Is your organization supporting program partners through systems approaches to philanthropy?

Whether a funder aims for incremental change, reform, or full-fledged transformation rests on a variety of factors, including the preferences of the board and senior leadership, the time horizon on which the organization operates, and the resources available for different types of grantmaking. Regardless of the particular strategic approach adopted, however, the following set of diagnostic considerations should help to clarify the degree to which a funder is systems-oriented in its giving and program planning. For each of these dozen statements, consider whether a given organization’s staff and partners would agree, and how strongly. If the response tends to be “strongly agree”, then the organization has likely embraced a systemic approach. Ambivalence in responses should not be discouraging, however, as seeing opportunities for change is the first step in implementing change.

Note: Insights from this survey will be used to inform future Scaling Solutions toward Shifting Systems research. To learn more about the initiative, please visit www.rockpa.org/project/scaling-solutions.

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1. Your Name:

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2. Your Organization:

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3. Your Role:

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4. Email

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5. I would like to subscribe to hear about the Scaling Solutions Initiative and other Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors news and updates.

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6. A significant portion of our portfolio consist of multi-year grants that provide program partners with enough time to design for and create systems-level change.

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7. Once we agree with program partners on overall aims and activities, we allow them to use their funding flexibly so that they can adapt as needed without undertaking time-consuming revisions to individual line items in grant agreements and budgets.

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8. We adjust the length of our financial commitments to grantees to the timeframe needed to achieve meaningful impact.

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9. We understand that promising solutions and innovations take time to scale and commit to supporting these solutions and innovations beyond the “proof of concept” phase.

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10. We provide funding to monitoring/evaluation/learning in every grant we make.

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11. We use feedback processes so that program implementers and other partners can anonymously share both positive and critical perspectives on how we operate.

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12. We support the research and data collection costs necessary to understand and map the systems program partners aim to change.

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13. We consider funding proposals to build partnerships, coalitions, and movements across sectors.

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14. We make an effort to coordinate and collaborate with other funders, including philanthropic, business, and government organizations.

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15. We recognize the importance of government partners in scaling systems change, whether through policymaking or direct service provision.

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16. We rely on local expertise in program design, monitoring and evaluation.

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17. We take the time to understand a local funding ecosystem, and we acknowledge that once we are a part of it, we have a responsibility to understand how our actions (including our departure) affect it and to take those effects into consideration.

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