In a world of increasing complexity and polarization, system orchestrators drive collective action to achieve outsized impact.
– By Don Gips, Tulaine Montgomery, Rohini Nilekani & Cristiane Sultani
We are living in a period of human history rife with paradoxes: Societal challenges like climate change, economic inequality, and social injustice are deeply entrenched and getting worse. Our collective ability to respond to these challenges is increasing, but the problems continue to outpace available resources and solutions. This moment has brought many impact-oriented leaders, including this article’s coauthors, to a shared understanding that linear problem-solving is not enough.
We need more system orchestrators to meet the moment. System orchestrators play a critical role in bringing about transformational social change by knitting together actors and institutions, providing backbone infrastructure, and mobilizing collective change efforts across ecosystems, sectors, and geographies. Along the way, they shape new paradigms, leverage system-wide resources, and navigate complexity, all to create forward momentum and progress at societal scale.
System orchestrators are often overlooked because of the complex, collaborative, and behind-the-scenes roles they play in long-term systems-change efforts. Consequently, many in the social innovation field describe this multifaceted role with different names. The Bridgespan Group refers to these actors as “field catalysts.” Others call them “system catalysts,” “system stewards,” and “ network entrepreneurs.” Despite the disagreement on terms, Bridgespan’s research indicates a key truth: If you want to drive equitable systems change, investing in system orchestrators is among the highest-leverage investments that the philanthropic sector can make.
What does system orchestration look like in practice? Spanning sectors and ecosystems, Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) is illustrative of the indispensability of system orchestrators to systemic change. HCWH works globally at the intersection of human and planetary health to transform the health-care sector and drive equity and climate action. HCWH partners with the World Health Organization, governments, hospitals, and community-based organizations to secure commitments to design low-carbon health systems on a path to zero emissions. Its orchestration approach incubates, connects, and scales grassroots initiatives to create systems-level shifts in policy and practices.
The eGov Foundation in India is a philanthropic organization that works to better lives by transforming public health infrastructure, creating a sanitation value chain, improving public finance management, and tackling climate change—all backed by open digital infrastructure and ecosystems. To achieve its goal of putting people first and bringing the government closer to the people it serves, it helps the state deliver services that are accessible, affordable, and inclusive. To date, eGov Foundation has delivered benefits to two billion people and more than 200 organizations in 10 countries have used its assets.
Systems orchestrators know that leadership duties—and the power that goes with them—should be shared among multiple people, including other types of social innovators, government officials, and C-suite executives.
GirlTREK, the largest public health nonprofit for Black women and girls in the United States, mobilizes community members to organize local walking crews and lead a health movement that centers healing intergenerational trauma and fighting systemic racism. Working closely with many organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Council on Exercise, and Sierra Club, GirlTREK developed a world-class training program for Black women looking to serve as health advocates and coaches. The organization set the bold goal of increasing the life expectancy of Black women in the United States by 10 years. To that end, it currently engages more than 1.3 million Black women in the United States alone, with crews emerging across the Caribbean and West Africa.
The work that these system orchestrators do to bridge, connect, and knit together individuals and institutions across sectors and roles is indispensable to transforming societies for the better. We have seen firsthand the huge leverage that system orchestrators create for our partners and ecosystem actors—and the value of funding and partnering with them over the long term. That is why we have come together—the Skoll Foundation with a global lens, New Profit from the United States, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies from India, and Instituto Beja from Brazil—to support system orchestrators in their efforts to fix inequitable systems around the world.
One of the misconceptions that we are working to address among funders is the notion that skillful and proximate system orchestrators are few and far between. In fact, it’s the funding that has been scarce; the pipeline of system orchestrators and the opportunities to support them is flourishing.
Our hope is that by coming together, we can accelerate our collective learning journey, build a shared understanding of what is working and what is needed, and provide resources for other funders who want to provide scaled-up and sustained funding and other support to system orchestrators.
We have observed the following three hallmarks of the most successful system orchestrators we’ve worked with to remake entire systems around education, health care, environmental sustainability, protecting democracy, and economic equity.
Focused on driving collective action and impact. | System orchestrators are the connective tissue that holds different parts of a system together. They identify, validate, and support solutions worth further exploration and scaling. They also understand the financial, policy, legal, and cultural barriers that are often overlooked or only addressed in isolation. They know that shifting mindsets around societal challenges and potential solutions is part of the work. The result is that people rely less on individual heroism and more on coalitions that can accelerate solutions at scale.
Bridge builders and enablers of other leaders in the system. | System orchestrators know that leadership duties—and the power that goes with them—should be shared among multiple people, including other types of social innovators, government officials, and C-suite executives. These leaders demonstrate high levels of credibility and are trusted as stewards to build bridges between communities and institutions of power to drive equity, inclusion, and change. Given the challenges of coming together in a polarized world, they are often content to lead through others and receive no public recognition.
Capable of deploying the full range of tools available to them. | They understand that there is no single solution to large-scale societal issues and that money alone won’t solve our problems. In addition to direct funding, they employ strategies such as convenings, relationship-building, and knowledge-sharing to influence policy, resource flows, decision-making pathways, and mindset and behavior shifts.
Now is the time to come together to drive deeper investment in system orchestration. In 2022, The Bridgespan Group surveyed approximately 100 system orchestrators—including many in our networks—who mobilize and galvanize myriad actors across a social-change movement, or field, to achieve a shared goal for equitable systems change. The survey found that these organizations believed they could achieve their ambitious systems-change goals within two decades with a median size of 10 staff and annual operating budget of $5 million. This is despite being seriously underfunded, with the median funding gap for each organization estimated at $2.5 million per year.
Closing this funding gap would help these organizations transform systems for the better. In addition to unlocking more resources, we believe we can cocreate opportunities for system orchestrators to learn from each other, and for other funders and partners to join the effort.
As funders, we believe it’s critical to listen to and learn from social innovators on the front lines; they know best how we can better support their work. This level of partnership is critical, because by any measure, system orchestration work is ambitious, highly complex, and requires the bridging of many gaps and sectors.
We launched the Centre for Exponential Change (C4EC) to mobilize around system orchestration. C4EC is a global action network that creates spaces and marshals resources for system orchestrators. These resources, including design expertise, paradigm grants, leadership development, and technology, are used to reimagine solutions and ecosystems that create resilient, collaborative responses to new challenges as they arise.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the big, audacious goals of society can be achieved without system orchestrators. If philanthropy provides them the wraparound, long-term support they deserve, we may never have to.
Philanthropist Rohini Nilekani and Skoll Foundation CEO Don Gips discuss the role of philanthropy in addressing entrenched global challenges and creating change at scale. Listen to their conversation at the 2024 Skoll World Forum in the video below.
Don Gips is CEO of the Skoll Foundation.
Tulaine Montgomery is CEO of New Profit.
Rohini Nilekani is Chair of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies.
Cristiane Sultani is Founder and President of the Board of Directors of Instituto Beja.
