Philanthropy for Systems Change: An Exploratory Study

For the past decade, interest in systems change has increased among nonprofit sector practitioners and criticism has targeted grantmaking foundations’ funding practices for failing to support “changemakers” engaged in systemic approaches. While systems change has long been a goal of modern philanthropy, confusion remains about its meaning and operationalization. We still know little about foundation executives’ representations and practices regarding systems change. This exploratory study, based on interviews with leaders of 15 French foundations, reveals important gaps between a marked interest in systems change and current funding practices. This decoupling between talk and action implies that foundations may be limited in attaining systemic goals. We identify six key obstacles to funding systems change and propose that independent foundations are more likely to eschew these obstacles than foundations that depend on continuous fundraising and face significant pressure from stakeholders, such as corporate foundations.