What is Ecosystem Building? A Guide for Global Non-Profits
19/05/2026
By Will Tucker, Co-Director (Communications and Resource Mobilization), Global Commons Alliance. Watch part one and part two of the original Linkedin posts this blog is based on.
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There’s a lot of emphasis in philanthropy and civil society now-a-days around the idea of “ecosystem building”. It’s led lots of people to ask “what is ecosystem building?” and “how do we fit in?”
What is ecosystem building?
There is no fixed definition, but for me ecosystem building is a mindset which requires us to:
- Prioritize the health of the collective over the health of the individual — this is about looking across the movement to see whether we have strong examples of all the necessary functions, at the necessary scale and power, and with the necessary connections, to deliver the portfolio of activities which are needed for the desired systems change. Importantly, these strengths may be in the contributions of public, private and non-profit sectors.
- It also means recognizing that the world is constantly in flux and so you can’t have fixed narrow objectives, strategies or term-limits — you’ve got to plug-away on a shared journey which evolves and endures throughout the changes around us.
- And partly because the world is in flux, and is not always predictable, we need to simultaneously pursue parallel strategies which tackle both the world of today and the world as it might be tomorrow. So, for me, an ecosystem needs to be diverse and pluralist. There are no silver bullets. We will need an array of strategies, solutions and tactics. Furthermore, we need to avoid diluting our power with lowest-common denominator thinking whilst strengthening our strategies and activities through constructive discourse and exchange of insights and evidence.
Perhaps most importantly, ecosystem building requires us to think big, powerful and long-term. The systems transformations that humanity and the world needs are big — we need to see change across cultures, economies and governance systems and they need to endure.
That means strategies which gradually ‘ratchet up’ progress, designing for resource multiplier-effects and challenging ourselves to sustain our impact and power, including through non-traditional financial models where possible.
How do we fit in?
If that’s what ecosystem building is then it leads to the subsequent questions: “How do we fit in?” and “What does this mean for our fundraising?”.
A few years ago, when establishing an ecosystem-building grant portfolio, I developed a simple categorization. Let me know what you think and if it’s helpful for you too.
There are three categories:
1. Scaling and sustaining
This category is about finding opportunities to scale impact by leveraging additional power or resources behind an activity which already has a good evidence base and scalable model. For example:
- Uniting commercial and non-profit’s around shared narratives, advocacy and campaigns
- Scaling up commercial operating models
- Impact-investments where capital is maintained or repaid
- Replicating success in a new geography or sector.
2. Innovating
The second category is about finding out what works (if we don’t know) and experimenting with scaling and sustaining models.
For me, innovation is about testing and iterating design and operations in order to provide the foundations and trajectory for future impact at scale. This implies an entrepreneurial approach with rapid cycles of design, testing and iteration and rigorous modelling and experimentation.
Of course learning and iteration is important for the other categories — the difference is the ‘newness’ of the approach being innovated.
3. Infrastructure
Infrastructure combines organizations contributions to enable them to be more than the sum of their parts. Infrastructure enables the distribution of activities to the organizations with the most appropriate functional or geographic strength. Infrastructure provides resources and services which are enablers of the wider ecosystem and which otherwise would be inefficiently provided (e.g. because they are duplicated unnecessarily) or simply wouldn’t be available to some. Infrastructure accelerates learning and cross-pollination of ideas — by sharing insights exchange and dialogue across the ecosystem, reducing duplication and aiding the community to benefit from diverse expertise.
This is where our work at the Global Commons Alliance Secretariat is focused. We facilitate strategic dialogue and prioritization, are developing community enabling tools, orchestrate partnership programs and facilitate learning exchange.
Clearly, this is a simple model, based on operational approach, which doesn’t integrate other important attributes (geography, audience/ function, ‘issue’ focus…). However when I started using it as a funder it really helped me to think about the balance across my portfolio and to see where organizations weren’t positioning themselves as part of a collective long-term effort.
What does ecosystem building mean to you? What have I missed? Or included which shouldn’t be there? Contact us to chat about how your organization can fit into the wider ecosystem that is working together for a safe and just future.
By Will Tucker, Co-Director (Communications and Resource Mobilization), Global Commons Alliance. Watch part one and part two of the original Linkedin posts this blog is based on.
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