Philanthropy can make significant resources available to support the transformation of underlying systems and redress entrenched discrimination. But too often not enough money is being spent or funds are spent in ways that do not address systemic barriers – and particularly to the advancement of women and girls (see our page on ‘Gender Equality and Intersectionality’).
Even where funders acknowledge the type of flexible and long-term funding that systems change requires, it is still challenging to implement a systems change funding strategy as an individual organization. For this reason, we know that many funders are thinking about how to partner effectively with others.
Pooling funding towards systems change initiatives can achieve greater impact because the vision is long-term – far beyond a single intervention or year-to-year funding. By coming together and investing in this way – in building on what’s already working, focusing on organizational strengthening, supporting winning coalitions, and helping to unlock additional capital from other funders or government resources – we are able to make a far bigger dent towards long-term systemic change.
Each grant we make creates an opportunity for others to co-invest, and we work to build a wider community of additional funders and partners to learn and work along with us. By collaborating, and creating a platform for others to join, Co-Impact and its partners seek to achieve far more together than any one actor could do alone.
At the same time, we seek to use our collective experience and voice to influence more philanthropy that is larger, longer-term, and more flexible, as well as to help grow the overall resources available for gender equality.
Supporting our Program Partners
As funders, we seek to live up to six key philanthropic practices. These apply both to good funding practice, in general, and to supporting systems change, in particular:
- Be outcomes-focused and flexible through mutually-agreed outcomes and programmatic milestones rather than detailed and rigid plans and budgets.
- Provide comprehensive support through significant, longer-tern grants accompanied by deep non-financial support.
- Support strategic coherence by providing program partners with the time and space needed to clarify their strategic choices and by supporting their overall systems change strategies and associated budgets rather than restricting to specific parts of their plan and encouraging other funders to do the same.
- Value our partners’ time and effort by seeking to keep reporting and other requirements simple, streamlined and predictable.
- Encourage learning and adaptation for the benefit of our partners and their initiative – using data to assess progress and make course corrections.
- Behave as true partners by setting agendas together with our partners, listening with intent and challenging where relevant. We always strive for empathy.
For more, see: Philanthropy for Systems Change
