Giving Compass' Take:

• Mark R. Kramer explains how polarization and lack of trust in government impede philanthropic systems change efforts. 

• How can funders work to effectively overcome these challenges? 

• Learn about the essential components of systems change work. 

Foundations have often relied on government as an ally to scale up and sustain the programs they pilot. The Obama Administration’s Social Innovation Fund was built on precisely this model. Yet even before the election, many systems change-oriented foundations had moved away from a strategy based on government funding to achieve scale. “Certain assumptions have been clearly disproven and invalidated,” says Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, “such as the very quaint idea that we simply need to invest in an intervention, accompanied by a randomized control trial, and if it works, it will be translated into policy and scaled by government.”

The problem goes beyond the government not adopting proven programs. It’s that too often we don’t pay attention to the system itself. “Foundation-funded interventions are demonstrated using special money under special circumstances outside the normal government contracting and procurement system. Even when they work, you need to solve a whole set of system problems to implement them at scale—and a bad system always trumps a good program,” says Patrick McCarthy, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The challenge today is not merely that we have dysfunctional systems nor that we lack innovative solutions to our society’s problems. Instead, it’s that our country has no unifying narrative that binds us all to a common fate. Too many factions separated by race, gender, wealth, religion, education, politics, geography and more are working toward fundamentally incompatible goals in the false belief that their success is unaffected by the failure of others. The vision of a just and equitable society with opportunity for all is being undermined by the poisonous myth that the pursuit of prosperity depends on the eradication of compassion.

Even the most basic assumptions that many of us hold can no longer be counted on: that government will act on hard facts, respect scientific proof and democratic principles, or respond to humanitarian and environmental concerns. No mere programmatic intervention can overcome these obstacles. Instead, we need to find ways to change attitudes and relationships throughout every level of society in order to co-create a new future across our perceived differences.

This is precisely the messy and unpredictable domain of systems change. Foundations may not have the scale to remake our entire society, but they can apply a systems change approach to achieve significant impact on the issues and in the communities that they have chosen to work. “It is quite a stretch for foundations to become agents of social change and yet that is exactly what we must do,” says Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Read the full article about philanthropic systems change efforts by Mark R. Kramer at Stanford Social Innovation Review.