The Fito Story
We like to say that though the Fito Network was formally founded in 2023, it is rooted in years of previous experiments and relationships.
Despite that, below is a snippet of how we started!
Fito Mottos
Things we say a lot that have defined our path...
Part 1: The Search for Fito
Our first — and most important — task was to find a name.
We wanted a beautiful name, one which could express an idea rooted in tradition, and which came from a language that wasn’t English.
A search with a small group of co-creators yielded words like “shamiri” in Swahili, which means “to thrive, be widespread, or assemble” and represents the East African spirit of pulling together resources to better each other off.
There was also the Hindi saath (together) and sahyog (collaboration), and dibana (to connect) in isiXhosa.
But we found quick alignment around “fito” — which in the Southern Africa Sesotho language means “joining diverse pieces or people to make one powerful effort”. Meanwhile, in the Kenyan Dholuo dialect it means “the rods to reinforce and build huts”, and in ancient Greek “to generate or grow.”
Drop in to the Fito Party!
Echoing that spirit, from the start the Fito Network has maintained an all-hands-on-deck approach to its systems and processes.
In December 2022 we brought together 60+ minds to help us articulate our purpose, values, engagement approach, and impact strategy. This formed the Fito Network Charter, which many have used as inspiration for their own networks.
We immediately shied away from the word “member” — finding it can create exclusion and disincentivize engagement — and instead developed an approach responding to diverse interests, needs, and capacities. Our resulting engagement model was designed so people can choose between being a “passenger” — where they can get a feel for the Fito experience, meet amazing people, and discover innovative ideas and practices — or “deep dive” into intentional learning and relationship building.
To navigate this, we designed a complex welcoming and matchmaking system to intentionally foster and track thousands of relationships, needs, offers, entities, and engagement levels across the network. It’s a work in progress!
Fito Field Trips
A cornerstone of our work centers on leveraging the deep trove of existing knowledge in the field by connecting network “weavers” to strengthen each others’ practice.
Across our first year, over 180 network leaders, movement-builders, and community coordinators joined multi-month experiences to deepen relationships, engage in self-discovery, and experiment with others. We called these “field trips”.
Through these field trips we covered topics like technology in networks, equity and decolonization, network leadership capacities, impact measurement, member engagement, how transformation happens, and scaling learning systems.
ANd we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the Networks Festival — our annual flagship event. This 6-week extravaganza each year brings together hundreds of speakers and participants across countries in every corner of the world to explore how we leverage relationships to transform our world. Funders, changemakers, weavers, and capacity builders join pitch tents, tech corners, and obstacle courses to share cutting-edge strategies and tools, amplify extraordinary stories of change, and foster new relationships for long-term collaboration. It was a blast.
But while each model is meant to fulfill specific needs people have, what we usually hear is that a feeling of not being “alone” is the most important outcome. This, they say, is everything.
Methods, Tools, and Jobs — oh my!
But not everyone has the time or will to every learning and relationship-building experience — so over 2023 we crafted a variety of offerings and experiences so people could “dip in and out” as they saw fit.
In January we opened up the collaborative impact methods kit, a community-curated treasure trove of 500+ techniques and tools to unleash collective change. Hundreds of people access this toolkit on a monthly basis to aid in their network weaving and facilitation work.
Because many networks are seen as a “fringe” or “nice-to-have”, we also invested careful energy into crafting inviting, accessible language and imagery around networks to amplify this great work — while not shying away from its complexity.
And to emphasize how large this field really is, we slowly built a system to find and share hidden weaving opportunities, collecting hundreds of jobs, funds, consultancies, and learning opportunities for network leaders around the globe.
Making the Fito Magic: Our Network Leaders
From the onset, we re-conceptualized our own previous thinking around network leadership.
Rather than seeing leadership as just a formal means for network decision-making – which we think can often end up concentrating power in the hands of a few – we have come instead to focus on multiple, specific leadership circles.
These small, carefully curated groups of people work behind the scenes to co-create the Fito magic — while learning, gaining recognition, and discovering new lines of collaboration. We invest deep energy in weaving and supporting these groups, who decentralize power and control in our own network, while also fulfilling their own personal goals.
One of our first leadership groups was the Festival Composers, a group of network field-builders who collectively reach 100,000+ communities worldwide. Over 8 months, this group collaborated to co-create the Network Festival’s purpose and theme, while designing and delivering the majority of sessions. They also built relationships with each other, and started collaborating in their own events, exchanging resources, and co-promoting each others’ activities.
We also launched the Learning Architects, curators of network-focused courses working together to amplify learning opportunities. This new group helped us distribute our opportunity-sharing, while also supporting each other to strengthen curriculum, engage in shared marketing, and form collective communities of practice.
And, very special to us are our Fito Facilitators. These are a pool of motivated community and event facilitators who guide the Fito Network’s deep-dives, while strengthening each others’ capacities and connecting to external opportunities. Coming from India, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Brazil, these fantastic individuals bring a wealth of skills to curating engaging, participatory and playful experiences.
Funding Relational Changemaking
Because funding is so important to thriving networks, core part of the Fito Network’s mandate came to focus on shifting more funding to support networks.
We started by curating a popular open list of network funders, to appreciate those pioneer funders who have taken strides to navigate this uncertain funding landscape.
We also hosted events on funding networks engaging dozens of funders, and piloted awareness-raising campaigns like the $1 Million Award for Weaving.
Our popular “funders treehouses” — funder-to-funder meet ups to share best practices on supporting networks, movements, and communities — engaged funders to explore themes like:
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Tracking impact in complex, evolving, and relational initiatives
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The funder’s role as a convener, facilitator, and connector
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Supporting grassroots movements and cross-network advocacy
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“Making the case” to boards for supporting networks
And building on the data that has emerged from these diverse activities, we developed a broader engagement approach for philanthropy to fund networks.
The Grand Vision: Networks Mosaics!
All of this has been a slow culmination for the core of what Fito was founded to do: enable networks to achieve more together.
The reality is, while thousands of networks exist, most remain siloed, reinventing the wheel and struggling to achieve their ambitious visions due to resource and capacity constraints. By bringing together thousands networks and funders from sectors like food, climate, and migration, we aim to help them navigate complex issues together while dramatically increasing their scale and reach.
We call these the “Networks Mosaics”.
Mosaics are intricate collections of diverse pieces that make a beautiful whole, touching societies for centuries. Crafting these masterpieces requires a shared vision, connecting many tiny and interrelated parts, coordination across diverse actors, and time (lots of time).
As a network-of-networks ourselves, with deep knowledge of how to connect and convene and access to thousands of networks, movements, and funders around the globe, we think we’re in a unique position to craft such mosaics.
Based on similar programs our team has piloted over pre-Fito years, we developed a roadmap for bringing networks together to:
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Collaboratively map the “ecosystem” of knowledge, needs, programs & reach — include marginalized & excluded stakeholders
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Bridge academic, practitioner & indigenous knowledge to grasp complex systems & policies
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Connect learnings and aggregating data to build collective cases for “what works”
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Scale innovations through collaborative, decentralized approaches
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Leverage super connectors, cross-pollinators, and local hubs for broad-scale advocacy campaigns
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Mobilize funding for grassroots networks and movements around the globe