You want to fund systems change

Funders increasingly talk about systems change. And rightly so. In our previous blog, my colleague Claire Gordon set out seven features of what systems change looks like for funders interested in the area. Building on those features, this blog tackles a fundamental question you should ask yourself: what system are you actually trying to change?

Our landscape work with This Day and Movember showed that most social problems do not sit neatly inside one programme area, one beneficiary group or one intervention type. Poverty overlaps with health, education, housing, climate vulnerability and community resilience. Boys’ and young men’s outcomes are shaped by mental health, loneliness, education, employment, violence, and trusted relationships. Social cohesion depends on trust, belonging, participation, safety, economic opportunity and democratic resilience.

These are not separate issues sitting side by side. They are connected dimensions in a wider system. If funders want to shift outcomes, they need to understand how those dimensions interact: which organisations are active, where funding is flowing, what conditions are driving need, and where relationships or infrastructure could unlock wider change. Otherwise, systems change risks becoming a slogan attached to isolated grants.

The problem is not that funders lack ambition. It is that the system they want to change is often hard to see.

At NPC, we help funders answer a deceptively simple question: what system are you actually operating in?

Before deciding where to fund, convene, influence or learn, funders need to understand who is already active, what support exists, where money is flowing, what is missing, and which organisations or relationships are holding the field together.

The challenge is that systems do not come neatly labelled.

Organisations working towards similar outcomes often describe themselves in very different ways. Funders may search public databases or directories for ‘social cohesion’, ‘boys and young men’ or ‘community resilience’, but relevant activity may show up as youth work, peer support, sports clubs, mentoring, faith spaces, advice or safe spaces. If we only look for the language we already know, we risk seeing only the organisations that already speak funder language.

To overcome this, we combine public data, funder strategy, taxonomies, language analysis and human interpretation to make complex fields more visible and discussable. The output might be a landscape review, dashboard, open dataset or set of strategic questions.

But the real value is not the product. It is the shift in perspective: from a list of known organisations to a wider view of the system, and better questions.

Where is funding concentrated? Where does the system look thin or fragmented? Which funders are backing similar issues? Where could collaboration or field-building add value?

Our work on social cohesion and on boys and young men with Movember shows what this looks like in practice (see case studies below). In both, the same lesson holds: fields are often made, not found.

A field becomes fundable when people develop shared language, identify the actors, understand the needs and map the money.

Landscape mapping can identify partners who align with a strategy, show where money is flowing, reveal who is visible and who is missing, and create a shared evidence base for conversations with other funders, practitioners and policymakers. It can also help funders understand their own role: whether they are best placed to fund direct provision, support infrastructure, build evidence, convene the field, influence policy, or fund experimentation.

There are limits. Our methodology does not tell you which organisation is most impactful. It relies on how organisations describe themselves and what is visible in available data. It can show where organisations are registered, but not always where they work. It can surface patterns but cannot interpret their strategic meaning without people who understand the field. The technology helps us see more of the system rather than decide what matters.

But used well, it changes the quality of funding decisions. It gives funders a broader starting point, clearer language, and a more practical basis for collaboration.

It helps funders move from we want to change the system to we understand the system well enough to know where we might contribute.

So, if you want to fund systems change, start with the obvious but often missed question: what system are you operating in? Only then can you decide where your funding, relationships, influence and learning can make the biggest difference.