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 deep 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.    

GOVERNING: Moving Power into Networks

For a system change network to function, it must do more than share a vision—it must make decisions together. Decisions about strategy, about what to try next, and about where to place collective bets.

That’s why Pando Funding doesn’t treat governance as a compliance requirement, administrative layer, or solely within the provenance of funder control, but as core network infrastructure—the connective tissue that aligns capital with purpose, distributes agency, and makes collective action possible in real time.

Just as Pando Funding rewires how money moves into and through networks, it also rewires how decisions get made—balancing accountability with flexibility, strategic clarity with experimental freedom. At its heart, governance braids together two essential dynamics:

  1. Long-term direction & guardrails

  1. Network members define and steward the long-term vision—the “why” that holds the network together. They set the bounds for experimentation, through Clusters, protecting the collective from fragmentation while allowing space for risk and difference.

  2. This shared strategic container becomes the foundation for mutual accountability—not to a rigid plan, but to a transformational purpose.

  1. Near-term experimentation & adaptation

    1. Members hold the authority to pursue varied, even divergent, lines of experimentation.

    2. Decisions are made close to the work, grounded in real-time learning

    3. Accountability is measured by alignment with shared intent and the courage to adapt—not by compliance with pre-approved metrics.

Four key roles that enable governance:

  • Core responsibilities: Co-govern pooled funds within their cluster, lead projects, shape strategy and learning.

  • Core responsibilities: Pool capital into the network, aligning with its charter and principles—without steering individual project choices.

  • Core responsibilities: Design, facilitate, and manage the relationships, governance cycles, adaptive strategy, and day-to-day administration that keep the network humming.

  • Core responsibilities: Hire/oversee stewards, ratify cluster allocations, hold agreements with donors & clusters, ensure legal compliance, and protect the integrity of the network’s decision-making.

This model doesn’t remove structure—it reconfigures it. Pando Funding governance is about enabling—not controlling—networked action. Pando Funding fuels a vibrant process of relating, strategizing and acting among leaders in a network. Pando Funding’s governance model must equip networks with the authority, guardrails, and flexibility to steer capital—and themselves—toward system-level transformation.

Guideposts in Practice

Governing with Shared Vision and Collective Will

In philanthropy, participatory grantmaking and trust-based approaches have made critical strides in challenging centralized control and elevating the voices of those closest to the work. But for the New Capitalism Project (NCP), participation alone wasn’t the goal. The network’s decision-making process emerged from something deeper: a shared vision for economic transformation created by network members, and a collective will to act on it.

When we launched the NCP Lab, the question wasn’t simply how to allocate funds—but who should decide, and on what basis. Unlike traditional participatory models that invite input from grantees or community advisors, NCP’s approach was rooted in the network’s own sense of purpose and systemic ambition. A group of members—deeply involved in shaping NCP’s analysis of structural barriers and possibilities—were entrusted with the responsibility to resource new Lab participants.

This group didn’t just bring proximity to the field. They brought ownership of a shared theory of change. Proposals weren’t judged in isolation, but evaluated against a collectively held vision of economic transformation—how well they advanced that vision, addressed critical leverage points, and aligned with the network’s evolving strategy.

The result: ten ambitious, varied, and network-born initiatives, backed not because they aligned with a funder’s theory of change, but because they had the potential to help accelerate the network’s own roadmap. This wasn’t participation for legitimacy—it was governance for transformation.

What distinguishes this from participatory grantmaking is intentionality and embeddedness: decisions were made by people who were already co-creating the strategy, building the infrastructure, and investing in the long-term future of the work. It was decision-making as an act of collective stewardship, not just inclusion.

This is what Pando Funding makes possible. Not just funding aligned to purpose—but funding that supports leaders in a network capable of governing themselves in service of a shared, long-term transformation.It demonstrates what it looks like when a network moves from shared analysis to shared investment—with the power to act, adapt, and align at the pace system change demands.

GUIDING QUESTION

What are the decisions that network members already make together and how are they different then decisions members would make alone? How can this decision-making evolve to influence more resources and strengthen the network?

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.