The Question That Stops Ecosystem Builders Cold

After a combined 48+ years navigating ecosystem building, innovation strategy, and economic development, we've seen one question derail more ecosystem leaders than any other: "What's your ROI?"

You know the work is foundational. Building trust. Preventing duplication. Weaving connections that make entire systems work. But translating it into the language funders understand? That's where even the most experienced builders struggle.

Last year, ecosystem builders across the country began to lose critical funding. Not because the work wasn't valuable—because it was invisible. Funders couldn't see it, so they cut it.

That's why we partnered with Social Venturers and EcoMap Technologies to tackle this head-on in our recent webinar: From Compliance to Connection: How Ecosystem Builders Can Protect What Matters and Demonstrate ROI.

This month's newsletter breaks down the approach we shared, with practical steps you can implement immediately to protect your coordination work and demonstrate measurable value.

The Builder's Dilemma: Three Capabilities, One Missing Piece

🔥 Here's the tension every ecosystem builder faces:

Effective ecosystem building requires three distinct capabilities:

🔨 Building authentic relationships and trust
⚙️ Delivering measurable, systemic impact
📊 Demonstrating value in the language funders understand

Most ecosystem builders naturally excel at the first two. The third? That's where brilliant builders get stuck—and defunded.

The environment isn't helping. We're operating in a BANI Environment: Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible.

Funding cycles are shrinking. Political instability is rising. Pressure on builders to "show impact" has never been more intense.

Meanwhile, the coordination work that prevents $2M in duplication or accelerates deals by six months? It gets labeled "overhead".

🧠 The uncomfortable truth: The most critical work in ecosystem building is also the hardest to fund. We're talking about the invisible infrastructure. This is the relationship maintenance, partner alignment, information flow systems, and coordination mechanisms that enable everything else to work.

Your glue work isn't overhead. It's critical regional infrastructure.

And infrastructure requires investment.

We covered real examples: Business Oregon's hub-and-spoke model demonstrates how coordination leads to less waste and new funding opportunities. That "coffee meeting intel" you're capturing? It's social capital building that opens doors and outcomes.

Watch the Full Webinar

Ready to master this approach and learn from live examples and audience Q&A? The complete session is available here:

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💬 Share Your Experience

What's one piece of invisible work you do that you wish funders understood? Hit reply and let us know. Your insights help all of us get better at this.

Remember: Every conversation where you successfully reframe systems needs into funder language creates space for more organizations to do this essential work and achieve greater long-term impact.

Until next month,

Amy Beaird, PhD & Dawn Haynes, MBA​
Co-Founders, Ecosystem Edge​
​Experienced. Mission-Driven. Ecosystem-Literate.

Funding Opportunities

Here are three funding opportunities aligned with ecosystem-building work. We've successfully navigated federal grant development across multiple agencies, reach out if you'd like to explore these together.

• EDA FY 25 Disaster Supplemental Grant Program (Due March 3, 2026)
• NSF's Accelerating Research Translation (ART) (Due Jan 15, 2026)
• National Science Foundation Translation to Practice (NSF TTP) (Due Jan 20, 2026)

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