Event Writeups
The Shifting Systems Initiative has convened numerous workshops and events to investigate and propagate successful systems change. To preserve and disseminate the learnings and commitments, reports from those workshops and events were created and can be accessed below.
Strengthening Countervailing Forces through Climate Philanthropy
On April 3, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ Shifting Systems Initiative convened more than 100 global funders, practitioners, and allies on climate action at the 2025 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England.
The event, titled “Strengthening Countervailing Forces Through Climate Philanthropy,” explored how to be responsive, rather than reactive, to the overwhelming challenges of the present.
Collaborating to BUILD Transformational Change: A Shifting Systems Initiative Summary Report
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ Shifting Systems Initiative gathered important stakeholders on the margins of the 79th United Nations General Assembly for “Collaborating to BUILD Transformational Change.”
Using lessons gleaned from the Ford Foundation’s BUILD initiative and its longtime leader, Kathy Reich, the workshop explored actionable pathways to accelerate systems change and shared key insights and best practices with participants. Critically, this session dove into both the what and the how of what philanthropy must do to enact change of this magnitude.
Shifting Impact Investing Perspectives: A Skoll World Forum Report
Can a systems-change lens shift what we invest in and how we measure? To try and answer that question, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) presented two events at the 2024 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England, to spotlight the emergent field of impact investing through a systems lens and explore emerging practices, questions, and tensions.
The first event, on April 9, was a closed session for those who are already thinking about or applying a systems lens to impact investing and impact measurement and management (IMM). This session featured remarks by Latanya Mapp, RPA President and CEO; Alejandro Alvarez von Gustedt, RPA vice president, Europe; and Karim Harji, program director, impact measurement at the Saïd Business School in Oxford.
A Systems Change Orientation to Climate Philanthropy
Funding to remedy the various effects of climate change is on the rise, and that’s unquestionably a positive development in the face of this existential challenge. But is that funding being directed in ways that can produce systems-wide, transformational change and what can we do differently to expedite action?
Those were the core questions at the heart of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ (RPA) interactive panel discussion, “A Systems Change Orientation to Climate Philanthropy,” at the 2024 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, UK. In hosting this event, RPA sought to support climate philanthropists in shifting practices and mindsets that will help them contribute to systems transformation.
Shifting Systems: What it Takes To Be a Systems Change Funder
During the September 2023 United Nations General Assembly opening week, representatives of many diverse organizations traveled to New York City to attend Climate Week and other related events. As part of a workshop series hosted by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors-led Shifting Systems Initiative, about 95 participants convened at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice to explore the theme, “So You Think You’re a Systems Change Funder.”
Courage to Transform: Funding Systems Change for Lasting Impact
At the Skoll World Forum 2023, the Shifting Systems Initiative hosted an even that focused on numerous challenges facing philanthropy. The program included a panel discussion as well as facilitated table discussions.
Country Deep-Dive Workshops
In 2019-2020, RPA conducted deep dives in three countries using a workshop process that included preparatory research and interviews, as well as a follow-up plan based on commitments made in the workshops. Reports from those workshops include:
- Narrowing the Rural Equity Gap in Colombia (with a focus on SDGs 8 and 16): RPA and Asociación de Fundaciones Familiares y Empresariales (AFE) (Colombia) convened in Bogotá in early 2020 with a goal of determining how philanthropic funders can better support Colombia in narrowing the rural equity gap.
- Exploring Gender Equality Efforts in India: In collaboration with Ashoka University’s Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy, RPA held a convening in New Delhi to focus on SDG 5, achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.
- Exploring Good Health for All in Kenya: The theme of this Kenya-based workshop focused on health and the determinants of health. For Kenya and most countries, achieving this goal requires greatly scaled-up solutions where at least some philanthropic funders adopt a systems approach.
In August 2019, RPA co-hosted a workshop to explore how to monitor and evaluate systems change. The workshop was designed around three key themes: seeing systems change, facilitating systems change, and assessing systems change.
The Summit at Race Brook in July 2018 brought together leaders from three continents across the themes of systems thinking, philanthropy, impact investing, and ‘new economy’ models. Attendees shared an interest in creating economic, financial and investment systems that serve people and planet. There findings have been distilled in the report Philanthropy Transforming Finance: Building an Impact Economy. Read the full report here.
In addition, as a result of this convening, Building an Impact Economy: A Call to Action was released in February 2019. It calls for philanthropic organizations to use their capital in a way that more directly supports the development of an impact economy and to align their investments and actions overall with the underlying values inherent in an impact economy. Read the full report here.
In March 2018, RPA co-hosted a workshop on Scaling Solutions in Bogotá. Conversations amongst the sixty participants representing corporate, family, and operating foundations in Colombia also centered on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Theory of the Foundation initiative, and strategic time horizons in philanthropy.