This is the first article in a three-part series. Part Two examines the sources of resistance to network approaches—and why many of them are legitimate concerns rooted in real experiences of networks done poorly. Part Three explores the enabling conditions that separate networks that transform systems from networks that disappoint.
This article is based on the resource “How Networks Support Systemic Impact,” developed in collaboration with Adrian Röbke, Brendon Johnson, Carri Munn, Dominic Stucker, Ifeyinwa Egwaoje, Jeanne Hamilton, Jennifer Atlee, Jennifer Berman, Jessica Conrad, Kate Trompetter, Katy Mamen, Laurie Tochiki, Léna Borsoi, Rebecca Petzel, and Ruth Rominger.
Most of us working in philanthropy and systems change already know an essential truth: a complex, adaptive system—a community, an economy, a supply chain, a climate—cannot be fixed the way you fix a clock. You can’t diagnose the broken part, design a solution, and contract out the repair. Living systems can only be healed from within, by the people who are part of them.
Living systems can only be healed from within, by the people who are part of them.
We know this. And yet, if we’re honest, our strategies, funding models, and behaviors haven’t fully caught up with that knowledge. We still commission expert-designed interventions. We still seek “buy-in” after the strategy is set. We still fund three-year projects aimed at problems that have persisted for generations.
Part of this may be that we simply lack a compelling enough case for a better approach. Part of it may be that we haven’t yet metabolized our own fears—about loss of control, about the messiness of genuine co-creation, about what it means to fund something whose outcomes we can’t fully predict. And part of it may be that we just don’t know yet what reliably good network practice looks like and what conditions it requires.
This article is an attempt to address the first part: to make the case as clearly and compellingly as possible. The key to meaningful systems change lies in building networks—not loose affiliations or temporary coalitions, but intentionally cultivated groups of diverse leaders and organizations united by a shared imperative. These networks possess four unique superpowers that traditional, top-down approaches cannot replicate.
A second article in this series will take on the fears and the resistance—because they are legitimate, rooted in real experiences of networks done poorly, and worth addressing directly.
And a third will explore the enabling conditions that separate networks done well from networks that disappoint. But we begin here, with the case for why networks are worth believing in.
Superpower #1: Forging Ownership, Not Buy-In
For decades, the goal of many leaders and funders has been to secure “buy-in” for their strategies. But the need to seek buy-in is itself a symptom of a failed process. It’s an admission that the strategy was developed by an inside set of actors, and now those outside that set must be persuaded to get on board.
We’ve made progress beyond the most egregious versions of this, but subtler forms persist. Consider what might be called the “Program Officer as Architect” model, where a funder decides who will be part of a network and then leaves the groups together in a room to figure out why they’ve been assembled—an arranged marriage, without the courtship. Equally problematic is the “double ask,” where grantees are contracted for their individual deliverables while also being expected to collaborate, forcing them to choose between their own clearly-defined work and the messier, emergent work of collective strategy. The result is compliance, not commitment. People participate because they need the funding, not because they genuinely co-own the intent.
A network mindset flips the script. Here, the funder or lead organization acts not as an architect but as a gardener. They don’t arrive with a blueprint; they start by preparing the soil—convening a small, diverse group, building trust, and creating the conditions for shared intent to emerge. From that foundation, the strategy and the network itself grow organically, from a seed of shared interest or intent. This is the difference between the disempowering experience of being handed my part in a plan and the electric feeling of co-creating a future.
This is the difference between the disempowering experience of being handed my part in a plan and the electric feeling of co-creating a future.
The Amazon Gold Alliance (AGA) is a vivid example of what this looks like in practice. Launched in 2024 to transform the gold value chain and stop the destruction it drives across the Amazon Basin, the AGA now brings together 90+ leaders from across 17 countries—Indigenous community leaders, civil society organizations, government officials, academics, and industry players who don’t always agree and don’t always trust each other.
Amazon Aid, the nonprofit that initiated the network, began as its primary funder and visionary. They could have stayed in the architect role, designing the strategy and managing execution. Instead, they made the harder and more generative choice: evolving into a backbone organization that works alongside the network to continuously define and adapt its goal, analysis, and strategy. Amazon Aid became the gardener. The result is a network that owns its own direction—and the responsibility, legitimacy, and distributed capacity to pursue it. When a network develops its own analysis and strategy, we don’t need buy-in. We have something far more powerful: deep, genuine ownership.
Superpower #2: Driving Multi-Level, Multi-Faceted Action
A single organization, no matter how well-resourced or effective, can only pull a few levers of change at a time. A sufficiently diverse network can pull many levers at once, simultaneously, across levels, sectors, and geographies.
A sufficiently diverse network can pull many levers at once, simultaneously, across levels, sectors, and geographies.
This is what distinguishes network-driven systems change from even the most ambitious programmatic approaches. Change happens at the individual level, as leaders develop new capacities and perspectives. It happens at the organizational level, as members carry new insights and practices back into their own institutions. It happens at the community level, as relationships and trust build across historical divides. And it happens at the larger, whole system level, as the network’s collective weight shifts norms, standards, and structures that no single actor could move alone. Networks don’t sequence these levels; they cultivate them in parallel, allowing them to reinforce each other.
The Bioregional Weaving Labs (BWL) collective, active across multiple European bioregions, demonstrates this multi-level logic with unusual clarity and ambition. BWL brings together cohorts of 60 to 80 stakeholders per bioregion—farmers, landowners, investors, policymakers, educators, conservationists, and community members—in a three-to-four year multi-stakeholder process aimed at regenerating land, water, and local economies simultaneously. The goal is breathtaking in its scope: mobilizing one million changemakers to restore, protect, and regenerate one million hectares of Europe’s land and sea by 2030.
What makes BWL a compelling illustration of this superpower is that the change it drives cannot be located at any single level. Local farmers shifting their practices, investors developing new financing instruments, policymakers revising land-use regulations, and communities reimagining their relationship to their landscape—all of this is happening at once, woven together by the network’s relational fabric and shared purpose.
Crucially, this cascade of action isn’t dictated by a rigid, pre-set theory of change. Networks at their best are intelligent, learning ecosystems. They gather, share intelligence from diverse vantage points across the system, and adapt their strategy in real time—driven by the collective insight of people on the ground, not by outside experts with necessarily partial views.
Superpower #3: Building to Last
Perhaps the most compelling superpower of a well-built network is its resilience. Programs end. Funding cycles close. Leaders move on. A network with deep roots—in relationships, shared purpose, and genuine ownership—can endure for decades, long after any single initiative would have concluded.
A network with deep roots—in relationships, shared purpose, and genuine ownership—can endure for decades, long after any single initiative would have concluded.
The Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) is a powerful illustration of this staying power. A group of over 70 health systems committed to building more inclusive and sustainable local economies, HAN has sustained and deepened its work over many years by operating simultaneously across every level of change. Member health systems share best practices on local hiring and procurement through peer learning groups, even as they compete for talent and patients at times, while the network as a whole shapes leadership standards and advocates for policies on affordable housing and workforce development that no individual health system could advance alone. HAN persists not because of an external grant or a mandate, but because its members have built something they genuinely own and believe in.
For an even older proof point on longevity, consider the Solar Circle, which, now in its 24th year, may be the longest-running multi-stakeholder “impact network” in the systems change field. When it launched in 2002, its founders set a goal that seemed almost delusional: 50% of global energy from solar by the year 2050, at a time when the total global output of solar energy was less than one mid-sized nuclear power plant. This was a more-than-generational commitment. Many of the founders knew they might not live to see it achieved.
The network held together not through funding or formal structure alone, but through two acts of design that proved durable over time. First, the group forged a genuine shared imperative early on, when the gap between the tipping points of climate change and the inadequacy of solar’s growth trajectories at the time became undeniable to everyone in the room. Their goal transformed shared interest into a shared imperative. Second, the network was built on a foundation of deep trust, curated over more than a year by its conveners, my mentors Alisa Gravitz and Susan Davis, who selected members not for their titles but for their integrity, generosity, and proven commitment to collaboration.
When Solar Circle set its goal in 2002, it was considered wildly optimistic. In their latest April, 2026 research report, LUT (Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland) now projects that installed solar PV capacity could reach 30–70 terawatts by 2050, covering the majority of all energy demand globally. While LUT consistently produces the most bullish projections on solar growth as a percent of total energy, they have a track record of being right when mainstream forecasters were too conservative.
Superpower #4: Becoming a Microcosm of the Future
There is something that well-designed networks can do that no program, initiative, or campaign could ever replicate: they can make the desired future present, right now, in the room.
A microcosm, in this sense, is a network whose membership actually reflects the system it is trying to change, where the people, institutions, and relationships that would need to comprise a healthier version of that system are already present and already working differently together. When that happens, something profound occurs. Participants don’t just work toward the future; they experience it. The future, experienced directly in a network, stops being an abstraction on a theory of change slide and becomes something people have already felt, already lived inside. And that changes what they believe is possible.
The future, experienced directly in a network, stops being an abstraction on a theory of change slide and becomes something people have already felt, already lived inside. And that changes what they believe is possible.
Not every network achieves this. An advocacy coalition working to change a harmful industry may do vital and courageous work, but if it comprises only advocates and allies, it remains outside the system it seeks to shift. It is pushing on the system rather than embodying the new system. A true microcosm does something different: it brings the new system’s diverse actors into direct relationship with each other, under conditions of genuine trust and shared purpose, so that a new way of being in that system becomes something people can point to and say: we’ve already experienced this. We know it’s real.
The Clean Electronics Production Network (CEPN) is a clear example of this distinction. The electronics supply chain has a deep and documented history of harm for the workers who manufacture its products through exposure to toxic chemicals. CEPN brought together the actors who would need to co-create a healthier version of that system: technology suppliers, major brands, labor and environmental advocates, academics, and government representatives. Competitors sat at the same table. Advocates sat alongside the industry players they had long hammered from the outside. And together, they began to experience what it felt like to work on this problem collaboratively rather than in opposition, to share data, develop shared standards, and build trust across lines historically defined by opposition.
That experience doesn’t just produce better outcomes. It produces different people—leaders who have felt in their own bodies that a more just and collaborative version of their industry is not a utopian dream but a practical reality they’ve already participated in. That is a superpower no single organization or program can offer.
The Gardener’s Invitation
These four superpowers are not theoretical. They are visible in networks operating right now, across continents and issue areas, working on problems that have resisted every attempt at program-based approaches.
But realizing them requires something of us. It requires funders and leaders to step out of the architect role and into the gardener role. Not to abdicate strategy, but to understand that the most durable and powerful strategy is one that emerges from and with the people who will carry it. It requires patience with emergence, and the kind of trust in others that can feel uncomfortable when we’re used to being the ones who design the solution.
This is not a lesser role. It is, I’d argue, the more interesting and more consequential one. The architect builds something. The gardener cultivates a living system that can grow, adapt, and enact the future we’re all working toward, long after any single program or plan would have expired.
The architect builds something. The gardener cultivates a living system that can grow, adapt, and enact the future we’re all working toward, long after any single program or plan would have expired.
The networks are there to be built, and thousands of active, alive social change networks are already working around the world. The problems are urgent enough. The question is whether we’re ready to become the gardeners they need.
Beyond the Four Superpowers: Four More Reasons Networks Work
The four superpowers above are the most distinctive advantages networks hold over traditional program-based approaches. But they don’t tell the whole story. Research and practice in the network field point to at least four other reasons why well-designed networks outperform other approaches to systems change:
Truth-telling and accountability. When the people most harmed by the current system are in the room, it becomes harder for positional leaders to deny the reality of their experiences. Strong networks don’t just pool expertise—they surface truths that expert-only rooms consistently miss.
Reach and trusted influence. A well-designed network includes leaders held in high regard across very different communities. When those diverse leaders carry the network’s learning and strategy back to their own constituencies, they do so with the framing, language, and relationships that make it land. No communications campaign can replicate that.
Visibility and healing around power. Networks help participants see more clearly how power operates in the system—who holds it, who lacks it, and how those dynamics shape outcomes. Well-supported networks create conditions for addressing that directly: moderating unhealthy power differences, creating more equitable pathways for participation and leadership, and in some cases advancing healing from historical harm.
“Epistemic humility” as a learning accelerator. When leaders see that their own perspective is just one small piece of a much larger, more complex landscape of knowledge, perspectives, and truths, something shifts. Our grip on our preferred analyses and solutions loosens. We enter a productive not-knowing. And from that place, genuine learning becomes possible in ways it rarely is when we’re certain we already have the answers.
Free resource from CoCreative (and friends): How Networks Support Systemic Change
Russ Gaskin is founder and co-owner of CoCreative, a consulting and training organization specializing in network weaving, systems change strategy co-design, and facilitation of multi-stakeholder collaborations.