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In philanthropy, information is abundant. The knowledge that matters is not.
At Proximate Futures, we draw on the collective knowledge of people and organizations closest to the challenges.
Turning local knowledge into actionable intelligence.
Helping donors and investors better understand the issues, organizations, and opportunities that matter.
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Proximate Futures
Harnessing local insight to guide global capital
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Our Approach
Making the invisible, visible
What We Do — Proximate Intelligence
Proximate Futures helps donors navigate complex issues and unfamiliar contexts by bringing the knowledge of people closest to the work into strategic decision-making.
Every community holds knowledge that rarely reaches funding decisions. It lives in relationships, shared experience, and the judgment of people who understand a place or issue from the inside. We surface that knowledge through trusted peer networks and successive rounds of referral, engaging practitioners, researchers, community leaders, and sector experts with direct firsthand experience. By drawing on multiple independent perspectives, we identify where insights converge, where they differ, and what those patterns reveal about the ecosystem as a whole.
Our team combines this intelligence with research, analysis, and strategic expertise to map the actors, relationships, and dynamics shaping a context — surfacing signals of trust and influence, identifying overlooked opportunities, and translating informal knowledge into clear, actionable insight.
The result is better-informed philanthropy: decisions grounded not only in what can be found in reports and data, but in the knowledge, experience, and judgment of people who understand the context firsthand.
Our Model — The Proximate Futures Model (infographic)
Funders: Priorities · Questions · Decision needs. Define Focus: Regions · Issues · Criteria · Goals
Trusted Network Partners: NGOs & networks; Universities & researchers; Government agencies; Philanthropic partners; Other trusted institutions
Locally Rooted Expertise (hub): Community organizers; Practitioners & implementers; Government agencies; Civil society leaders; Clinicians & frontline workers; Entrepreneurs & innovators; Journalists & media; Researchers & academics; Nonprofit leaders
Deeper Insights: Ecosystem insights; Patterns & opportunities; Promising organizations; Relationships & influence; Actionable intelligence
Better Decisions: Stronger strategies · Curated pipelines · Greater impact
Services
Proximate Futures is built for a range of donors—from individuals to large foundations—all seeking a smarter, more effective approach to giving.
No two engagements are the same. We begin by understanding our partners' goals, priorities, and decision-making needs. These priorities shape everything that follows—from the issues and regions we explore to the insights we gather, the organizations we surface, and the criteria we use to assess opportunities.
1. Ecosystem Analysis: A comprehensive analysis that illuminates the actors and conditions surrounding the problem of focus, as well as the landscape of critical gaps, high-leverage opportunities, and more.
2. Strategy Recommendations: In-depth strategy options and recommendations on the most effective use of a donor's or investor's resources in light of their goals.
3. Curated Pipelines: A robust set of high-potential, locally-led organizations—sourced through nominations from the Advisors Network—that is aligned with donors' specific priorities and criteria.
4. Evaluation: Local experts vet organizations—based on document review, interviews, and/or virtual site visits—that probes on their impact track record and potential, organizational health, ecosystem traction, and other dimensions.
Our Process
Process
01 — Define the Question
We begin by understanding what our partner is trying to accomplish, what they already know, and where additional intelligence could strengthen their strategy or decision-making.
The questions vary widely. A funder entering a new geography may need to understand the ecosystem and where it can contribute. Another may want to identify opportunities aligned with an established strategy, test its assumptions, or gain deeper insight into a specific organization or investment.
We translate these priorities into a focused inquiry, defining the questions to answer and the knowledge, perspectives, and expertise needed to answer them.
02 — Assemble the Expertise
With the questions defined, we identify and assemble the mix of expertise, experience, and perspective needed to answer them.
We draw first from our Proximate Advisor Network, selecting people whose knowledge and experience are directly relevant to the engagement. The network spans nonprofit and community leaders, practitioners, researchers, academics, public officials, journalists, and local funders across the Global South, with every Advisor entering through trusted peer referral.
The size and composition of the Advisor group are tailored to the question. A focused, time-sensitive engagement may involve a dozen Advisors; a comprehensive ecosystem analysis may engage several hundred.
Where additional expertise is needed, we extend the network through trusted Network Partners, including NGOs, universities, philanthropic institutions, government agencies, and other locally embedded organizations. They identify respected people with deep contextual knowledge, strong local relationships, and relevant firsthand experience. We vet prospective Advisors for their proximity to the issue, professional credibility, understanding of local dynamics, and ability to contribute meaningful insight.
Each engagement therefore assembles the expertise needed for the immediate question while expanding the network available for future work.
03 — Gather Local Insight
We engage Advisors through a focused inquiry designed around the intelligence our partner needs. The inquiry can range from understanding an entire ecosystem to examining a specific challenge, organization, population, intervention, or funding decision.
At the ecosystem level, Advisors may help us understand how an issue is evolving, what is driving change, where needs and opportunities are emerging, and which actors are shaping the field. At a more granular level, we may examine why an intervention is succeeding or struggling, how an organization is regarded by its peers, which leaders are trusted within a community, or what contextual factors should inform an investment.
Advisors contribute knowledge rarely captured fully in conventional research or datasets: practical experience, institutional memory, local context, professional judgment, and an understanding of the relationships and dynamics that shape how an ecosystem actually works.
The referral process generates an additional layer of intelligence. It reveals who people turn to for expertise, whose judgment carries weight, where knowledge resides, and how individuals and organizations are connected. As independent referral pathways converge, they can surface people and organizations recognized across different parts of the ecosystem.
The result is a body of human intelligence calibrated to the question, from a broad understanding of a system to highly specific insight into a particular decision.
04 — Build Collective Intelligence
We bring individual perspectives together to develop a more complete and reliable understanding of the issue.
No single Advisor is expected to represent an ecosystem or provide a definitive answer. Each contributes a particular vantage point. We triangulate these perspectives with independent research and network data to identify:
Convergence: Where do independent perspectives reinforce one another?
Divergence: Where do informed perspectives differ, and why?
Recognition: Which organizations, leaders, and approaches surface repeatedly across independent sources?
Trust and influence: Who is consistently regarded as credible, effective, or influential?
Relationships: How are actors connected, and where are the clusters, bridges, dependencies, and gaps?
Emerging signals: What are people closest to the work seeing before it appears in conventional research or data?
Blind spots: Which perspectives, communities, organizations, or issues may be missing?
This transforms a collection of individual perspectives into collective intelligence, revealing patterns and relationships that no single source could provide.
05 — Turn Intelligence into Action
We translate collective intelligence into practical implications for strategy, investment, and funding.
Depending on the engagement, this may include:
Ecosystem intelligence: a clearer picture of the actors, relationships, dynamics, gaps, and opportunities shaping an issue.
Strategic recommendations: on where to focus, which approaches to consider, which assumptions to revisit, and where philanthropy may have leverage.
Curated pipelines: surfacing organizations, leaders, partnerships, and initiatives through trusted networks and independent validation.
Funding guidance: providing contextual intelligence on prospective grantees, including their reputation, relationships, track record, ecosystem role, and how their work is understood locally.
The result is not simply more information, but expertise tailored to the decisions our partners need to make.
Our Model
The Proximate Futures Model
Through cascading peer referrals, we unlock the collective expertise held within local networks, revealing the people, organizations, relationships, and opportunities that shape an ecosystem.
Pillars: People. Connections. Insight. Impact.
Outcomes
More locally led organizations supported
Greater collaboration across the ecosystem
Less duplication, more learning
A growing network of trusted experts
Lasting, equitable impact
Our Vision
Leveraging local expertise
The information problem
Social change doesn't happen in a vacuum. Every organization operates within a web of relationships, dependencies, and conditions that shape what's possible — and that web often determines which intervention succeeds or fails. Yet, philanthropy too often assesses these organizations in isolation, with little visibility into the ecosystems of people and institutions that shape outcomes and determine where resources can have the greatest influence.
This blind spot has become increasingly consequential as global challenges are more interconnected than ever before. Climate change, food insecurity, economic instability, public health threats, political polarization, biodiversity loss, and displacement no longer exist in isolation—they influence and amplify one another in complex ways. Solving these challenges requires more than understanding individual organizations; it requires understanding the ecosystem dynamics in which they operate.
Without insight into who is trusted, how organizations are connected, and the roles they play within their ecosystems, donors are forced to make decisions with incomplete information—relying on what is visible and already familiar. As a result, many of the organizations best positioned to address complex challenges, especially those that are locally-led, remain overlooked and underfunded.
If we are serious about solving today's interconnected challenges, we need a different approach. We need to understand the ecosystems in which change happens, listen to those most proximate to the problem, and act on their insight—ensuring that resources reach the people and organizations with the deepest understanding of local realities and the greatest ability to respond.
Bridging the gap
We envision a future where the people closest to society's challenges play a much greater role in shaping where funding flows.
To that end, we want the knowledge held by those closest to a problem to inform the decisions of those seeking to solve it. We want it to be easier for locally-led organizations to be discovered and supported. And we want a philanthropic field that is guided by a deep understanding of the people and relationships that are driving and sustaining change.
By bridging the gap between local knowledge and global capital, we aim to help build a more informed, responsive, and equitable system for social change.
Insights
Insights
Philanthropy has access to more information than ever before. Research, reports, and datasets help funders understand the scale of challenges, assess interventions, and measure results. But they rarely capture the full picture.
Who is trusted? Which organizations are gaining traction? Where are new approaches emerging? What relationships shape success? And what do people closest to the work know that has yet to appear in the data?
Proximate Futures brings this knowledge into view. By drawing on local expertise and trusted networks, we uncover the insights, relationships, and opportunities that conventional research often misses—giving funders a deeper understanding of the issues and ecosystems they seek to influence.
From Data to Context — Understanding why things happen: Going beyond indicators and outcomes to reveal the local conditions, experiences, and dynamics that shape results.
From Organizations to Ecosystems — Seeing how change happens: Looking beyond individual organizations to understand the relationships, dependencies, and broader systems that influence their work and impact.
From Visibility to Discovery — Finding who matters: Surfacing trusted leaders, promising organizations, and emerging approaches that often remain outside established funding networks.
From Information to Intelligence — Knowing where to act: Bringing together diverse local perspectives to identify patterns, uncover opportunities, and inform more strategic funding and investment decisions.
About
Who We Are
The Team — Key People
The Proximate Futures team has decades of experience as funders, nonprofit leaders, social entrepreneurs, and network builders. Having sat on both sides of philanthropy—as grantmakers and grantees—we understand the challenges of identifying trusted organizations, navigating unfamiliar contexts, and deploying resources effectively. This experience shapes our conviction that the future of philanthropy depends on closing the distance between those who hold capital and those who hold local knowledge.
Governance
We are a fiscally sponsored project of, and governed by, Accountability Lab. And we are guided by our Executive and Advisory Committees, whose members include:
Azad Oommen, Independent Expert in K-12 education in the Global South
Jennifer Wegbreit, CEO, Shockwave Foundation
Julia Pettengill, Executive Director, Schooner Foundation
Kathie Paul, Manager - Capital, Rippleworks
Kathryn Harrison, Director - Portfolio and Investments, Skoll Foundation
Kevin L. Brown, CEO, Mighty Ally
Leah Shearman, Global Director of Development, Accountability Lab
Our Values — What guides our work
Proximity Matters: We believe those closest to a problem often have the deepest understanding of its causes and the pathways to change. Local knowledge, relationships, and lived experience are not peripheral to effective philanthropy—they are essential to it.
Trust is Intelligence: Trust is one of the most important—and most overlooked—forms of information. We believe that strength of relationship, reputation, and peer recognition provide powerful signals about who is best positioned to create change.
See the Ecosystem: Organizations do not operate in isolation, and neither should philanthropy. We seek to understand the broader conditions, relationships, and dynamics that shape outcomes, recognizing that lasting change emerges from ecosystems rather than individual actors alone.
Shared Knowledge, Collective Learning: Knowledge becomes more valuable when it is shared. We believe insights generated through one engagement should strengthen the next, creating a growing body of collective intelligence that helps the sector make better decisions over time.
Participation is Essential: Those affected by decisions should have a voice in shaping them. We believe local leaders, organizations, and communities should not simply implement solutions, but play a meaningful role in defining priorities, identifying opportunities, and informing how resources are allocated.
Engage
Harness local insight for smarter giving
Philanthropic Infrastructure — Turning insight into impact
Proximate Futures provides the infrastructure needed to move from understanding to implementation. We support donors across the full lifecycle of philanthropy—from ecosystem analysis and strategy development to sourcing, due diligence, grantmaking, reporting, and long-term ecosystem strengthening.
Because the intelligence generated through each engagement is shared, donors can build upon one another's work rather than starting from scratch. Whether acting independently or collaboratively, they benefit from a common foundation of local knowledge and a growing body of shared intelligence.
The result is a new kind of philanthropic infrastructure—one that lowers the costs of discovery and diligence, increases confidence, and enables more resources to flow to the people and organizations best positioned to solve complex challenges.
Who We Work With — Proximate Intelligence in action
Proximate Futures is built for a range of donors—from individuals to large foundations—all seeking a smarter, more effective approach to giving.
No two engagements are the same. We begin by understanding our partners' goals, priorities, and decision-making needs. These priorities shape everything that follows—from the issues and regions we explore to the insights we gather, the organizations we surface, and the criteria we use to assess opportunities.
Services — For each engagement we provide a wide range of services:
1. Ecosystem Analysis: A comprehensive analysis that illuminates the actors and conditions surrounding the problem of focus, as well as the landscape of critical gaps, high-leverage opportunities, and more.
2. Strategy Recommendations: In-depth strategy options and recommendations on the most effective use of a donor's or investor's resources in light of their goals.
3. Curated Pipelines: A robust set of high-potential, locally-led organizations—sourced through nominations from the Advisors Network—that is aligned with donors' specific priorities and criteria.
4. Due Diligence: Advisor-led vetting of organizations—based on document review, interviews, and/or virtual site visits—that probes on their impact track record and potential, organizational health, ecosystem traction, and other dimensions.
5. Selection Guidance: Guidance on which organizations to select for funding, based on Advisors' consensus (via deliberation or voting).
6. Sub-Granting Infrastructure: End-to-end funds disbursement on behalf of donors, including grant agreements, reporting, compliance tracking, and performance monitoring.
7. Ecosystem Strengthening: Longer-term engagements through which entire ecosystems can be strengthened over multiple years, to increase the likelihood of sustained impact.
8. Co-investment: Opportunities to join forces with peers through pooled or collaborative funds.
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Proximate Futures — Harnessing local insight to guide global philanthropic capital
Connect: contact@proximatefutures.fund