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# System prepended metadata

title: Global Systemic Change Networks

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# Forging a Coherent Future: An Integrated Landscape of Global Systemic Change Networks

## **Introduction: The Rise of a Systemic Change Ecosystem**

In the face of complex, interlocking global crises—from climate disruption and profound inequality to institutional mistrust and social fragmentation—a new wave of initiatives has emerged. These efforts move beyond isolated projects or symptom-level fixes, aiming instead for the deep transformation of our social, economic, and governance systems. They share a common goal: to address humanity’s most pressing systemic challenges at their roots by linking local action with a global, regenerative vision. This report synthesizes and evaluates a broad spectrum of these initiatives, from globally recognized networks and UN programs to grassroots movements and paradigm-shifting "sense-making" communities. It merges two distinct analyses into one coherent landscape, providing a comprehensive map of "who is doing what" in the service of deep systemic change.

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## Methodology for a New Kind of Movement

To compare these diverse efforts, we evaluate them using a unified (0–100) scoring model across nine key dimensions that capture the principles of deep systemic change:

* **Generativity (Long-Term Value):** The capacity to continuously generate new solutions, value, and social capital over time.
* **Systemic Coherence & Polycentric Governance:** Alignment with whole-system thinking and multi-level (global-local) coordination.
* **Root Cause Focus:** The degree to which the initiative addresses underlying paradigms, structures, and causes rather than superficial symptoms.
* **Experimentation & Tractability:** The use of pilots, rapid prototyping, and iterative learning to find what works.
* **Inclusiveness & Community Empowerment:** Openness, accessibility, and the ability to support and empower a broad, diverse community of changemakers.
* **Transformational Depth:** The capacity to foster deep cognitive, emotional, and cultural shifts in participants and society.
* **Scalable Network Impact:** The ability to scale impact through network effects, replication, or distributed growth.
* **2030 Impact Potential:** The likely contribution to meaningful, positive outcomes by 2030, aligned with global sustainability milestones.
* **Alignment with Systemic Values:** Resonance with a core ethos of regeneration, open-source collaboration, polycentric action, and empowerment.

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## A Thematic Journey Through the Ecosystem

Rather than a simple list, this report is structured thematically to explore the different **layers** of systemic intervention. We will journey through:

* **The Anchor Initiative (Changemappers):** An emergent platform designed to connect and empower all other changemakers.
* **The Inner Frontier:** Initiatives focused on the paradigm, consciousness, and inner capacities required for systemic change.
* **The Global Connectors:** Large-scale "networks of networks" that coordinate and enable action across sectors and regions.
* **The Living Laboratories:** Grassroots, community-scale movements that prototype and **live** the new paradigm.
* **Economic & Market Transformation:** Initiatives redesigning the core rules and infrastructure of our economic systems.
* **Movement & Direct Action Infrastructure:** Organizations that support and enable grassroots movements and direct action.
* **The Institutional Interface:** Initiatives working to reform and embed systemic principles within existing governance structures.
* **The Navigators:** Projects dedicated to mapping and providing the knowledge base for the entire ecosystem.
* **The Financial Frontier:** A landscape of funding models—from grants to DAOs—that fuel the transformation.

This integrated analysis is followed by a synthesized review of the entire ecosystem's blind spots, leverage points, and strategic recommendations for the crucial 2026–2030 period.

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## Comparative Evaluation Matrix

The table below provides a consolidated overview of the **initial set** of initiatives analyzed. The subsequent chapters expand this landscape significantly, introducing numerous other high-impact organizations categorized by their primary mode of intervention. Scores are on a 0–100 scale based on the nine criteria defined above.

| Initiative | Generativity | Systemic Coherence | Root-Cause Focus | Tractability | Inclusiveness | Transformational Depth | Network Scalability | 2030 Impact | Systemic Values Alignment |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Changemappers** | 80 | 90 | 90 | 70 | 85 | 95 | 80 | 80 | 100 |
| **Second Renaissance** | 70 | 85 | 95 | 60 | 75 | 90 | 80 | 80 | 90 |
| **Game B** | 80 | 90 | 90 | 60 | 70 | 85 | 80 | 75 | 95 |
| **Presencing Institute** | 80 | 90 | 90 | 70 | 80 | 95 | 85 | 70 | 90 |
| **Inner Development Goals (IDG)** | 75 | 60 | 95 | 50 | 80 | 100 | 85 | 70 | 95 |
| **Co-Intelligence Institute** | 75 | 85 | 80 | 85 | 80 | 90 | 60 | 70 | 85 |
| **Catalyst 2030** | 85 | 80 | 75 | 60 | 90 | 50 | 85 | 80 | 85 |
| **Wellbeing Economy Alliance** | 80 | 85 | 90 | 50 | 75 | 60 | 70 | 75 | 80 |
| **UNDP Accelerator Labs** | 80 | 70 | 75 | 95 | 85 | 40 | 90 | 85 | 75 |
| **Impact Hub Network** | 85 | 60 | 70 | 90 | 75 | 50 | 85 | 90 | 60 |
| **Transition Movement** | 85 | 90 | 85 | 90 | 80 | 75 | 90 | 85 | 80 |
| **Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)** | 80 | 85 | 90 | 70 | 60 | 90 | 70 | 75 | 80 |
| **Community Energy Co-ops** | 80 | 85 | 90 | 80 | 75 | 30 | 80 | 85 | 75 |
| **Open Government Partnership** | 60 | 65 | 50 | 80 | 80 | 30 | 85 | 70 | 60 |
| **Participatory Budgeting** | 75 | 80 | 80 | 95 | 85 | 40 | 95 | 80 | 70 |
| **Systems Change Alliance (SCA)** | 55 | 75 | 85 | 40 | 65 | 70 | 50 | 50 | 90 |
| **Social Innovation Atlas** | 60 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 75 | 50 | 60 | 50 | 60 |

---

## Chapter 1. The Anchor Initiative: A Platform for Coherence

At the center of this emerging ecosystem is the **need** for a meta-platform to connect the fragments. One initiative is being designed specifically for this purpose.

### Changemappers

Changemappers is a platform and community designed to connect and empower changemakers for "long-lasting impactful systemic change." Its philosophy blends local impact with global connectivity, aiming to support changemakers with shared knowledge, collaboration tools, mental-emotional support, and volunteer matching.

* **Innovations:** Changemappers is building a map-centered, open-source platform where users can find aligned allies, solutions, and resources. It explicitly champions **polycentric governance** (nested decision-making balancing local autonomy with global coherence) and the cultivation of **collective intelligence and integrative consciousness**.
* **Strengths:** Its core strength is its deep systemic ethos. It addresses root causes and fosters "win-win-win" mindsets rather than oppositional activism. By focusing on **inner transformation** (emotional maturity, resilience, learning from failure) alongside outer impact, it fills a crucial gap in changemaker support. Its open-source, inclusive "narrative of hope" aligns strongly with the needs of a global grassroots movement.
* **Gaps:** As an early-stage initiative, Changemappers faces challenges of implementation and scale. Its ambitious scope (aiming to support millions of users) demands significant network effects and resources. Proving a self-sustaining model and attracting users beyond the already-engaged "changemaker" bubble are its primary hurdles.

---

## Chapter 2. The Inner Frontier: Seeding a New Consciousness

A profound insight shared by many systemic thinkers is that our external crises are a reflection of an internal one. The following initiatives operate at this "deepest" layer, focusing on the worldviews, paradigms, and inner capacities from which new systems can emerge.

### Presencing Institute / Theory U

Emerged from MIT’s Theory U work (Otto Scharmer et al.), this is a global action-research community dedicated to "awareness-based systems change."

* **Strengths:** Scoring highest in **transformational depth**, its programs (like U.Lab) cultivate the inner shift in consciousness "from ego-system to eco-system awareness" needed for lasting change. It has engaged tens of thousands worldwide, who form self-organized local hubs to prototype solutions. It explicitly targets root causes by helping practitioners identify and shift the deep mental models that hold problems in place.
* **Gaps:** Its impact is often indirect, catalyzing change **through** the leaders it trains rather than implementing large-scale projects directly, leading to a moderate tractability score.

### Inner Development Goals (IDG)

The IDG initiative complements the external Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a framework of 23 inner traits and skills (e.g., "Being," "Thinking," "Relating") needed to achieve them.

* **Strengths:** The IDG initiative scores extremely high on **root cause focus** and **transformational depth**. It directly targets the "lack of inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment" as a root cause of stagnating SDG progress. As a non-profit, open-source framework, it has high generativity, with a global community of hubs and partners adapting it for education, business, and policy.
* **Gaps:** As a new framework, it does not implement on-the-ground projects itself. Its impact is as an **enabling platform** to amplify other initiatives by strengthening the inner capacity of their changemakers.

### Second Renaissance

This initiative (from Life Itself) provides an accessible introduction and community hub for our current "civilizational crisis and awakening." It frames our era as a "second renaissance" requiring a major new cultural paradigm.

* **Strengths:** Its strength is its **depth of vision and narrative clarity**. It squarely targets root causes at the cultural and "ontological" (worldview) level, asserting that modernity’s paradigm is the problem. It serves as a vital "gateway" and mapping project for the fragmented ecosystem of "paradigmatic changemakers" (e.g., Integral, Teal, Game B), curating complex ideas for newcomers.
* **Gaps:** It is primarily knowledge-oriented and does not directly implement projects. Its impact depends on inspiring or guiding others, risking it remaining in an intellectual bubble. The step from "sense-making" to "concrete action" is left to the user.

### Game B

Game B is not a formal organization but a "memetic tag" for a loosely knit movement seeking to design a new "social operating system" beyond the rivalrous, zero-sum dynamics of the current "Game A."

* **Strengths:** It aims for an "anti-fragile, scalable, increasingly omni-win-win civilization" by fostering collective intelligence and cooperation. Its conceptual innovations (e.g., "omni-win," "anti-rivalrous") and holistic, open-ended search process have attracted a diverse network of thinkers and doers, seeding many spin-off experiments in community and governance.
* **Gaps:** Its non-prescriptive, diffuse nature is a double-edged sword. Much discourse remains abstract, and its jargon can be inaccessible to "laymen." Bridging from theory to practical, real-world "proto-B" examples is its main challenge.

### Co-Intelligence Institute (CII) & Wise Democracy

Founded by Tom Atlee, the CII promotes "collective wisdom, co-creativity, and collaborative governance" innovations.

* **Strengths:** CII’s strength is its **practical grounding in democratic innovation**. It has developed a rich toolkit and "Wise Democracy Pattern Language" for participatory dialogue and deliberation that engages the "wisdom of the whole." It directly addresses root causes of governance failure (like polarization and exclusion) with tested process solutions.
* **Gaps:** As a small nonprofit, its reach has been limited to niche communities of facilitators and activists. It has not yet fully tapped new technologies (like AI for sense-making) that could amplify co-intelligence at scale.

### Berkana Institute

Pioneering the "Two Loops" systems change model, Berkana conceptualizes transition through the simultaneous hospicing of declining systems and the nurturing of emergent alternatives. Its framework identifies four key roles for changemakers in this transition: pioneers, connectors, protectors, and those managing the old system's decline.

* **Strengths:** The "Two Loops" model provides a highly pragmatic and sophisticated framework for organizations navigating change. Its theoretical depth rivals the Presencing Institute but is often seen as more directly applicable to organizational strategy and understanding transition dynamics.
* **Gaps:** As a conceptual model, its impact is indirect, reliant on adoption and application by other leaders and organizations rather than being a direct-action initiative itself.

### Collaborative Change Leadership (CCL) Program

A Canadian-based program that trains leaders in "emergence, adaptation, and co-creation" to navigate systemic challenges. It emphasizes compassion-rooted leadership and the emotional-relational capabilities required for transformation, moving beyond mechanistic change management.

* **Strengths:** Directly addresses the "inner-led" change gap by building practical, relational skills for leaders. Its focus on navigating uncertainty is highly relevant to the polycrisis and aligns with the need for new leadership paradigms.
* **Gaps:** As a training program, its direct scale is limited by the number of leaders it can graduate, relying on them to cascade the principles and practices within their own networks.

---

## Chapter 3. The Global Connectors: Weaving Networks of Networks

This group of initiatives excels at operating at scale. They act as large-scale conveners, aggregators, and enablers, connecting thousands of actors (social entrepreneurs, NGOs, government labs, and businesses) to create a coordinated, multi-sectoral push for change.

### Catalyst 2030

A prominent global coalition of social entrepreneurs, NGOs, funders, and innovators dedicated to achieving the SDGs through collaborative systems approaches.

* **Strengths:** Catalyst 2030 scores very high on **inclusiveness and network scale**. With over 1,600 member organizations, it exemplifies a multi-stakeholder "network-of-networks." It is a self-organizing, democratically governed structure where members co-create strategies. Its "co-creation over competition" ethos helps pool knowledge and efforts to influence whole systems, giving it high generativity.
* **Gaps:** It scores more moderately on **experimentation** and **transformational depth**. The coalition itself focuses more on advocacy and convening dialogues than running rapid prototypes, and it does not explicitly provide the personal development tools that "inner-led" initiatives do.

### Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll)

WEAll is a global coalition of organizations, academics, and governments working to create a "wellbeing economy," replacing GDP-growth as the primary measure of success with human and ecological well-being.

* **Strengths:** WEAll is strong on **systemic coherence** and **root cause focus**, directly challenging the flawed paradigm of extractive capitalism. It acts as a connector, bringing together governments (the "WEGo" group), businesses, and civil society hubs to build momentum for a new economic model.
* **Gaps:** It is somewhat less focused on rapid experimentation (being more of a policy and narrative-shifting alliance) and has a lower network scale compared to giants like Catalyst 2030.

### UNDP Accelerator Labs

This is the world's largest and fastest learning network on sustainable development challenges, with 90 labs embedded in 115 countries.

* **Strengths:** The UNDP Labs received the highest marks for **experimentation and tractability**. They run 100-day innovation cycles, scout for grassroots solutions, and treat community members as "solutions providers." This polycentric design—highly distributed labs with a global support team—allows them to test hundreds of innovations and, if successful, scale them through UNDP programs or government adoption.
* **Gaps:** The network’s main trade-off is in **transformational depth**. It focuses pragmatically on **how** to solve problems, with less emphasis on the inner personal transformation or cultural worldview shifts advocated by the initiatives in Chapter 2.

### Impact Hub Network

The Impact Hubs comprise a global network of social innovation coworking spaces and incubators in over 100 cities.

* **Strengths:** A key strength is **tractability and rapid experimentation**. Impact Hubs foster a "lean startup" approach to social innovation, allowing entrepreneurs to quickly prototype solutions (apps, services, products) and get feedback. The network provides scalable infrastructure for social enterprise, making social innovation accessible and exciting to new, diverse audiences.
* **Gaps:** Hubs can be critiqued for focusing on **market-based solutions** (enterprise fixes) that may address symptoms rather than underlying structural causes. They excel at business innovation but less so at challenging deeper governance or cultural paradigms.

### Ashoka

Operating since 1981, Ashoka functions as a global fellowship that identifies and supports the world's leading "social entrepreneurs." It has elected nearly 4,000 Ashoka Fellows across 70+ countries, providing stipends and a powerful peer network. Its guiding philosophy is to build an "everyone a changemaker" world.

* **Strengths:** A 40-year empirical framework for identifying high-impact individual innovators. Its global peer network is unparalleled for mutual learning and scaling. Functions as a meritocratic system for elevating and resourcing proven leaders.
* **Gaps:** Its focus is on selecting **individual** innovators rather than building integrated **platforms** or **maps** for the entire ecosystem. The fellowship model is, by design, selective rather than fully inclusive.

### Schwab Foundation Social Innovators Awards

Established in 1998 and affiliated with the World Economic Forum, the Schwab Foundation recognizes leading social innovators annually. It functions as a global platform for visibility, highlighting diverse solutions that have collectively improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

* **Strengths:** Provides immense visibility and institutional legitimacy, connecting social entrepreneurs to global leaders in policy and business at forums like Davos.
* **Gaps:** Functions more as a recognition and visibility platform (an "award") than an active, on-the-ground network or capacity builder.

---

## Chapter 4. The Living Laboratories: Prototyping Regenerative Futures

While others talk, map, or connect, these initiatives **build**. They are the on-the-ground, living prototypes of a new way of life, demonstrating that regenerative, resilient, and community-led systems are not just possible, but already exist.

### Transition Movement

A grassroots network of "Transition Towns" working to build local resilience in the face of climate change and economic instability.

* **Strengths:** Transition excels at **tractability and network scalability**. It provides an "open-source" framework that is non-hierarchical, experimental, and easily adaptable, allowing it to spread rapidly to over 1,000 local initiatives. Its cultural innovation is its **"positive visioning"** narrative, reframing activism from confrontation to hopeful, creative, local solutions (e.g., community gardens, local currencies). It also integrates an "Inner Transition" aspect, addressing changemaker burnout.
* **Gaps:** Many local groups struggle with volunteer burnout and funding shortages. Sustaining momentum long-term and moving beyond a core group of activists to engage the broader community remains a challenge.

### Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)

An international alliance of ecovillages—intentional communities designed for sustainable living, ecological regeneration, and social cohesion. Representing 6,000+ member projects, GEN functions as a living laboratory network demonstrating integrated sustainability across ecological, economic, social, and cultural dimensions.

* **Strengths:** Ecovillages are microcosms of systemic innovation, demonstrating holistic, low-carbon, high-wellbeing lifestyles. Their **root-cause focus is high**, tackling consumerism and alienation by modeling a different paradigm of daily life. This provides deep **transformational depth** for residents. GEN connects these "living laboratories," allowing successful practices (in governance, green tech, social cohesion) to propagate.
* **Gaps:** The movement faces limitations in **scale and inclusivity**. Many ecovillages are small and can require significant financial or ideological buy-in, limiting accessibility. A key challenge is translating the lessons learned from these "separate" communities into mainstream urban and suburban contexts.

### Community Energy Cooperatives

A movement of local initiatives where citizens jointly produce, manage, and benefit from renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.).

* **Strengths:** This movement directly addresses the **root causes of climate change** while simultaneously fostering **"energy democracy."** By applying a cooperative model (one member, one vote) to the energy sector, it challenges the centralized utility paradigm. These projects are highly generative and practical, shifting power to communities and keeping economic benefits local.
* **Gaps:** They face significant **regulatory and scaling hurdles**, as energy policy often favors large, incumbent utilities. They are also a concrete, technical solution and may not, by themselves, address deeper cultural aspects of consumption or other systemic issues.

### Barefoot College

Founded in 1972 in rural India, Barefoot College pioneers community empowerment by training local community members (notably illiterate grandmothers) as "solar engineers" to electrify remote villages. It exemplifies deep knowledge democratization and gender equity through practical, utility-based skill development.

* **Strengths:** A 50-year track record of hyper-local, "bottom-up" empowerment. Its model is radically inclusive, bypassing formal education requirements to create tangible economic opportunity and clean energy access simultaneously.
* **Gaps:** Its hands-on, residential training model is deeply effective but inherently slower to scale globally than a digital-first initiative.

### Slow Food Movement

Originating in 1986 as a protest against fast-food in Rome, Slow Food has evolved into a comprehensive philosophy for a food system that is "good, clean, and fair." It integrates agriculture, ecology, and politics, emphasizing "eco-gastronomy" and the role of the "co-producer" (consumer).

* **Strengths:** Highly effective at cultural narrative reframing, positioning food as an act of identity and political choice, not just a commodity. It has built a massive, distributed global constituency around relational food values.
* **Gaps:** Its primary focus is cultural and educational rather than direct policy advocacy or economic restructuring, though it influences policy through its cultural weight.

---

## Chapter 5. Economic & Market Transformation

This chapter focuses on initiatives redesigning the core "rules of the game" for our economic and market systems, moving from extraction to regeneration, solidarity, and democratic ownership.

### Ellen MacArthur Foundation

This UK-based charity has been instrumental in popularizing and institutionalizing the **"circular economy."** Through evidence-based research and high-level corporate partnerships, it has shifted global discourse and business models toward closed-loop, "waste as food" design principles.

* **Strengths:** Achieved rare and powerful institutional-corporate alignment, bringing major brands on board. Its focus on operational efficiency provides a tangible, non-ideological entry point for businesses to adopt systemic change.
* **Gaps:** Its emphasis is on material and operational redesign, which, while critical, does not always address the deeper "solidarity" or "collective ownership" aspects of economic transformation.

### New Economy Coalition (NEC)

Representing the US solidarity economy movement, the NEC organizes coalitions to transition from capitalism to a **"solidarity economy."** It focuses on building regional ecosystems that center collective ownership, self-determination, and leadership by marginalized communities.

* **Strengths:** Has a strong, explicit anti-capitalist framework that centers justice and collective ownership, differentiating it from market-oriented approaches. It focuses on building concrete, local economic ecosystems.
* **Gaps:** Its radical framework may be less accessible to mainstream institutions or corporations compared to the "circular economy" framing.

### Platform Cooperativism Movement

This framework advocates for democratically-governed, cooperatively-owned digital platforms (e.g., for ridesharing, delivery) as alternatives to extractive, venture-capital-funded "gig economy" models. It seeks to redistribute ownership and power in the digital economy.

* **Strengths:** Directly addresses root causes of economic extraction in the digital sphere. It creates living laboratories that prove alternative, democratic business models for tech are viable.
* **Gaps:** As an emerging framework, it faces immense competition and scaling challenges against the network effects of dominant, well-funded tech platforms.

### B Lab Certification & B Corporation Movement

Launched in 2007, B Lab created a third-party certification for **"B Corps"**—companies that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency, going beyond simple shareholder profit.

* **Strengths:** Establishes a market-accessible, legally recognized pathway for social enterprise, creating a "race to the top." The B Corp brand is a powerful tool for consumer and talent attraction.
* **Gaps:** Critics note the certification can function more as a branding tool than a deep governance restructuring, as it may lack binding legal rigor or mandatory due diligence mechanisms.

### Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA)

Established by leaders like Rodale Institute, Patagonia, and Dr. Bronner's, the ROA created the **"Regenerative Organic Certified"** label. This certification exceeds standard USDA organic baselines by adding three pillars: soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness.

* **Strengths:** A powerful market-based tool that encodes deep systemic values (soil carbon sequestration, farmer compensation) into a consumer-facing label. It demonstrates a multi-value approach, linking ecological regeneration with social justice.
* **Gaps:** As a premium certification, its reach is currently concentrated among premium brands and may not be accessible to all farmers or consumers.

---

## Chapter 6. Movement & Direct Action Infrastructure

Beyond building or connecting, some initiatives specialize in the infrastructure of direct action and narrative warfare, aiming to shift public discourse and political will.

### Sunrise Movement

Founded in 2017, this youth-led US movement fundamentally shifted the climate discourse from "pathetic incrementalism" to a systemic **"Green New Deal"** framing. It uses non-violent direct action and a distributed organizing model to make climate a central political issue.

* **Strengths:** Masterful at narrative change and political action. In just a few years, it successfully moved a systemic policy framework from the periphery to the center of national debate through high-visibility, coordinated actions.
* **Gaps:** As a movement focused on political discourse and direct action, it doesn't build the long-term alternative **systems** (e.g., energy co-ops) itself, relying on others for that implementation.

### Ruckus Society

Founded in 1995, Ruckus operationalizes the "strategic use of creative, nonviolent direct action." It functions as an infrastructure and training organization, providing tactical support (media, action planning, climbing) to environmental, human rights, and social justice campaigns.

* **Strengths:** Provides critical **"action infrastructure"** and expertise that empowers other movements, enhancing their safety and impact. It focuses explicitly on training for targeting institutional power.
* **Gaps:** Its focus is tactical and campaign-specific, designed to support **other** organizations rather than push its own long-term systemic vision.

---

## Chapter 7. The Institutional Interface: Rewiring Governance

Systemic change cannot remain on the outside forever. It must eventually be embedded in the "rules of the game." These initiatives focus on innovating and reforming the formal structures of governance, democracy, and public participation.

### Open Government Partnership (OGP)

A multilateral initiative that brings together 76 national and 106 local governments with civil society to promote transparency, citizen participation, and accountability.

* **Strengths:** OGP's **institutional scale and reach** are enormous. Participating governments co-create two-year action plans with civil society, making concrete commitments (over 4,500 to date). This a great example of **tractability** at the government level, allowing reforms to be piloted and scaled.
* **Gaps:** Its scope is relatively **narrow**, focusing on governance processes while not explicitly tackling deeper cultural or economic paradigms. It is weak in **transformational depth** (it's about laws and policies, not mindsets) and its impact is constrained by the political will of participating governments.

### Participatory Budgeting (PB) Movement

A democratic innovation where ordinary citizens directly decide how to allocate part of a public budget, typically at the municipal level.

* **Strengths:** PB squarely addresses the **root issue of democratic deficit**. It has **proven scalability and adaptability**, spreading from Brazil to thousands of cities worldwide. It is a powerful tool for civic learning and social capital, transforming citizens' relationships with government from apathy to agency. Its score for **tractability and scalability is near-perfect**, as it's a proven, replicable process.
* **Gaps:** PB usually operates on a **small fraction of the total public budget**. By itself, it doesn't overhaul the entire system. It also primarily addresses local resource allocation, not larger structural issues of revenue or inequality.

### Nyaaya Project

Operating in India, Nyaaya is an access-to-justice network that provides digital, multilingual legal information and connects lawyers to underserved communities. It addresses justice system barriers through a hybrid of technology democratization and a human-centered legal aid network.

* **Strengths:** A powerful model that bridges digital innovation with community care, making justice accessible to those traditionally excluded by cost and complexity.
* **Gaps:** Its model is specific to the Indian legal context and addresses **access** to justice, not necessarily the **systemic reform** of the justice system itself.

### Right Livelihood Award

Operating since 1980 as the "alternative Nobel Prize," this foundation honors courageous changemakers addressing urgent global challenges. With laureates like Wangari Maathai, Edward Snowden, and Greta Thunberg, it functions as global recognition infrastructure.

* **Strengths:** Acts as a "megaphone and shield," providing critical visibility and protection for changemakers, particularly those facing state persecution for their work.
* **Gaps:** It is a recognition mechanism, not an implementation network. Its impact comes from elevating and protecting leaders, not from coordinating their work.

---

## Chapter 8. The Navigators: Mapping the Uncharted Territory

In such a complex and fragmented ecosystem, a critical function is "sense-making." These initiatives provide the maps, knowledge, and intellectual frameworks that help all other actors navigate, find each other, and understand the whole.

### Social Innovation Atlas

A knowledge project and interactive world map that provides a comprehensive overview of diverse social innovation ideas, solutions, actors, and cultural contexts worldwide.

* **Strengths:** The Atlas's strengths are in its **breadth and legitimacy**. It bridges siloed domains, capturing a wide variety of cases—from grassroots projects to national policies—and linking them to research and the SDGs. It serves as a vital, open-source information commons for the entire field.
* **Gaps:** It is largely a **static resource** (up to 2019) and not an action platform. It catalogues "what is" but doesn't provide evaluative or strategic guidance on which innovations are most systemically potent. Keeping the crowdsourced map live and current is a major challenge.

### Systems Change Alliance (SCA)

A platform aiming to "unite progressive people and organizations to create planetary systems change," providing content and a forum that links spiritual growth with ecological sustainability.

* **Strengths:** SCA provides a rich, **integrative vision** and high **root-cause focus**, explicitly critiquing extractive capitalism and advocating for a new worldview. Its content serves as a "trend indicator" for the "liminal web" discourse connecting spirituality and systems change.
* **Gaps:** SCA scores low on **tractability and scalability**. It functions more as a content hub and networking forum than a vehicle for on-the-ground experiments. It illustrates that a powerful integral vision, by itself, is not enough without a concrete strategy for execution and community-building.

### Institute for the Future (IFTF)

Operating since 1968, IFTF conducts interdisciplinary research on emerging social challenges using participatory futures methodologies. It pioneers "massively multiplayer forecasting games" and ethnographic foresight to integrate diverse perspectives into systems understanding.

* **Strengths:** Deep institutional legitimacy from decades of work. Its collective sense-making methods mirror the Presencing Institute but with a stronger foothold in corporate and government partnerships.
* **Gaps:** Functions as a research and foresight body, with impact dependent on clients and partners adopting its insights.

### Institute for Futures Studies (IFFS)

Sweden's independent research institution examines population ethics, technology impact, and democracy through policy-relevant interdisciplinary research. It provides critical infrastructure for long-term thinking.

* **Strengths:** Provides a rigorous, academic, and policy-relevant foresight function that complements more activist-oriented initiatives.
* **Gaps:** Its orientation is academic and research-based, not direct action.

### TRANSIT: Transformative Social Innovation Theory

An EU-funded research project that examined transformative social innovation networks (including 12+ case studies) to understand their change models. It produced middle-range theories, practitioner training materials, and guidance on governance, funding, and learning.

* **Strengths:** Moves beyond being a simple **catalog** (like the Atlas) to providing **theory** and **guidance**. It serves the ecosystem's meta-knowledge and capacity-building needs.
* **Gaps:** As a completed research project, its outputs are a valuable resource, but it is not an ongoing, active initiative.

### Future Earth

A decade-long global sustainability research initiative aligning with the SDGs. It operates as a collective research endeavor, bridging scientific communities with societal partner needs across themes like decarbonization, urban resilience, and human health.

* **Strengths:** Models how massive, interdisciplinary research institutions can orient their work directly toward societal transformation goals.
* **Gaps:** A research-coordination body, not an advocacy or implementation platform.

---

## Chapter 9. The Financial Frontier: Funding the Transformation

A critical component of the change ecosystem is its economic underpinning. The landscape of funding for individual changemakers and social innovation is evolving from traditional grants to a diverse array of innovative, democratic, and blended models.

### Traditional Grants, Fellowships & Major Funds

This category includes established programs, often providing seed funding, stipends, and mentorship to vetted leaders.

* **Echoing Green Fellowship:** Offers 2-year fellowships with up to $90,000 in seed funding and professional development for early-stage social entrepreneurs.
* **Skoll Foundation:** Invests in social entrepreneurs driving systemic change, often with multimillion-dollar funding for scalable projects.
* **Global Innovation Fund (GIF):** Provides grants up to $230,000 for pilot projects and up to $15 million for scaling evidence-based, scalable solutions.
* **Ashoka Youth Venture:** Provides funding and resources for youth-led social innovation initiatives worldwide.
* **National Geographic Society Grants:** Supports conservation, education, and exploration with competitive project-based grants.
* **Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust Grants:** Supports social justice, sustainability, and peace-building projects, mainly in Europe.
* **Karibu Foundation Grantmaking Program:** Supports African-led justice movements and advocacy.
* **Global Fund for Community Foundations:** Grants dedicated to grassroots innovation and local solutions globally.
* **DoSomething.org Grants:** Supports youth-led campaigns in education, health, and other social areas.
* **Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards:** Recognizes and funds sustainable solutions to global challenges.

### Thematic & Regional Grant Programs

These programs target specific issues (like climate or tech) or geographies.

* **Restoration Returns Grant:** Offers US$17,000 for community-led ecosystem restoration projects worldwide.
* **Q2 Philanthropy Fund:** Provides up to $25,000 for global community impact initiatives.
* **Africa Impact Fundraising (AIF) Grant Program:** Multiple thematic funding streams for Africa-focused initiatives.
* **Norec Grant:** A fully funded global exchange for youth-led organizations and changemaker partnerships.
* **The Boring Fund:** Up to $80,000 for open-source conservation technology projects globally.
* **Pollicy Fellowship:** Funding for civic tech, digital rights, and game design innovation in Africa.
* **In-Country YouthADAPT Challenge:** Up to $30,000 for African youth climate innovators and leaders.
* **Youth Climate Leaders Program:** Funds youth-led climate action initiatives globally.
* **Direct Aid Program (Australian Embassy in Nepal):** Up to AUD 40,000 for grassroots community projects, exemplifying similar opportunities through embassies worldwide.

### Accelerators, Prizes, and Innovation Forums

These initiatives combine funding with intensive support, mentorship, and network access, often in a competitive cohort model.

* **100x Impact Accelerator (LSE):** A £50 million platform supporting social ventures, offering resources and grant-making services.
* **PLAI Acceleration Program:** Focuses on AI-driven startups and innovative projects, supporting global GenAI development.
* **Digital ChangeMakers for Women Entrepreneurs Incubation:** Financing and mentorship for women-led digital initiatives.
* **Amahoro Coalition Fellowship:** Up to $155,000 for growth-stage social impact ventures in Africa.
* **Google.org Impact Challenge:** Awards funding to projects leveraging technology for social good.
* **Cartier Women’s Initiative:** Supports women entrepreneurs globally with innovative projects that have significant social impact.
* **Voqal Fellowship:** Provides stipends and support for social entrepreneurs working on social justice or transformative media and technology.
* **Social Innovation Forums & Prizes (e.g., J.M. Kaplan Innovation Prize, MassChallenge):** Combine open calls and competitive pitch events, offering equity-free grants, fellowships, and PR boosts.

### The New Frontier: Innovative & Democratic Funding Models

Reflecting the ecosystem's values, new models are emerging that are more democratic, decentralized, and community-led.

* **Crowdfunding & Matchfunding:** Platforms like **Goteo** (Spain), **Spacehive** (UK), and **Crowdfunder** enable direct support from the public. Digital matchfunding platforms (like Spacehive) are particularly innovative, creating a transparent process where institutional funds (from governments or private sponsors) are used to match donations from "the crowd," blending democratic choice with scaled investment.
* **Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending:** Platforms like **Kiva**, **Prosper**, and **LendingClub** bypass traditional banks, allowing individuals to directly lend to social entrepreneurs and nonprofits. This provides flexible, affordable capital to those who may lack traditional collateral, fostering a network of relationships between backers and borrowers.
* **Microgrants & Asset-Based Community Funding:** Fast, small-dollar grants from universities or anchor organizations (as recommended by Ashoka and Echoing Green) empower grassroots initiatives by lowering formal barriers. This includes "Community-Led" or "Reverse Call for Proposals," where local organizations set priorities and invite donors to partner, flipping the traditional power dynamic.
* **DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations):** Blockchain-based DAOs allow communities to collectively govern and allocate funds with high transparency. Examples include **VitaDAO** (funding biomedical research) and **EarthFund** (a crypto-native crowdfunding platform for social impact DAOs), both enabling universal access and donor-driven allocation outside traditional charity models.
* **Impact Investing & Blended Finance:** This rapidly growing field includes investment funds that demand measurable social/environmental returns alongside financial ones. Innovative models like **Social Impact Bonds (SIBs)** and **Blended Finance** (used notably in the EU via ESF+) combine grants, outcomes-based contracts, and private loans/equity to fund large-scale social projects.
* **Participatory Grantmaking:** This model shifts decision-making power directly to the communities affected by the issues, allowing them to decide how grant funding is distributed, enhancing accountability and equity.

### Corporate & Collaborative Initiatives

Corporations and multi-stakeholder groups are also creating large-scale funding mechanisms.

* **Corporate Social Innovation Partnerships:** Companies like **Yunus Social Business**, **MovingWorlds**, and **Reckitt** offer unrestricted, skills-based funding and technical mentoring through multi-year collaboration programs, moving beyond one-off donations.
* **Collaborative Pledges:** Initiatives like the **Rise Ahead Pledge** (Davos 2024) aim to close funding gaps (e.g., a $1.1 trillion gap for social innovation) with commitments from multiple companies.
* **European Innovation & Transformation Calls:** EU programs (e.g., **Horizon Europe**, **Creative Europe**) release large open calls for social transformation, catalyzing co-investment from consortia of civil society organizations and research hubs, often with a focus on regional inclusion and social equity.

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## Chapter 10. Synthesizing the Landscape: A Cross-Initiative Analysis

Looking at this expanded ecosystem as a whole reveals critical, recurring patterns—both dangerous blind spots that are being missed and high-leverage opportunities that are just emerging.

### Comparative Positioning & Ecosystem Clusters

The initiatives evaluated display certain clustering patterns:

* **Values-Coherence Leaders:** This cluster includes initiatives achieving high transformational depth (IDG, Presencing, Changemappers, Game B, Second Renaissance) by centering consciousness, values alignment, and paradigm-level critique. These can struggle with tractability, often managing 50-70 scores while achieving 90-100 on values alignment.
* **Pragmatic Scalers:** These initiatives prioritize tractability and network scalability (Participatory Budgeting: 95/95, UNDP Labs: 95/90, Impact Hub: 90/90) at the cost of transformational depth (which often falls in the 30-50 range). They implement immediately legible mechanisms—budget allocation, policy pilots, accelerator programs—that integrate within existing systems rather than fundamentally restructuring them.
* **Distributed Movements:** This group balances both dimensions through network models (Transition: 90 tractability/90 scalability/75 depth, GEN: 70 tractability/70 scalability/90 depth) by enabling local autonomy while maintaining coherent principles.

The additional initiatives introduced in this report extend this landscape:

* **Institutional Standardizers:** Ashoka, Ellen MacArthur, and B Lab function as institutional standardizers, establishing criteria and certification mechanisms that enable market-scale adoption, while potentially diluting more radical values.
* **Living Demonstration Models:** Barefoot College, Slow Food, and GEN exemplify alternatives at scale through embodied practice rather than policy advocacy.
* **Movement Infrastructure Platforms:** Sunrise, Ruckus, and Right Livelihood operate as movement infrastructure and visibility platforms, enabling distributed activists and changemakers while maintaining narrative coherence or providing protection and recognition.
* **Ecosystem Knowledge Infrastructure:** TRANSIT, Future Earth, and IFTF serve the ecosystem's knowledge needs, translating practitioner experience into frameworks and research that guide field development.

All these initiatives share the recognition that 21st-century challenges require simultaneous innovation across multiple domains: personal consciousness (IDG), economic structures (New Economy Coalition, Platform Cooperativism), institutional governance (B Lab, Nyaaya), movement infrastructure (Sunrise, Ruckus), living demonstrations (Barefoot College, GEN), and knowledge commons (TRANSIT, Future Earth). The landscape functions as a distributed, complementary ecosystem requiring the very coordination mechanisms that a platform like Changemappers is designed to enable.

### Common Blind Spots (Areas for Urgent Attention)

* **Fragmentation and Siloed Efforts:** Ironically, the systemic change field is deeply fragmented. Networks for social entrepreneurs (Catalyst), new economists (WEAll), governance reformers (OGP), and consciousness (IDG) often work in parallel, missing synergies.
* **The Inner/Outer Change Divide:** The "inner development" movement (Presencing, IDG) and the "outer system change" movement (policy, tech, economics) still operate in separate spheres. Most large-to-scale coalitions (Catalyst, UNDP) under-value the inner capacities needed to prevent changemaker burnout and regression.
* **Mismatched Funding & Changemaker Sustainability:** A critical blind spot is the economic model for this work. As detailed in Chapter 9, while many new models exist, traditional philanthropy (short-term, project-based grants) remains dominant and is poorly suited for long-term, emergent, systemic work. This leads to widespread volunteer burnout and a lack of sustainable livelihoods for changemakers.
* **The "Tech for Good" Infrastructure Gap:** Few of these initiatives are building the shared digital and data infrastructure needed for global-local coherence. The "civic tech" ecosystem (working on DAOs, deliberation platforms, etc.) is not well-connected to these social change networks.
* **Inclusion, Equity, and Decolonizing Change:** Many of these movements originate in the Global North and risk cultural homogeneity. There is a blind spot in intentionally ceding power, centering leadership from the Global South, and integrating feminist, decolonial, and indigenous perspectives as core to the work, not as an add-on.
* **The "Last Mile" to the Public:** Most initiatives work with experts, organizations, or specific communities. They struggle to connect with mass public movements and popular narratives, remaining in a "changemaker bubble" and failing to capture the public imagination.

### Emerging Weak Signals (Future Leverage Points)

* **Global Citizens’ Assemblies:** A trend toward large-scale, binding deliberative forums (like the 2021 Global Assembly on climate) points to a future of polycentric global governance.
* **Integral/Metamodern Cultural Spread:** Ideas from "sense-making" communities (Game B, Second Renaissance) are slowly permeating mainstream culture, signaling a growing public hunger for meaning and holistic solutions beyond polarization.
* **Corporate & Investor Shifts:** Nascent interest in "regenerative capitalism" and "systems change" funds indicates that capital may **start** to move toward this deeper work, beyond simple ESG.
* **Movement Convergence:** Youth climate, racial justice, and indigenous rights movements are increasingly adopting systemic critiques and solutions (e.g., "just transition"), opening the door for convergence with the formal change initiatives.
* **Technology for Collective Intelligence:** The rise of AI and new collaborative tools (DAOs, Pol.is) offers the potential to supercharge collective sense-making and large-scale coordination without hierarchy.

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## Chapter 11. A Strategic Path Forward: Recommendations for 2026–2030

To maximize collective impact in the critical window leading to 2030, the fragmented ecosystem must begin to **act** like an ecosystem. The following strategic recommendations are synthesized from the analyses.

* **Forge an "Alliance of Alliances":** The first priority is to connect the connectors. A "Changemaker Ecosystem Roundtable" is needed, bringing together leaders from Catalyst, WEAll, IDG, Presencing, GEN, etc. to share insights, align on goals, and hatch joint projects. This reduces duplication and allows for a united front to funders and policymakers.
* **Integrate Inner Development for Changemaker Well-being:** Address the burnout crisis by embedding inner development tools into all platforms. For example, Catalyst 2030 or Impact Hubs could partner with the IDG initiative or 29k Foundation to offer mental-emotional resilience tools to all their members. This ensures the "who" of change is as healthy as the "what."
* **Build the "Digital Commons" for Change:** Invest in shared, open-source tech infrastructure. This means integrating the **Social Innovation Atlas** map into the **Changemappers** networking platform, and linking both to the **Co-Intelligence Institute's** pattern library and **Participatory Budgeting** tools. We need a "GitHub for social change."
* **Accelerate Polycentric Experimentation:** Create distributed "social R&D" networks. Platforms like Changemappers could host global-local experiments (e.g., a "Regenerative Food Challenge"), where communities worldwide prototype solutions in their local context and share learnings in real-time, creating a rapid learning loop.
* **Develop Regenerative Funding Models:** The ecosystem must collectively advocate for and build new funding mechanisms—moving "from projects to portfolios." This includes pushing philanthropy toward long-term, flexible, core funding and exploring new models (as detailed in Chapter 9) like participatory grantmaking, community-led funds, solidarity funds, and "commons-based" financing that support the infrastructure and the people, not just the projects.
* **Cultivate a Coherent Meta-Narrative of Hope:** The ecosystem must align its storytelling. The visions of a "Wellbeing Economy," a "Second Renaissance," and "Game B" are all parts of the same story. By collaborating on media, documentaries, and public campaigns, these initiatives can weave a compelling, coherent, and positive "meta-narrative" that can capture the public imagination and build the political will for deep change.

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## Chapter 12. Conclusion: Weaving the Threads of a New World

Humanity’s most pressing challenges demand nothing less than a societal transformation, and the landscape of initiatives explored in this report shows that this transformation is actively in progress. No single initiative has all the answers, but each holds a vital piece of the puzzle. We have the large-scale networks (Catalyst 2030), the new economic models (WEAll), the agile experimental methods (UNDP Labs), the living regenerative communities (GEN), the deep inner-growth frameworks (IDG, Presencing), the practical governance tools (OGP, PB), and an emerging ecosystem of innovative funding (Chapter 9). The highest leverage now lies not in creating something new, but in **connecting what already exists**. The task ahead is to weave these threads together—marrying vision with implementation, inner change with outer change, global coordination with local agency. The period to 2030 will not be easy, but these initiatives offer a credible, powerful, and regenerative narrative of hope. Our charge is to weave them well.
