Six Essential Factors for Systems Change: Lessons from Co-Impact’s Round 3 Selection Process

This blog is Part 2 of a series on our Round 3 Open Call. Part 1 discusses lessons learned from our Open Call process on sourcing Global South-rooted and women-led initiatives.

The world has changed significantly since we launched the Open Call for our third round of grants on January 29, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic and the movements for racial justice in the US and around the world have revealed how systems are marked by deep inequities and the pervasive legacy of systemic racism. This makes the need to advance systems change — in a manner that is truly inclusive and just — even more important.

In reviewing the proposals for our Round 3 Open Call, our core question was: When our societies are marked by deep discrimination and disparity, what does it take to achieve true systemic change?

This question was central to the difficult task of selecting a shortlist of 26 initiatives for the next round of diligence from among the 601 applications we received. The Round 3 applicant pool was full of exceptional, high-potential systems change initiatives. Hailing from 74 countries, applicants were majority women-led, rooted in the Global South, and represented a wide diversity of issue areas and sectors. Selecting a shortlist from among them was very challenging and required us to exercise careful judgment. This process involved two rounds of review from our internal team and external experts. Multiple considerations needed to be taken into account, including the 11 criteria we had laid out in the application materials. How were we to sort and weigh across different critical factors?

Throughout the rigorous selection process, and in reviewing the final set, six strengths stood out as common among the 26 initiatives that we have selected for further diligence:

1. Significant people and systems-level outcomes: The strongest applications articulated a compelling vision for more just and equitable systems. Beyond programmatic outputs and activities, these initiatives described the system they aim to change, how they would contribute to clear improvements in that system, and how those improvements would translate into meaningful and long-term impact in the lives of women, men, and children.

2. Strong systems change mindset: Our shortlisted initiatives demonstrated a deep understanding of the conditions responsible for the problems they seek to solve, and outlined a strategy with the potential to transform — not just respond to — these root causes. They focused on adoption of a proven model at scale by a government or market system, rather than the linear scale up of one organization or project. And they made it clear how improvements would be institutionalized in the target system to ensure the changes and impact would endure.

3. Transformative approach to gender and intersectionality: The strongest initiatives brought a gender and intersectional lens to all parts of their proposal (not just in the application’s section related to gender and inclusion), from problem analysis, to outcomes and results, to measurement and learning, to organisational capabilities and leadership, across the gender continuum. Their systems change strategies seek to transform the root causes of inequality, rather than merely accommodate them. And these organizations demonstrated a commitment to addressing discrimination — in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity and/or caste — as an integral part of their full systems change strategy and foundational to their organization’s values.

4. Deep-rootedness in the target context: The most convincing systems change proposals came from organizations anchored in the country(ies) where they work. These organizations’ track record, reputation, leadership, and legitimacy within their contexts, including the strength of their relationships and credibility with key actors in the system, gave us confidence that they understand the complexities of the system and are well positioned to enable deep change over the long term.

5. Savvy approach to political economy: The strongest applications articulated how power and incentives work among key actors in the targeted system and how the proposed initiative would build a “winning coalition” to navigate and overcome barriers. They had a convincing plan to build a concerted set of actors aligned, motivated, and powerful enough to make change happen. These initiatives also made a compelling case that they had the right relationships, leverage, history, and position to achieve systemic impact within the proposed context.

6. Organizational strength and strategic partnerships: Organizational strength was challenging to assess from a concept note alone, but the strongest applications clearly argued the anchor organization’s readiness to lead large scale systemic change. We could discern this most often in the initiative’s description of their partnerships and in their approach to learning. Most shortlisted initiatives already had strategic partnerships in place, and described how their partners’ incentives and capabilities were aligned and complementary to their own. Likewise, the strongest applicants thoughtfully described how they would track progress within systems and for people, how data would be used by the target system/government moving forward, and how learning and adaptation manifest in their organisation.

Fundamentally, systems change is all about how large-scale systems support people to thrive, and particularly the women, men, and children who have not had a fair shot, who have been systematically excluded, who have been denied sufficient support to withstand shocks and access opportunity. If it was not evident already, the current global context has made that abundantly clear. Unless inclusion is designed and intentional, it will not happen. At the next stage of diligence in our process, we will continue to seek to better understand how our partners will drive outcomes at the systems level, are rooted in the contexts they aim to improve, have the organizational capacity and savvy to enable systems change, and how they will center the needs of women and others experiencing systemic exclusion.

Kappie Farrington