DEEPER DIVE INTO PRACTICE OF PANDO FUNDING

Hello! This is a Pando Funding deep dive; one of several concepts where we dig deeper into a critical aspect of Pando Funding. To explore why we believe it matters and to share what we’ve learned while leading the New Capitalism Project, a US-based system change network to transform the economic system so that it works for all people and the planet. These deeper dives are offered as tools to help you adapt Pando Funding to your context – to animate Pando Funding as a shared, living practice rather than a fixed model.    

Orchestrating Pando Funding

Shifting a complex system isn’t just about how a network organizes and works differently; it’s about how money organizes and works differently too. Capital holders—the institutions and the people inside them—operate under their own constraints and juggle many priorities in driving the change they seek. Supporting a network is often one tactic, among many, for achieving their objectives. But a network can’t be resourced with the same logic that resources a project, initiative or an organization. It’s why orchestrating a different kind of funding in service of a network is core.

Pando Funding supports the integrated space where:

  • Network members forge new, cross-ecology relationships, align strategies, and take transformative action.

  • Capital holders learn to engage and move money differently – adopting practices that increase the odds of durable system transformation.

For capital to truly serve system change, it must reflect the integrated, adaptive nature of the work that emerges from a system change network. Pando Funding is grounded in three key practices that make this possible:

  • Pool and integrate. By mingling resources from multiple sources and bundling a set of interdependent activities Pando Funding reflects the collective value of a systems change network, which exceeds the sum of its parts. Capital integration reduces “free-riding,” ensures under-funded (but crucial) functions get covered, and signals that funders see the work as one integrated strategy.

  • Create shared responsibility—with clear paths in and out. Long-term systemic work demands long-term support. Yet many funders need diversification and periodic off-ramps. Pando Funding must provide structures that welcome a diverse mix of capital holders, provide intentional moments to reassess commitments, and allow orderly entry or exit without disrupting the network’s momentum.

  • Build a healthier membrane between capital and strategy. Instead of rigid grantmaking that fragments efforts, Pando Funding allocates certain resources through network-controlled processes—such as how cluster make decisions. The enabling conditions, a common long-term vision, and mutual accountability provide useful guardrails for that delegated resource allocation. These “structural layers” create space for adaptive use of funds while still offering funders alignment and accountability.  

Orchestrated funding lets capital holders “join the dance” of shifting complex systems – moving in rhythm with how a network moves.

Guideposts in Practice

Bringing Funding Together for New Economy Field-Building & Networked Action

Over five years and four different phases, the New Capitalism Project (NCP) has been powered by a shifting mosaic of funders—each drawn in by a different facet of the same ambition: re-imagining capitalism, building field-level infrastructure, growing system-shifting leadership, financing transformation.

This diversity of capital (and intent!)  has been a feature, not a bug. But the challenge is, as philanthropic priorities evolve, teams turn over, grant horizons expire, networks, like NCP, must keep moving. NCP has had to balance its long-term vision with real-time adaptation—and in doing so, forge a type of proto-Pando Funding from which a lot of this understanding has emerged. As we look ahead, we’re focusing on two critical frontiers:

Building Pando Funding to thrive in today’s philanthropic landscape
Pando Funding exists inside a much bigger philanthropic ocean—it can’t ignore its tides and needs to create new slipstreams. We’re designing principled and flexible lanes for funders to scale up or down, enter or exit NCP’s work without knocking the network off course and disrupting its integrity. First, this means translating between funder needs and the network priorities. Second, ensuring funder influence aligns with the network’s shared vision and approach. And finally, investing in the network to generate relational, intellectual and other forms of non-financial capital, to help buffer the network across inevitable funding cycles.

Jumping the chasm to network project portfolios
The leaders in a network’s clusters need capital they can steer together—fit-for-purpose money that flows to their co-created portfolio of projects; and capital that transforms their root enabling conditions into a different type and intensity of work. This has been a particularly challenging chasm to cross.  Most capital exists in more of a transactional, constrained, and decontextualized space. By design, cluster work is context-rich, highly relational and built for systemic change. We’re exploring Pando Funding from several angles: Options for pooling resources governed by the network. Supporting clusters to engage funders directly in the shared work they want to undertake. Designing “cluster experiments” that are both authentic to the work and legible to funders.  

The goal is simple but radical: capital that can be deployed by networks, as networks—so the bridges we build lead to real transformation.

GUIDING QUESTION

What are the new things that become possible for funders in your movement, because your network exists? What are the different ways of working that are necessary for these funders to increase the network’s agency?

Each deep dive offers a guiding question, as a jumping off point for exploring a particular aspect of Pando Funding in your own work and context.