For Borrowers
Borrowing Criteria
Does Steward work with beginning farmers and ranchers?
How does Steward assess animal welfare in farming projects?
Why partner with Steward versus raising capital independently?
What does the Steward loan process involve?
How does Steward define sustainable and regenerative agriculture?
What kind of agriculture businesses does Steward work with?
Am I eligible for a Steward loan?
Can I use a Steward loan to purchase land?
Using The Steward Platform
Using Steward: Application Process
About Project Pages
What identity verification documents do I need?
Verify your business with Steward's payment facilitator
What should I include in my Farm Page?
Using Steward: Live Project
How does Lender Checkout work?
What happens when a project successfully meets its loan amount?
How do I find anchor lenders to participate in my loan?
What is the point of the private campaign period?
Using Steward: Growth & Repayments
How do I link a bank account on my Steward profile?
Borrower Resources
Receiving a commercial loan from Steward - FAQs
FAQ Participated Loans - Borrowers
For Lenders
Lender FAQ
How is tax handled for my loan participation?
Payment Profile Creation - Errors and Solutions
Why did my transaction fail?
How does Lender Checkout work?
How much can I lend to a project?
What is Dwolla?
What lender opportunities are available with Steward?
What is Steward's loan servicing spread?
What transaction methods are available when participating in a loan?
Can anyone from the general public purchase loan participations from Steward?
Is lending with Steward an investment or a donation?
What are the fees for lenders?
Why is personal information required in order to handle payment on Steward?
Why is my transaction still pending?
Adding A Second Funding Source
Your Steward Wallet
Steward Regenerative Capital
Understanding your Steward Regenerative Capital loan
Automatically roll over loans to Steward Regenerative Capital
What is Steward Regenerative Capital?
How to request an early withdrawal of your Regenerative Capital loan
FAQ Participated Loans - Lenders
About Steward
- All Categories
- About Steward
- Are you a private company?
Are you a private company?
Updated by Steward Team
Yes, Steward is owned and controlled by its founding team, staff, and shareholders.
Our origin story
Steward was founded in 2006 by Dan Miller, whose family has agricultural roots on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that date back to 1884. Unfortunately, like so many other small family farms, their farm was eventually squeezed out by larger producers, and his mom’s generation was the first to make a living removed from the family land.
After growing up in his family's real estate business, Dan co-founded Fundrise - the first real estate crowdfunding platform in the United States.
Though invigorated by the project’s success, he began searching for something more.
As he spent time in his family’s ancestral homeland on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he began to connect with young farmers. Dan quickly learned how few had access to the funding they needed to grow and succeed. Many of these agricultural entrepreneurs had established their operations on leased land and built a strong customer base of restaurants and individuals, but lending institutions like banks and government entities weren’t adapting to meet the needs of the next generation of agricultural stewards.
With this realization, everything clicked into place: Dan wanted to help rebuild the human-scale agricultural economy that his family participated in. At the crossroads of his passion and experience, Dan saw the potential in creating greater access to capital to fund the growth of regenerative agriculture.
Thus, Steward was born.