Interim paper: Review of funding and investment approaches for place-based systems change
What do funding mechanisms reveal about how funders, investors and policymakers believe place-based systems change will be sustained? As part of our inquiry into sustaining place-based systems change, we are excited to share a literature review on funding and investment approaches for place-based systems change initiatives.
As funding programmes come to an end, we are often asked to reflect on whether a place-based systems change initiative has become sustainable. However, this term often feels vague, and out of sync with the reality that many organisations are navigating.
This is why our inquiry aims to build a clearer understanding of what sustainability really means to people delivering place-based systems change and how they are practically building towards it. Based on a literature review, we have identified five approaches that national organisations take to resourcing place-based systems change:
- Support a community anchor
- Developing a coalition
- Embedding change in local statutory agencies
- Devolving investments decisions to a place
- Building a place-based endowment fund
Learn more about these models in our first paper, available below.
The approaches set out in this paper demonstrate how national organisations are resourcing place-based change. However, in reality we know that place-based systems change is often resourced through a combination of many of these approaches, with local organisations drawing on different sources to do work that rarely fits neatly into a funding programme. We have also seen that national organisations can also deploy different approaches at different stages of a programme’s maturity, transitioning from one resourcing approach to another as place-based systems change work develops.
As our research has progressed, and we’ve been hearing more from place-based organisations doing this work, the picture of how place-based systems change is being resourced is becoming clearer. Within this, some of these insights shine a light on where historic programmes have not been able to support lasting impact, while others present exciting ideas around programme design that can transition between different forms of resource to support sustainability.
Over the next few months, we will bring this into a typology setting out different ways place-based organisations might resource their systems change work. We will be presenting our findings during our launch event on April 21 – sign up to join here.
If you’d like to get involved with the inquiry, please reach out to Kezia.
