In June 2022, Bellwether published the Pragmatic Playbook, which explored how organizations can employ three strategies to maximize their impact: Direct Impact, Widespread Impact, and Systemic Impact.

Over the past several years, dozens of organizations across the country have adopted this framework for strategic decision-making and have used its key principles to communicate priorities in a clear, compelling external pitch to attract clients, partners, funders, and allies, and as an internal playbook to build alignment within their organization.

One of the biggest areas of need organizations frequently cite is access to more guidance and resources on how to build their capacity to pursue Systemic Impact: the ability to shift mindsets, relationships, and power in service of shifting policy, practice, and funding.

Nonprofits and philanthropies that aspire to achieve population-level impact need Systemic Impact to reach their goals. Social problems are owned by social systems, which can enact policy, direct funding, and implement and hold accountable changes in practices at scale. For nonprofits, Systemic Impact is the ultimate in business development. Systemic Impact is also philanthropy’s only exit strategy. Philanthropy plays a catalytic role in funding innovations, but philanthropy cannot replace social funding. However, Systemic Impact is complex and challenging to achieve. It requires being unapologetic about building and deploying power through partnership, persuasion, and pressure. Systemic Impact also never ends — the wheel of competing agendas is always turning.

In January 2025, Bellwether launched an initiative to explore strong practices in Systemic Impact. In June 2025, Bellwether launched a six-month community of practice composed of 10 postsecondary persistence advising organizations across the country to build their capacity to plan and execute Systemic Impact campaigns and provide feedback on draft content.

Based on this work, we are excited to share the following:

• #1 in the Series — Systemic Impact: The Only Path to Scale, Success, and Sustainability discusses what Systemic Impact is and why it is a critical strategy for nonprofits and philanthropy to pursue to achieve population-level impact.
• #2 in the Series — Systemic Impact: Systems, Markets and Infrastructure argues that nonprofits need to embrace that they compete in markets and take advantage of Systemic Impact to influence the rules of the market to operate to their advantage.
• #3 in the Series — Systemic Impact: Mapping Authority in Postsecondary Systems details the roles of various stakeholders in determining how postsecondary systems operate.

Future publications on how to design and execute Systemic Impact campaigns to come in spring 2026.