Foundations, Social Innovation & Peer Learning
Philanthropic Foundations Canada - Looking Outward: New Horizons for Canadian Philanthropy
2016 Conference Vancouver
Session Description: Increasingly foundations are using social innovation to shape high impact philanthropic programs. Can peer groups accelerate the process of learning about innovation? The Social Innovation Exchange (SIX), a United Kingdom-based network, is an example of such an affinity group of global funders, including Canadian foundations, who are learning from each other and their partners about social innovation, looking at areas such as system change, scaling impact and ecosystem building. This session will share insights from SIX's activities and from examples of peer-to-peer learning models.
Background: Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) has convened a global network of foundations (North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America) interested in participating in a learning community exploring how funders integrate social innovation into funding and partnership strategies for social change. To date the network has met three times with an evolving content agenda.
The first meeting in July 2015 reviewed a 7-stage innovation framework of the stages of social innovation suggested by Geoff Mulgan, CEO of Nesta, the UK innovation foundation:
It then explored the ways in which funders could integrate social innovation into their strategies, building on the 7-stage innovation framework:
The second gathering in January 2016 identified and delved into a range of pain points for funders including partnering with nonprofits, government and business, scaling innovations and system change. The third gathering, hosted in September 2016 at Wasan Island, focused exclusively on systems change with 22 participants from Canada, the USA, England, Scotland, Germany, Brazil and Hong Kong.
That retreat underlined the following pain points experienced by actors in the field of systems change:
- Time – funders are under pressure to understand systems change quickly, to make decisions about what to fund and to move to solutions before they really know what they are doing. The governance structure of most Foundations makes this a risky endeavour as they will be held to account for success and failure.
- Engaging others – funders struggle with identifying new people to fund, managing expectations as they are exploring what systems change means while having exploratory conversations with possible grantees. Systems change work also calls on them to build cross-sector collaboration and create sustainable partnerships, which are challenging.
- Definitions – funders said they struggle with knowing where to start, understanding where the boundaries of systems change practice are, defining and mapping systems effectively.
- Building internal support- this was a significant issue that was repeated often. Building basic systems thinking skills, working out how to balance new systems change grantees with traditional grantees and getting their teams internally to buy into a different way of working.
- Language - making it real, less academic, sharing a clear definition of what it is and what makes it different. Creating communications that allow everyone to be involved, evidencing the value, not just those who ‘get it’, creating compelling case studies.
Resources:
Mapping Momentum- A snapshot of the emerging field of systems change by Rachel Sinha and Tim Draimin.Published in August 2016.
System Change Agents: A Profile of Grantmaking Foundations Focused on Public Policy explores the complexity inherent in making policy changes over the long term by interviewing a different grant making foundations engaged in public policy published on the Philanthropist in May 2016.
Behaving like a system: A report on the preconditions for place-based systems change by Collaborate and funded by Lankelly Chase. Published in December 2015.
Keywords: Building a language for systems change.Produced by the Point People and Marc Ventresca at Oxford University's Said Business School in November 2015. This publication attempts to find a common language to help system change entrepreneurs to find the words to describe their work in a meaningful way.
What are the capabilities we need for system change? A blog produced by Anna Birney of Forum for the Future exploring the five capabilities that are directly required for systems change. Published July 8, 2015.
Systems change: A guide to what it is and how to do itA guide produced by NPC and Lankelly Chase to clarify what systems change is, the main perspectives, good practice and recommendation for funders, charities and the public sector on how to act systematically. Published June 2014
Ecosystems for systems change: A comprehensive resource of ideas, blogs, papers, videos and more curated by Social Innovation Generation including their report Building Ecosystems for Systems Change written by Tim Draimin and Kelsey Spitz (published in 2014).
Cultivating system change: a practitioner’s companion. A short book produced by Anna Birney that helps understand systems thinking, practical system change strategies pulled from theoretical models, illustrates examples and provides tips for practitioners to navigate this territory. Published June 2013.
Systems Grantmaking Resources GuideSolving today’s pressing problems requires impacting the bigger picture — the systems we live and work in. Management Assistance Group and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations have assembled this guide of powerful tools and resources to help you make real change.