For more information about what systemic investing is, read the publication “Definition and Hallmarks of Systemic Investing”. To learn more about the relevance of systemic investing and the contexts in which it promises to be most useful, see the primer “Systemic Investing for Social Change” published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review as... See more

How Financial backbones build and convene investor coalitions, guide the development of collective visions and strategies, generate systemic intelligence, support the construction of strategic investment portfolios, design and structure financial instruments, mobilize capital, shape deal pipelines, and broker investments. They also translate... See more

In a nutshell, systemic investing is an investment approach designed to catalyze the transformation of real-economy systems at different levels of scale. It leverages the principles of systems thinking to deploy financial capital in a way that is: • Strategic by being rooted in a transformative vision and an associated theory of change, informed by... See more

Financial backbones build and convene investor coalitions, guide the development of collective visions and strategies, generate systemic intelligence, support the construction of strategic investment portfolios, design and structure financial instruments, mobilize capital, shape deal pipelines, and broker investments. They also translate between... See more

Examples of entities doing aspects of this work include: • GroundBreak Coalition, which aims to close racial wealth gaps in Minneapolis-St. Paul (USA); • Hawai’i Investment Ready, which is dedicated to making Hawai’i’s economy more resilient; • Tara Health Foundation, a “spend-down” philanthropic non-profit addressing health and economic injustice... See more

What emerges from this menu is that financial backbones play three critical meta-roles: • Mobilizing and building bridges between system stakeholders and coordinating capital deployment in ways that generate combinatorial effects; • Building capacity and developing the mindsets for systems work amongst stakeholders; and • Managing change in complex... See more

Funding systems transformation thus essentially boils down to a three-pronged orchestration challenge: 1. Systemic intelligence generation Figuring out the nature of a societal issue and identifying the financial interventions needed to tackle it. 2. Capital matchmaking Channeling the right kind of capital to the right kind of intervention at the... See more

Emerging innovations The third layer is comprised of innovation inquiries that have emerged more recently, including: • New approaches to philanthropy E.g., collectively owned strategies, Pando Funds. • Portfolio-based systems innovations E.g., Deep Demonstrations, innovation portfolios for sustainable development.

The overall purpose of financial backbones should be to enable the effective and efficient allocation of a multitude of different kinds of capital from a multitude of sources to a multitude of destinations, guided by a theory of change for a particular systemic issue. The pathways to such enablement include influencing , governing , and controlling... See more