Systems Change for Nonprofit Development

The social challenges that prevent people and communities from flourishing are incredibly complex. Complex systems are driven by a plethora of interconnected components whose interactions spontaneously create patterns, behaviors, and structures that shape our lives. The relationships between these driving factors is not linear, meaning one small change in an individual driver can cause the entire system to adapt and change. 

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What are Complex Systems?

Complex systems occur across our environmental, social, and biological worlds. Some examples include:

Ecosystems

Environmental ecosystems are complex systems where the interplay between climate, animal, plant, and microscopic life all work in conjunction. Alter one component, such as climate or apex predator, and the entire system shifts.

Social Systems

Social systems include economies, class structures, family structures, education, and more. These systems are built and adapted historically, shifting over time, as technologies, worldviews, and other parts of systems change.

Biological Systems

Bodies are complex systems where dynamic systems (pulmonary, vascular, muscular, nervous, etc) all work together to create life. Healthcare is a social system related to biological systems that provides a microcosm of a complex system.

Systems Change as Development Strategy

At Kohli+Associates, we use systems thinking as a holistic approach to help communities and organizations better understand how different parts of a system interact and influence one another to drive a pressing social problem. Rather than focusing solely on services that address a concrete need, we help organizations look behind the immediate need to identify and address the root causes themselves. In systems thinking, we seek to identify, map, and understand dynamic relationships between things. Therefore, systems thinking provides mission-driven organizations with a strategic tool to understand how the various components of an organization and community influence one another. It gives us methods for: 

• Identifying the root causes of challenges

• Mapping the ways programs, policies, people, and external factors interact to drive or resolve challenges

• To design more effective, sustainable solutions.

Systems thinking helps mission-driven organizations move beyond quick fixes to build strategies that work across the whole system, leading to greater impact and change.​

With Systems Change, Organizations and Entire Sectors Can Shift the Way They Work.

When we do systems change work, we analyze performance and outcomes data in relation to structures, relationships, mindsets, and corresponding policies and practices that sustain challenges. Then, we use a host of tools to begin to change systems from the inside out,  impacting its structures, policies and processes, and the relationships within it.

People and their relationships are at the heart of this work. We work to set the experiences and perspectives of all stakeholders into collaborative problem-solving approaches, including:

• Participants and the population served

• On the ground staff and volunteers

• Leaders & Boards

• Collaborative and Adjacent Organizations

Nonprofits are crucial for systems change because they operate on the front lines of communities, possess deep community knowledge, and have the flexibility to act as catalysts for broader transformations by advocating for policy reform, building coalitions, developing leaders, and fostering field-wide collaboration. This work goes beyond direct services to address the root causes of complex issues, creating the scaffolding for lasting, equitable change.