What if the way we fund change is the very thing holding it back?
Pando Funding is a principled approach to deploying capital to support system change.
Today's challenges—economic injustice, climate collapse, democratic erosion—are complex, interconnected, and constantly shifting.
But a lot of philanthropic funding is built for the opposite: control, predictability, and isolated impact. The good news? There is a growing set of donors frustrated with that approach and eager to experiment with how to resource deep transformation work.
Pando Funding is a new paradigm in how philanthropic capital flows. Purposefully and powerfully designed for complexity, long time horizons, and collective system change.
Pando Funding enables capital to be pooled and deployed across resilient system change networks, not just to fund fixed initiatives. It helps these networks launch aligned projects behind their shared vision and grow the enabling conditions for lasting transformation.
Whether you're a funder, practitioner, or network leader, Pando Funding is a call to reimagine how capital moves and how change unfolds.
It’s not a fixed model, but a shared invitation to evolve how we fund—and, together, decide what matters.
Why Pando?
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 ground.
Pando Funding is designed to finance the often invisible, under-funded but critical “roots” for transformative change, the interconnections and enabling conditions among people, projects, and practices that we know are key drivers of a system’s health.
Pando Funding also finances the innovative “shoots,” the portfolio of projects launched from a system change network by leaders who see the power in working in infinitely more strategic and connected ways behind their shared vision.
At the most basic level, Pando Funding supports ecologies of diverse but connected actors, organizations, and theories of change intervening over time. Appropriately building and resourcing a system change network is the necessary infrastructure for leaders to organize themselves within; and more importantly, to develop the root enabling conditions for system change such as: relationships, trust, collective system awareness, information and knowledge flows, and a shared vision that can cohere all their work.
These conditions are not nice-to-haves. They are critical pre-conditions for a group to be able to take coordinated and coherent action together through a range of many specific but aligned projects.
That said, Pando Funding is more than just a funding mechanism to distribute capital. It is a framework for rebalancing power, encouraging a collective approach, and fostering long-term commitment in the service of transformational change. Pando Funding creates the conditions for deeper, more resilient change by aligning the strategic use of capital with the collective intelligence and shared purpose of leaders working within a system change network.
Meet the “Real” Pando
What can an old grove of aspens, and its intertwined root system, teach us about how to better fund transformative systems change? As it turns out, tons. Literally. The Pando Grove in Utah is one of earth’s oldest and largest living organisms. Pando is made up of 47,000 connected “quaking aspens,” weighing a whopping 7,500 tons, and estimated to be 9,000 years old.
While what we can see above ground is certainly impressive, the key to the grove’s scale, health, and longevity is its root system which spans 106 acres and serves to coordinate energy production, communication, defense and regeneration across its expanse. If these roots were laid out end to end, they would wrap halfway around the planet.
It is striking that despite its critical role, this root system, and the life-sustaining function it serves, are invisible to the passing observer. Rather, the focus tends to be on the trees and the leaves quaking in the breeze.
The Pando Grove brings to life many connected threads of what it means to support the health of whole systems. With Rob Ricigliano, the Omidyar Group’s System and Complexity Coach and Network Director of the Governance Futures Network, we co-authored a series of framing articles that introduced and developed the concept of Pando Funding. Much of the thinking from these articles is represented in this resource:
“Rethinking How to Finance System Health” argues that funding siloed projects won't produce systems change. Instead, we need approaches that build shared governance, adaptive capacity, and collective intelligence.
“Financing System Health: The Pando Fund” introduces Pando Funding as a model that prioritizes long-term investment in the invisible root conditions of change.
“Pando Funding: Financing System Change Networks” proposes a new architecture for pooled funding that shifts power to network leaders and supports adaptive, collective transformation.
Funding Deep Change
Why are we interested in a grove of trees? Because we think that it is a useful analogy for those working to ensure the health of the many social and ecological systems that are in crisis.
In social change, the dominant “point-solution funding architecture” we operate under now is akin to funding the health of the leaves and branches of individual trees — important but insufficient to achieve system change — and hoping that systems change will magically occur.
A point-solution funding architecture looks something like this:
Too little funding and sometimes none goes to the “invisible” interconnections and enabling conditions among people, projects, and practices that we know are key drivers of a system’s health.
Pando Funding describes a vision for a “system-level funding architecture” which is more likely to lead us to the system transformations we seek because it invests in the health of the largely invisible but essential root system, connects them to living project portfolios that emerge from a system change network, and supports more coherent, adaptive action on the key drivers of a system’s health and can look something like this:
The Pando metaphor strikes a more resonant chord when we understand that Pando is the Latin word for “spread.” Spread is the perfect way to describe the grove’s strategy. Pando scales, not by growing the tallest tree to tower over the others in its canopy in a competitive race for sunlight; but by spreading new, interconnected shoots throughout the forest.
A system change network’s strategy can promise the same impact. It can scale by spreading ideas, practices, projects and learnings all aligned behind a galvanizing, shared vision; and in the process, build the connections (literally!) that create a resilient and adaptive ecosystem for change.
What if the way we fund change made deep change more possible?
A Pando approach to funding deep change isn’t about isolated actors “competing for sunlight.” It’s about a network of initiatives that grow in relation to one another, filling in gaps, avoiding redundancy, and making the whole canopy stronger.
Like trees sensing light and responding to touch, we need funding and organizing models that are sensitive to context. That evolve based on what's already growing nearby, what’s missing, and where the ecosystem needs support.
Too often, funding landscapes are crowded with overlapping efforts, redundant pilots, siloed strategies, competitive organizations, fractured leaders. Just like trees in a windstorm, when initiatives collide without coordination, the result is friction, inefficiency, and fragility. Solving wickedly tough challenges like economic injustice or climate collapse requires this kind of dynamic coordination that Pando Funding is purpose built to support—space-making, not spotlight-seeking.
Pando Funding seeks to create space for others when alignment exists. To sense and respond to what's already happening on the ground. To invest in coordination, not just isolated action. To design portfolios that intentionally grow together, like a healthy forest canopy.
Pando Funding calls us to shift several of philanthropy’s business-as-usual practices; and equally as important, to shift many of the mindsets and beliefs that lock change in place.
Ultimately, we envision a funding landscape filled with many variations of Pando Funding working in a variety of geographies, on a range of issues, engaging leaders committed to intervening in the most intractable and broken systems of our time so that they work for the benefit of all people and our planet.
Key Principles + Features
Fund Shared Power. Fuel Collective Strategy. Flex for What’s Next.
Pando Funding isn’t just about financing change—it’s about building the power and will to sustain that change. Rooted in principles of collective governance, shared accountability, and long-term commitment, Pando Funding is designed to equip network leaders with the structure for strategic alignment, resilient collaboration, and adaptive action.
Ultimately, Pando Funding isn’t about creating a new fund; it’s about forging a new funding logic.
Pando Funding is founded on a set of the core principles that distinguish it from more traditional collaborative funds. By reimagining how capital flows and who controls it, Pando Funding helps movements not only act together, but govern together, shaping a future where power is shared, and strategy is collective.
PRINCIPLE #1: Power in Solidarity
Transformation happens when power is shared, not concentrated.
Pando Funding supports groups of change makers to stand with each other, especially in the face of shared struggles or causes. It shifts top-down decision-making by ensuring that leaders on the frontlines of change have the power to make collective strategy and allocate resources in service of it —so that capital serves collective strategy, rather than strategy serving capital. This strengthens networks, builds resilience, and ensures that resources flow toward real solutions.
PRINCIPLE #2: Strength in Synergy
A diversity of strategies strengthens the movement as a whole.
Pando Funding doesn’t dictate a single approach. Instead, it supports a range of tactics and strategies that work in concert toward a shared vision. Building and funding coherent and aligned “fronts” is the most impactful way to work with complex adaptive problems. By embracing differences and avoiding rigid structures, Pando Funding enables groups to act independently while reinforcing each other’s efforts.
PRINCIPLE #3: Built to Adapt
Real change requires flexibility, not fixed plans.
Complex systems are always evolving. Pando Funding allows new ideas, projects, and collaborations to emerge from their networks, allowing leaders to adapt in real time too. Traditional funding models often demand predefined outcomes, limiting a group’s ability to respond to shifting conditions. Pando Funding prioritizes adaptability—allowing leaders to pivot, refine strategies, and remain resilient in the face of evolving challenges. Transparency, collective decision-making, and trust-based governance ensure that shared direction and allocation of resources reflects what’s truly needed.
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While there are many different types of networks, Pando Funding is distinctive in its support of networks aimed at improving the health of a complex system. A system change network builds the root enabling conditions needed for transformational change by:
Connecting key system actors into a network and building trusting relationships
Developing a shared view of the complex system they work within
Identifying key drivers of system health and aligning project work to address them
Increasing learning and flows of information throughout the “whole”
Enabling adaptation, collaboration, cross-pollination, and innovation
Fostering efficient capital allocation
Providing the backbone support that makes this all possible
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Rather than centralizing control, Pando Funding decentralizes power. By design. Leaders within the network determine how to allocate portions of the pooled capital across their co-constructed living portfolios that align with the network’s shared vision.
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Networks organize their work into thematic clusters. These clusters develop, monitor, and adapt specific on-the-ground living project portfolios—work aimed at implementing the cluster’s strategy and targeting specific drivers of system health. By providing for learning and connection within and across clusters, Pando Funding accelerates innovation, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
These principles are the rootstock from which the more technical and structural shapes of Pando Funding grow. While Pando Funding will take on a range of variations depending on the context, it requires embodying these principles which make it distinct from other forms of pooled capital.
Traditional funding often targets isolated projects in the “grove of social change”—a tree here, a branch there, a few leaves over there, while often failing to nourish the interconnected roots of the system itself. This approach often fragments efforts, isolates leaders, and limits long-term impact.
Pando Funding aims to shift that. This isn’t just cosmetic--old wine in a new bottle. It’s about redesigning many, related aspects of business-as-usual funding. Changing who holds decision-making power, how networks act, learn and adapt, and what kinds of results are truly possible.
There’s still a lot to understand about Pando Funding and the networks they support, but we believe that, like Pando Funding’s principles, there are three core features that define a Pando Funding approach:
Clusters of Collaboration
Pando Funding invests in root enabling conditions—trust, shared understanding, and network coordination—that make system-level action possible. But it doesn’t stop there. To truly accelerate transformation, it must also invest in the new forms of action that emerge from the healthy system change network. That’s where Clusters of Collaboration come in.
Clusters are a core expression of what becomes possible when capital, learning, and coordinated action are designed to work at the network level.
Clusters are self-organized groups within the network that are intentionally supported in developing “living project portfolios”—forming around a shared hypothesis, set of aligned goals, and a desire to intervene more powerfully in the system they aim to shift.
Clusters make the enabling conditions visible. They are the space where relationships, shared intent, and reflection crystallize into collective action.
Clusters give networks agency. They transform the abstract promise of networks into grounded strategic execution.
Clusters act as accelerators of collective insight and experimentation. They serve as feedback-rich environments that turn learning into action. They become vessels for distributed leadership and networked decision-making.
Early insights suggest that Clusters can become a source for resilience, innovation and momentum. And together, the many Clusters “docked” onto a specific system change network, create a “united front” for deep change. Individually and collectively, clusters can intervene simultaneously in different parts of the system, tackling different barriers, influencing different stakeholders, driving different impact with different theories of change—and in doing so, accelerate learning, coordination, and collective power.
This turns a system change network into a platform for coordination—achieving what no single intervention could ever achieve operating on its own.
A Cluster is:
A subset of network members aligned around a specific opportunity or systemic challenge.
Supported to build shared analysis, vision, and strategic direction.
Trusted to make funding decisions over a pool of capital.
Organized around a defined hypothesis for change—that they themselves set—but with freedom to adapt as necessary.
Pando in Practice
The familiar saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” rings especially true for Pando Funding and the system change network it powers. The enabling conditions, principles, core features, and clusters we’ve discussed throughout this resource are each essential parts in their own right; but it’s how they come together that creates a dynamic system of action and impact
If we want to move the needle on today’s most complex, entrenched problems, we must focus not just on what we do, but on how we organize to do it. That means investing in the structures and containers that sustain leaders in long-term work in a constantly evolving landscape.
Put all the pieces together, and what emerges is something far more powerful than the parts alone. Instead, with Pando Funding and through a system change network, we intentionally build a living system for transformation that looks something like this:
Why Structure Follows Strategy.
Pando Funding provides the resources and structure for leaders to activate a network’s shared vision through more strategic and adaptive living project portfolios—built from within the collective. It does this first by investing in the enabling conditions that allows a system change network to thrive over time: deep trust and relational infrastructure across diverse leaders, shared sense-making and visioning that fuels aligned action, continuous learning and iteration that enhances resilience.
Then, rather than a “big bet” approach that attempts to select “the best idea” and scale, scale, scale, Pando Funding invests in collective strategy making, in the living project portfolios that emerge and equally as important, in the leaders willing to work in more connected ways.
In this way, Pando Funding capitalizes two core components: First, a network’s set of specific Cluster strategies that align diverse leaders around shared barriers and coherent action. And second, ongoing network learning that connects clusters, recycles insight, and strengthens the network and broader field.
This twofold approach is not a nice-to-have, it integrates, intentionally, the inseparable roots and shoots of long-term system transformation.
We believe the value of Pando Funding lies in what it enables: new ways of organizing, new ways of working, and the emergence of new outcomes that may not be possible through a traditional fund. Pando Funding’s power comes not from buying isolated outputs, but from investing in the emergent properties of the whole—in how different experiments, relationships, and learning interact over time to create the project and system level outcomes we care about. As a system change network strengthens and learns, the Pando Funding itself becomes more effective and adaptive: a self-reinforcing system.
This is where we’re going to geek out a bit on why Pando Funding matters for system transformation, but we think it’s worth it.
Emergence: The Whole Becomes Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts. In a system change network supported by Pando Funding, the value doesn’t come just from individual project outputs, but from the relationships and interactions between leaders in the network. Over time, as trust deepens and shared understanding increases, new forms of coordination, strategy, and innovation emerge, ones that could not be designed in advance. Pando Funding helps fund the generation of patterns of shared behavior and collective intelligence that no single actor or project could produce on its own. As this emergent intelligence grows, the whole becomes smarter—and the funding is able to respond more precisely, allocate capital more strategically, and support increasingly aligned efforts.
Feedback Loops: Learning Accelerates Performance. In a complex system, feedback loops, the continuous flow of data, insights, and consequences, are essential to adaptation. A system change network supported by Pando Funding is designed to maximize this flow through shared sensemaking, cross-cluster learning, and real-time course correction. As learning and feedback, critical outcomes that Pando Funding explicitly resources, become more frequent and trusted across the network: 1) leaders can adjust strategies quickly, 2) effective practices spread faster, and 3) “underperforming” efforts are corrected or sunset more intelligently. Pando Funding becomes less reactive and more proactive—anticipating shifts in the environment and responding in ways that reflect collective insight, not individual guesswork.
Network Effects: Coordination Increases Impact Exponentially. The power of a system change network lies in how its nodes (people, groups, institutions) interconnect and coordinate. This increases “connectivity” and “distributed intelligence” -- key ingredients in any system change effort. As more of the network’s leaders engage in shared strategy making, living project portfolio design, and guide resource allocation, the capacity of the network expands—and so does the ability for leaders to deploy capital meaningfully. In this flywheel effect, every cycle of shared decision-making improves the networks infrastructure, norms, and trust—leading to faster cycles, deeper alignment and hopefully greater spread.
Path Dependence and Adaptive Capacity. Once a system change network has built robust relational infrastructure and learned how to work together effectively, it develops “path dependence.” This means there’s a higher likelihood of sustaining productive coordination over time. The network’s history becomes an asset. It lowers transaction costs, reduces conflict and strengthens decision-making, making the funding and the network more resilient to shocks and more responsive to opportunity. The network benefits from the cumulative investments in trust, memory, and shared narrative—just as Pando, or any ecosystem, does from its biodiversity and interdependence.
So why does this all matter? Pando Funding doesn’t just support action—it gets reshaped by it. It’s not uni-directional. It’s one hundred percent relational. The funding evolves as the network evolves. As the network matures, the funding matures. We cannot understate how critical these dynamics and dependencies are when facing complexity.
Transforming Philanthropy
There’s a frustrating truth in systems change work: funding focused solely on programs built to solve individual problems won’t lead to healthier systems. Yet, this is the dominant funding model we’ve relied on for over a century.
Project-level—or “point solution”—funding is appropriate for urgent, immediate needs, like pandemic response or protecting unhoused populations. But it’s inadequate for tackling the systemic root causes behind those crises, and countless others. It's like treating the symptoms of Polio while ignoring the disease itself. To put it bluntly: if point solution funding is the only way we fund system health work, we will fail.
This is a structural challenge as much as it is a mindset challenge. Core to this problem is that we’ve built a set of norms, practices, processes, and organizations to deliver (and receive) funding for point solutions. This point solution funding architecture prioritizes and makes fundable impacts that can be attributed to the work of a project and that is often delivered by one organization funded to optimize its specific theory of change.
The result? A landscape marked by a sense of scarcity and competition. Leaders and organizations (both implementers and donors) compete for funding and recognition, leading to fragmented efforts with little coordination, shared strategy, or incentive to collaborate. This point solution funding architecture not only limits cooperation, it undermines our ability to invest in the deeper, collective work required to strengthen systems over time.
We have identified a range of opportunities for philanthropy to use Pando Funding as a way to drive system health—and in the process evolve their own practices:
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A subset of funders is actively looking for new models to drive deep, structural transformation.
Pando Funding offers a bold, innovative framework that aligns with the work of progressive funders interested in movement infrastructure and long-term change.
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Some funders are already exploring models that shift power to grassroots movements and frontline leaders.
Pando Funding aligns with the principles of participatory grantmaking, which is gaining traction in philanthropy, but informs it with a system logic.
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Trust-based philanthropy rejects burdensome reporting requirements and embraces long-term, flexible funding.
Pando Funding expands on this concept by ensuring decision-making is collective, rather than solely funder driven.
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Some funders may start small, providing seed funding to pilot Pando Funding before committing to full-scale investment.
Hybrid models could allow funders to gradually shift power while still maintaining some level of involvement.
While the below may be perceived as challenges for philanthropy in doing more Pando Funding, they can be flipped into opportunities to experiment with an evolving best practice so needed for the times we’re in.
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Many funders are used to controlling how funds are distributed and which organizations receive support.
Pando Funding redistributes decision-making power to leaders in networks and clusters, meaning funders no longer unilaterally dictate strategy or funding priorities. This requires a fundamental mindset shift, which some traditional philanthropists may find uncomfortable.
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Most foundations fund specific organizations with clear, individual goals, rather than fund collaboratives with shared objectives.
Pando Funding prioritize networked, ecosystem-wide impact, and the system change networks leading this change, which can be harder for traditional funders to assess using their existing grantmaking models.
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Many funders expect clear, short-term impact metrics to justify their grants.
Pando Funding is designed for long-term systems change, which doesn’t always produce quick, easily quantifiable results. This can make it challenging to attract funders who prioritize immediate, measurable return on investment.
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Funders tend to prefer models that fit within traditional philanthropy’s established norms.
Because Pando Funding involves adaptive, emergent strategies, some funders may see them as too unpredictable or complex.
The innovation in Pando Funding is in the novel integration of existing philanthropic best practices, intentionally combined for transforming systems. Pando Funding builds upon these proven and leading-edge practices already being deployed, such as: shared visioning, participatory funding, trust-based philanthropy, collective action, adaptive strategies, network and field building, ecosystem mobilization.
There is no set-in-stone blueprint for Pando Funding. It does require us to imagine a different way of being and doing. Maybe you’re already there? Maybe you want to take a few experimental steps towards a more intentional Pando Funding approach?
Explore some of the “Could you imagines…” in the table below to see how your philanthropic practices could be different:
Call to action
The Pando Funding model challenges the traditional architecture of philanthropic capital and calls for a deeper reckoning: What kind of funding actually supports systems change? Rather than directing dollars to isolated solutions, Pando Funding is rooted in a belief that capital must nourish the conditions that allow transformation to emerge and endure.
This shift requires a new mindset and surfaces a new set of questions—ones that shifts focus from control to collaboration, from attribution to alignment, from rigidity to resilience. A set of questions that can animate Pando Funding as a living and evolving practice in many contexts, by many people, over many years.
At its heart, and alongside numerous other efforts and traditions, Pando Funding is a response to profound, existential questions we face as a planet and as communities:
What type of leadership is needed to meet the moment and crises we are in and, together, how do we become those types of leaders?
How do we coordinate ourselves, our work, our resources and capital intentionally in ways that strengthen our relationships and pursue common goals?
Pando Funding focuses our attention on particular lines of inquiry, as paths through these larger questions:
How can financial capital -- particularly philanthropic capital -- be structured and governed to foster long-term, systemic transformation rather than short-term, project-based gains?
What forms of collective leadership and shared governance best enable diverse actors with the intention of transformation to allocate resources adaptively, learn in real time, and stay accountable without stifling diverse approaches and initiative?
How can trusting, feedback-rich relationships among funders and field leaders create continuously evolving portfolios of interventions that work in concert to strengthen overall system health?
The crises we face—from inequality and ecological breakdown to political polarization—are symptoms of deeper system failure. Traditional philanthropic funding approaches simply are not equipped to meet the scale or complexity of the moment. We need a new logic of capital—one that understands change as relational, not transactional; emergent, not engineered.
Pando Funding is not just another pooled fund. It is a strategy for organizing capital around collective power, coherence, and adaptability. It is an invitation to what’s possible when we align financial architecture with systemic transformation. When we see deep change as a living practice that we know needs many, many others to pursue.
To those already funding like Pando: we invite you and encourage you to deeper, more ambitious practice.
To those stuck in the chasm between transformative action and funding practices as they exist today: we invite you to join us. To make Pando Funding a core part of your work and to make your work a core part of the living practice of Pando Funding.
Who We Are
This guide is written by Anna Muoio and Brendan Lehan, co-leads of The New Capitalism Project (NCP), a US-based effort launched in 2020 to drive economic system change by mobilizing a diverse ecosystem of leaders, organizations, and funders.
Pando Funding began as a bold inquiry: What would it take to fund like Pando? That is, to fund in ways that resource system change networks—not just individual actors—so they can operate as evolving and powerful interventions: connected, adaptive, mutually reinforcing.
NCP convened the Pando Funding Design Team, a group of funders and NCP practitioners, to explore this question in more depth through a nine-month collaborative effort to imagine and prototype a more systemic, relational approach to funding system change.
Pando Funding Design Team Members
Chris Jurgens | Omidyar Network
Evan Steiner | One Project
Ivana Gazibara | TransCap Initiative
Jeremie Greer | Liberation in a Generation
Liz Diebold | Skoll Foundation
Mahlet Getachew | PolicyLink
Morgan Snyder | Walton Family Foundation
Nikhil Wilmink | Open Society Foundation
Rob Ricigliano | The Omidyar Group
Susan Choi | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Anna Muoio | New Capitalism Project
Brendan Lehan | New Capitalism Project
This effort formed in response to a hard truth surfaced within NCP: one of the greatest obstacles to advancing economic system change wasn’t a lack of ideas or action, but the mismatch between traditional funding structures and the nature of networked change.
We recognized that complex, long-term transformation demands funding models that go beyond short-term grants, siloed projects, and isolated outcomes. It requires resourcing the underlying conditions that enable networks to act strategically, relationally, and in far greater alignment as the first step in driving collective impact on a range of key outcomes.
The perspectives in this resource are grounded in the experience of the NCP system change network, co-created with input from leaders working on how to fund system transformation in many contexts, and intended as a call to action to anyone working to transform systems across the world.
Deeper Dives into the Practice of Pando Funding
To make Pando Funding real in any given context, practitioners and funders must make dozens of design choices about structures, processes, capacities, and relationships. We offer a set of seven deeper dives to support that work, which are linked throughout this page, and available using the button below.
DOWNLOAD
Click the cover image to the right to download a PDF of the Pando Funding Overview and Deeper Dives.
