Is your ecosystem truly thriving, or just surviving?

By Michael Anderson

Increasingly, we find that our work involves assessing the ecosystems in which nonprofits operate - the interlinked organizations, agencies, people, and social context that make up the social sector. Systemic challenges can rarely be fully addressed by a single organization; it takes an ecosystem view to design truly effective interventions.

So how do you know if your ecosystem is healthy? We've been hard at work developing an Ecosystems Assessment Matrix to help our partners do that assessment. It's built on five core factors essential for a robust, adaptive system:

• Comprehensive Capacity: Having the full spectrum of competence, skills, and solutions required to manage all stages of a project, from concept to operations.

• Resilience: The ability of the system to absorb significant shocks, recover quickly and self-organize without external rescue, and adapt proactively.

• Connection: The presence of dense, diverse, and intentional relationships spanning sectors and communities, ensuring people with problems can reach people with solutions.

• Circulation: Ensuring local economic recirculation, structured knowledge-sharing, and transparent, equitable resource flows within the ecosystem.

• Agency: How broadly the power to act is held, with governance co-designed with affected communities and local leadership actively developed and supported.

We believe assessing these areas is key to moving beyond "patchwork solutions" to "full spectrum solutions."

Would you like to review our full Ecosystem Assessment Matrix? We’d love to get your feedback! Please contact my colleague Robin Neidorf: robin@tangelotree.org to receive a copy.