Navigating Co-Design for Systems Change: A Tool for Grantees and Funders
/by Anna Saltzman and Clare Nolan
What does it take for grantees, funders, and evaluators to work together successfully when co-creating strategies and learning tools for systems change work? What are the key ingredients to set these types of relationships up for success? These are questions that we at Engage R+D are increasingly asking ourselves, as more and more of our projects involve these types of collaborative relationships. The push towards co-design—an approach that actively engages stakeholders in the design and implementation of grantmaking and evaluation—is part of a broader shift within the field of philanthropy, driven by a desire to be more responsive to the needs of communities.
Yet, while there’s growing recognition of the importance of engaging grantees and communities directly in funding strategies and evaluation, few resources actually exist to help ensure that partners enter these potentially challenging relationships smoothly.
We began to wonder: What would a resource like this look like? Could we in fact create a research-based tool to help grantees, funders, and evaluators navigate these types of relationships from the start?
Learning from our work and researching the field
To create such a tool, we first looked for a good test case within our own work at Engage R+D. Through our work with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Starting Smart and Strong initiative—a 10-year, place-based commitment focused on ensuring all children in three California communities are healthy and ready for school by age five—Engage R+D co-designed an evaluation with the funder and its grantees. We partnered with our client at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, as well as one of the Starting Smart and Strong grantee organizations, the Oakland Public Education Fund, to develop this tool.
In reflecting upon this work, each of us recalled how we had to adjust our own approaches and work in a much more collaborative way at the outset of the Starting Smart and Strong engagement. We learned that this type of partnership requires strong relationship attention and trust-building from the start. In addition, we learned that there’s value in self-reflection before diving into collaboration. Taking a step back and assessing readiness is critical, as is intentionality in establishing strong relationships that build effective collaboration over time.
With this practical knowledge in hand, we conducted a literature scan to discover what resources already existed to help grantees, funders, and evaluators engaging in systems change work that involves co-design. We found some existing literature about how to build strong funder-grantee relationships, but few spoke to navigating co-design relationships specifically.
We also searched for available tools to help with co-design relationships but only discovered tools that focused on strengthening funder-grantee partnerships or that centered on assessing readiness for systems change work in general. There was nothing that was meant to be used by both grantees and funders to self-assess their readiness to engage in systems change work. We also noted that none of the existing tools included assessments for evaluators. We flagged the latter as something to explore in a future iteration of our tool.
Creating a new tool for the sector
With this gap in resources defined, we worked with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Oakland Public Education Fund to draft a tool designed specifically for grantees and funders to use at the onset of their work together on systems change projects. Our Funder-Grantee Systems Change Readiness Assessment Tool includes:
Funder and grantee self-assessments on readiness to engage in collaborative systems change work across four dimensions: relationships, flexibility, systems orientation, and learning orientation
Guidance on how funders and grantees can come together to discuss the results of their self-assessments and the implications for their work
Discussion questions designed to jump start these conversations, recognizing that they may be sensitive and involve power dynamics
Previewing the tool
We had the opportunity to share this tool with a group of funders at the 2019 Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) conference in May 2019 and received feedback that they saw value in it.
More specifically, the tool embodies a sensibility that is interesting and unique. Funders shared that they were indeed looking for information and tools to aid them in collaborative systems change work, and the tone that this tool sets - emphasizing the relational aspect of these types of partnerships - resonated with them.
Sharing the tool more broadly
The tool we developed provides a strong foundation for grantees and funders engaging in systems change co-design work. It is meant to help them navigate potential challenges and set stakeholders up for success from the outset. In addition, those of us involved in developing the tool – the grantee, the funder, and the evaluator – found that by simply going through the process of using the tool, we became more attuned to the relational aspects of systems change work. We believe that others using the tool would experience similar benefits and are eager to test it out more broadly to inform further refinements.
