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In 2023, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice published Understanding political economy analysis and thinking and working politically. This complementary note sets out more detailed guidance on how to undertake a dynamic Stakeholder Analysis and Political Network Mapping, which are core elements of political economy analysis and other forms of politically informed context analysis. This technical note is for use...

Regenerative Evaluation: Evaluation in Service of Life To foster change today means navigating a gap between two realities: the reality of reporting (demanding accountability and proof of impact) and the reality of the planet (calling for regeneration, complexity, and interconnectedness). For too long, evaluation has forced a choice, functioning as an extractive exercise—mining data to count the "fruits" of a project while ignoring the health of the "soil" that sustains them....

Despite widespread endorsement of locally led development, donor agencies still struggle to translate local agency into cumulative change. Donor discourse increasingly emphasises localisation and community leadership, yet operational arrangements remain structured around upward compliance. The practical question is how local agency and institutional accountability can work together so that locally generated insights lead the way while portfolio coherence is maintained. This paper examines a...

This supplemental guide offers practical advice for thinking and working politically (TWP) when practicing the Conservation Standards. The CS are a widely used, systematic approach for planning, monitoring, and adapting programs aiming to conserve biodiversity. TWP is an approach to international development that brings greater attunement to the political dynamics of the local programming context in order to enhance development results. Given strong evidence that political factors...

Healthy Cities for Adolescents Phase II (HCA-II) is a multi-country programme that supports projects working to improve adolescent and young people’s health and wellbeing in intermediary cities. Guided by the principle of shifting the status quo, with adolescents at the centre of this, HCA-II aims to catalyse meaningful changes in how cities function for young people. This guide aims to help you influence the systems that shape adolescent and young people’s health and wellbeing in the...

This paper shares an insider's perspective on the spread of Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) across the US Agency for International Development (USAID), highlighting lessons learned along the way that are relevant even beyond the dissolution of the Agency in 2025.

While enthusiasm for systems change has grown steadily over the past decade, we find a significant gap persists between this enthusiasm and execution. Funders attempting to implement systems change consistently face 9 challenges, including unclear outcome attribution, long commitment horizons, and complex stakeholder coordination. When faced with these challenges, it is understandable why many funders find themselves defaulting to patching the system rather than changing it. The pressures...

Today’s critical challenges are complex and require system level change. Issues like ending poverty, reversing biodiversity collapse, creating more equitable and sustainable food systems, or ending health inequalities, will not respond to neat siloed technical interventions. These are not problems we can tackle head on. Rather, we need to change the conditions (systems) that create these problems. Consequently, many of the most ambitious philanthropic foundations are adopting ‘systems...

Pando Funding is a practical, principle-based approach to pooling and deploying capital to support a system change network—collaborations of diverse actors working across strategies, sectors, and theories of change to shift a complex system for the better. A system change network brings together leaders, helps them develop a shared vision for transformational change, and shifts decision-making into their hands so they can adapt and innovate in response to emerging developments on the...

The aim of this paper is to highlight several frameworks that changemakers can employ to assist them in thinking about, planning, and evaluating their efforts to change or transform systems. The paper is based on the idea that changemakers may have an easier time getting on the same page about what they are trying to accomplish if they have some common language about the different degrees, orders, or levels of change they seek. The paper goes further in exploring different types of change...

This foundation paper introduces the core ideas behind systems transformation and summarizes the most current thinking about how deep, structural change actually unfolds. It integrates insights from systems science, social innovation, sustainability transitions, and evaluation to clarify the mechanisms, patterns, and conditions that distinguish transformative change from more incremental forms of improvement. Designed as an accessible primer, it helps change-makers build a shared...

A tool to deepen your understanding of the status quo, envision desirable futures, and engage with ecosystems more intentionally.

A living library of practical tools, frameworks, and case studies designed to support practitioners in complex collaborations. Many-to-Many System -aims to support collaborations tackling complex, entangled challenges where disrupting norms and values, ownership, and power is essential. Solving today’s complex, interconnected problems requires what we term “complex collaborations” - bringing together many diverse groups (public, private, civic) with many new perspectives, including future...

Government offices are filled with siloed, sector-specific digital systems that strain their capacity to make decisions, use data effectively, and achieve ambitious sustainable development goals. Public investments in digital development, transformation, and infrastructure can only meet citizen needs if data and systems are consolidated and interoperable. While interoperability is a sensible approach to building digital public infrastructure, transforming existing systems is easier said...

Explore Climate KIC’s S-ToC guide A practical and flexible resource designed to help teams and partners navigate the complexity of systems change in the face of the climate crisis. Our S-ToC approach integrates systems thinking to support adaptive monitoring, evaluation, and ongoing learning. This guide empowers users to analyse systems, identify leverage points, and co-create change-oriented strategies that evolve with context. Whether you’re working on a small-scale pilot or a...