Process

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.