Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ Shifting Systems Initiative is proud to announce the launch of two new resources for impact investors: The Systems Thinking for Impact Investing Primer and the The Systems Thinking for Impact Investing Playbook. In this post, Karim Harji, advisor to SSI and author of both resources, outlines how they are designed to support investors in moving from conceptual understanding to practical action.

Why Systems Thinking, and Why Now?

Today’s social and environmental challenges demand more than siloed investments or narrow measurement frameworks. Foundations, family offices, and impact-first funds are increasingly seeking strategies that allow them to unlock a greater and more sustainable impact. This typically entails investment strategies and approaches that span sectors, geographies, and asset classes — deploying multiple forms of capital across varied time horizons.

Systems thinking offers a way to navigate this complexity by:

• Connecting strategy, investment deployment, and measurement
• Designing interventions across multiple leverage points
• Enabling adaptive learning as systems evolve
• Capturing broader ecosystem effects rather than isolated outputs

By bringing systems thinking more deliberately into strategies, implementation, and impact measurement, impact investors are more likely to be able to:

• Build total portfolio approaches across different issues, regions, and asset classes
• Integrate financial and non-financial tools creatively to address systemic challenges
• Evolve measurement from isolated KPIs to dynamic, systemic learning
• Rethink risk, resilience, and accountability at a systems level

The resources before are designed to meet organizations wherever they are — offering flexible, practical ways to begin, strengthen, or extend systems approaches to impact investing. Rather than prescribing a rigid path, these resources offer combinations, choices, and possibilities — enabling each organization to shape its own journey based on ambition, context, and capacity.

The Primer: Framing the Opportunity

The Systems Thinking for Impact Investing Primer sets the stage by:

• Framing why systems thinking matters for impact investors
• Introducing an integrated framework featuring six key shifts
• Providing practical starting points and examples
• Highlighting pathways for deeper systemic influence over time

It features case examples from a range of organizations — including Access Foundation, Omidyar Network, elea Foundation, Working Capital Fund, Laudes Foundation, and Acumen — illustrating that systems approaches are both diverse and achievable across investor types.

→ Download the Primer

The Playbook: Practical Tools for Action

The Playbook complements the Primer by offering tangible tools to bring systems thinking into investment practice, IMM processes, and strategy development. Organized around three pathways — Starting, Deepening, and Enhancing — the Playbook includes:

• Reflection exercises to surface team assumptions
• Diagnostics to assess current systems integration
• Frameworks for embedding systems perspectives into investment policies, theories of change, IMM frameworks, and due diligence

→ Download the Playbook

What’s Next: Engage and Contribute

This project involves engagement with a range of investors, practitioners, networks (see the Acknowledgements section in the Primer), and seek to build with and learn from others in this dynamic area. Here’s how you can get involved in the next phase of this work, and please use the form here to get in touch with us:

• Share your feedback: If you’ve read the Primer, what resonated? What additional guidance would help? If you’ve explored the Playbook, which tools are most useful? What else would you like to see? 
• Join the May 29th webinar:  Hear how investors and practitioners are applying systems thinking in their strategies, portfolios, and measurement practices. Register here. Watch our earlier webinar recording here. 
• Collaborate on speaking opportunities: We’ll be presenting at industry convenings this fall, including around AVPA, SOCAP, and the GIIN Forum.  If you’re interested in meeting at these events, or co-presenting at other events, please connect.
• Express interest in the Learning Cohort: Launching this fall, the cohort will bring together a small group of asset owners and impact-first investors for a practical, peer-based journey through systems thinking tools and applications. 

 

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