What the Summit must produce
Not programs to fund. An ecosystem to build, resource, and sustain.
Birth justice is not a collection of programs or organizations to fund. It is an ecosystem and an infrastructure that must be intentionally built, resourced, coordinated, and sustained.
The shift we are designing for
Success is not that people leave believing birth justice needs more funding. Most of the room already knows that. The shift is in how the field itself is understood.
“Birth justice is not a collection of programs or organizations to fund. It is an ecosystem and an infrastructure that must be intentionally built, resourced, coordinated, and sustained. Success is not that people leave believing birth justice needs more funding — most of the room already knows that.”
Nakeenya Wilson · Co-Director, Funders for Birth Justice and Equity
How Measure addressed it
The shift is now the organizing frame of the whole harvest: every session is read for ecosystem conditions rather than program stories, and the final intelligence is written against infrastructure, durability, and capital strategy.
The conditions determining whether birth justice organizations and leaders survive and thrive are not created by community organizations alone. They are shaped by philanthropy, policy, institutions, capital, workforce conditions, and the relationships between all of those actors. Fragmentation is not inevitable — it is something we can collectively change.
Where intelligence gets lost
Three places the microphone will not reach.
“A funder may believe they are providing flexible support while a CBO describes instability. Some of the most important things will be said at lunch, in hallways, and by the six people who disagree with the forty.”
Nakeenya Wilson · Co-Director, Funders for Birth Justice and Equity
How Measure addressed it
We added a between-the-sessions harvest, anonymous contribution channels, and a rule that minority positions are logged with equal weight and never averaged into consensus.
The risk
A funder may believe they are providing flexible, responsive support while a CBO simultaneously describes instability, administrative burden, short grant cycles, or an inability to invest in infrastructure. That contradiction rarely surfaces as open disagreement.
How we protect it
Harvesters record perspective alongside claim — who said it, from what position in the ecosystem. Contradictions between funder belief and CBO experience are logged as findings, not smoothed into a single narrative.
The risk
Lunch, hallways, the minutes right after a session ends, the reception, and the quiet conversation between two people who would not say the same thing into a microphone.
How we protect it
A between-the-sessions harvest: roving harvesters with a light protocol, anonymous drop-in contribution cards and a digital channel open the full two and a half days, and an end-of-day informal-intelligence pass in the team huddle.
The risk
If forty people say one thing and six say something fundamentally different, those six may be identifying the most consequential tension in the ecosystem.
How we protect it
Minority positions are captured with equal weight and never averaged away. No harvest is complete without recording where the room diverged and whose experience complicated the dominant narrative.
Attentive not only to themes, but to
Real-time responsiveness
Responsive, not improvisational.
The architecture remains intact; the questions within it become sharper as the Summit teaches us something. The Summit is not simply an event — it is part of the larger Ecosystem Intelligence process itself.
“Be responsive, not improvisational. Do not redesign Day 2 on the fly or invent new sessions onsite.”
Nakeenya Wilson · Co-Director, Funders for Birth Justice and Equity
How Measure addressed it
We drew an explicit line: the architecture and session ownership are protected, while prompts, tensions, and synthesis questions inside the existing design get sharpened by Day 1 intelligence.
Protected
- Day 2 is not redesigned on the fly
- The Summit's arc and architecture stay intact
- Session ownership stays with FBJE's named facilitators
- No new sessions invented onsite
Sharpened by Day 1 intelligence
- Naming an emerging tension inside a synthesis moment
- Adjusting a prompt within an already-designed session
- Giving a facilitator something specific to interrogate
- Surfacing a contradiction during the capital conversation
- Carrying a major opportunity into the afternoon coordination work
The final harvest
Structured intelligence Rachel can analyze — not hundreds of pages she has to reconstruct into meaning.
Every harvested item is classified so it can sit alongside the surveys, landscape work, Capital Index, and the eventual Ecosystem Intelligence platform.
“What Rachel needs is usable, structured input for the Ecosystem Intelligence work — not a beautifully written conference report she has to reconstruct into meaning.”
Nakeenya Wilson · Co-Director, Funders for Birth Justice and Equity
How Measure addressed it
Everything harvested is classified into nine intelligence types and tagged by lane, actor, sector, geography, and confidence so it can sit alongside the surveys, landscape work, and Capital Index.
Observations
What participants say is happening.
Patterns
Repeated across organizations, sectors, regions, or rooms.
Tensions
Where experiences or perspectives diverge.
Signals
Emerging but not yet widespread.
Structural conditions
Funding practice, policy, workforce realities, organizational capacity.
Needs & gaps
What the ecosystem cannot currently do.
Assets
What already exists and could be strengthened rather than rebuilt.
Coordination opportunities
Where shared action has real potential.
Questions & hypotheses
Requiring deeper investigation — explicitly not treated as findings.
Every item tagged by
The harvest must answer
- 01What did we learn about the conditions of the birth justice ecosystem that we did not know, or could not see as clearly, before the Summit?
- 02What does that intelligence suggest FBJE should investigate, build, convene around, resource, or help coordinate next?
Measure's role, made explicit
What we are not
- ×Invent the Summit's intellectual architecture
- ×Author an outside firm's version of the field
- ×Produce a beautifully written conference report
- ×Reconstruct meaning Rachel should own
What we are
- Help the room listen rigorously
- Protect what would otherwise be lost
- Connect intelligence across rooms
- Support responsive sensemaking
- Translate what emerges into usable inputs for the Ecosystem Intelligence work