Seeing the bigger picture: Using a systems approach to guide philanthropy

We are living in the era of polycrisis. You’ve probably heard this word in different contexts and rarely in hopeful ones. 

But if philanthropy truly comes from philos (loving) and anthropos (human), then responding to polycrisis should be its very job description.

Curious how philanthropy can meaningfully engage in a world where everything seems tangled?

Let me share how we’re approaching this challenge. 

Understanding Polycrisis

The essence of polycrisis is that no problem exists in isolation. Each issue is entangled with others. 

Take immigration protests as an example. They are not simply about migration. They reflect: 

• The economic decline of once-thriving English ports 

• Proxy wars among global powers 

• Displacement of communities in the Global South over decades 

It may feel like a leap from Hartlepool or Sunderland to the Pentagon, but that’s the nature of polycrisis: local symptoms often mask global drivers, which means philanthropy needs tools that can hold multiple layers at once 

And here’s the real challenge: solving a problem with multiple causes is hard without embracing a systems lens. 

Why philanthropy needs a systemic lens

To make progress, we must embrace a systemic lens.  

Impact investing is already experimenting with this approach: measuring not just investee-level outcomes but broader social outcomes the investee is operating at. 

Consider education. If you invest in an organisation that improves literacy outcomes among children, it’s tempting to measure success only by test scores or graduation rates. But a systemic lens asks: Are parents and caregivers supported with resources to nurture literacy at home? Do improved literacy skills translate into better employment opportunities, civic participation, or resilience against social exclusion later in life? 

Philanthropy should adopt the same mindset. At NPC, to help support the unwieldy nature of systemic lenses, we’ve developed an approach to identify the systems surrounding the social themes you care about. 

Case Study: Social cohesion mapping for This Day

Social cohesion is a perfect example of a systemic issue. It touches: 

• Economic opportunity 

• Social integration 

• Governance 

• Education 

• Immigration 

It’s the thread running through debates on NHS queues, illegal boat crossings, and multifaith community integration. Ironically, backlash often comes strongest from communities hosting the fewest immigrants—fertile ground for far-right narratives. 

This Day has provided a grant to support our analysis of the social cohesion landscape in the UK. 

In response we built a natural language tool that analyses charity and grant descriptions against a framework inspired by sources such as The Khan Review. Language is a surprisingly reliable window into what organisations prioritise: their theory of change, their beneficiaries, and the problems they believe they’re solving. 

Our natural language tool allowed us to explore different parts of the theme. Breaking things down helps you spot organisations or groups working in areas you hadn’t considered. It also helps you avoid focusing only on the “usual suspects” and find new partners or approaches. 

This framework, with six domains of social cohesion, helped us identify who is operating in the field and how. Our tool scanned all 184,000 charities in the register and 700,000 individual grants on 360Giving database, flagging those whose language aligned with our framework. We then layered this with David Kane’s charity classification project to add themes and beneficiary groups. 

What we’re learning

Together with my colleague Daisy Carter, we’ve uncovered striking insights.

One that stands out: 

For every charity per 10,000 people, the likelihood of a neighbourhood being categorised as mission critical decreases.  A mission critical neighbourhood, defined by the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON), is an area with especially urgent social needs and significant gaps in services or cohesion. 

However, this is a correlation, not causation: more charities per capita are linked to fewer mission critical areas, but simply adding charities won’t automatically solve deep-rooted challenges. The quality, focus, and collaboration of organisations, along with wider systemic factors, matter too. 

Still, this insight highlights the value of investing locally and strengthening community assets. In the next post in this series, we show how a systems approach reveals the building blocks of community cohesion at neighbourhood level — stay tuned.

How this helps philanthropy

If you’re a philanthropist or a family foundation struggling to focus your strategy in the era of polycrisis because the social issue you want to solve is too broad, our language tool can help. 

It can be tailored to any social cause, mapping the system around your chosen issue. For example: 

• Early years funders can identify organisations working not only with babies but also with caregivers and fathers. 

• Funders can break free from the “usual suspects”, surfacing organisations that fit the framework even if they’re not already on your radar. 

If you’re interested in learning more about our approach, collaborating, or exploring how our language tool can support your philanthropic strategy, please don’t hesitate to reach out.  

Read the full blog series:

• Part 2: Identifying the building blocks of community cohesion
• Part 3: Making community cohesion count