The patterns reflect where our network currently sits. But regenerative agriculture, bioregional governance, community-owned enterprise, alternative ownership all exist across the Global South too, often with deeper roots and longer practice than in Europe. The geographic reality of our portfolio is a mirror. What it shows is not a failure of intention but the limits of what we have been able to achieve up to now with the group we have gathered. It provides the basis for reflection, for finding the right questions to ask ourselves. It helps us orient and stay humble. We’re off to an exciting start, but oh boy, there’s so much more to explore! ☺ ​

To help us choose our next steps we use the heatmaps to identify gaps that we can address.​

What counts as a gap – real funding gaps

The cells in the heatmaps that have no colour have not yet received any investment from our Explorers, but not every light cell on the map is a gap worth filling, or is one that we can realistically hope to fill!. The gaps that we do seek to address are those where a project already exists and are doing good work, but lack capital from communities like ours. In other words, we don’t want to go running around trying to fill theoretical holes in a system map. We want to stay grounded and close practical funding gaps for real projects run by real people in real places.

What could this look like in reality?​

• Lens Gaps A whole system view with almost no coverage. E.g. Our narrative lens runs almost entirely on grants, can we introduce models fueled by capital that expects financial returns?
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• Instrument Gaps Missing tools across the portfolio. Right now we’re using grants and equity almost exclusively. E.g. Can we provide a revenue-share arrangements that preserve steward-ownership models?
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• Geography Gaps​ Absent from regions where important work is happening. E.g. Bioregional regeneration in East Africa would fit our group’s expertise, how can we bridge this geographic gap?
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• Topic Gaps Known needs with no Explorer activity. E.g. New materials and local manufacturing currently uninvested. Do we want to go in that direction?

Interrelationability

Now it’s time for shameless self-promotion! ​We’d like to float a concept we’ve been developing in our own practice:​

Interrelationability is our way of describing the degree to which an initiative enables, depends on, or amplifies others in the portfolio.​

Most projects might do their own thing well, but they mostly stand alone. But some are structural and unlock capabilities for neighbouring initiatives. Others hold things together that would otherwise fall apart. These differences can make a big difference when you’re deciding where to focus next.​

So when we’re looking at funding opportunities we score each against three questions: how much does it enable others? How critical are others’ dependencies on it? How much spillover potential does it have beyond its direct effects?​

Those three questions help us assess whether an initiative will play a supporting role for others. We have put forward five possible roles that can be fulfilled:

• Enabler Unlocks capabilities for many others (an open data standard, a shared legal template)
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• Keystone​ Central infrastructure with many dependents; needs robust governance
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• Bridge Connects communities or markets that don’t currently interact (might be narrative or convening work)
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• Probe A small bet to test a hypothesis; cheap to learn from

• Flywheel A compounding dynamic that accelerates once minimum conditions are met​

So when we’re looking at an investment opportunity that would potentially fill a gap on a heatmap, the question isn’t “should we fill this gap?” It’s “could this investment play an enabling role for others?” ​

A keystone gap might be urgent. A probe gap might be an invitation to engage quickly and at little expense.But an isolated gap that doesn’t connect to anything else will probably just stay empty for now.​

From gaps to synergies – the polycapital move

Identifying which investments could play which roles naturally takes us into the discussion around synergies. At this point it is important to talk about ‘polycapital’, rather than just impact investing. ​

Financial capital is absolutely necessary, but it’s only one of five types of capital that we seek to track. The others are:​

• Symbolic capital, which you can understand as reputation. It adds legitimacy and makes a project visible. It signals that an opportunity is investable to others who wouldn’t otherwise look.
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• Narrative capital that frames the stories and language to shift what people believe is possible.
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• Social or network capital based on trust, relationships, and coalitions that enable projects to reach communities and decision-makers they couldn’t access otherwise.
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• Natural capital — the biophysical knowledge and relationships with living systems that many of our ecological projects carry as genuine assets. ​
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Often the most important moves as Explorers are actually non-financial. Showing up for a project in a moment of public scrutiny is symbolic capital. Bringing the right journalist into contact with the right founder is narrative capital. Introducing two projects that didn’t know the other existed is network capital. These moves generate synergy. They’re just tough to capture in a spreadsheet!​