The Pragmatic Playbook: Direct, Widespread, and Systemic Impact
A Pragmatic Playbook for Impact, originally published in 2022, introduces three strategies organizations can use to create impact:
Direct Impact: How an organization provides programming directly to target beneficiaries.
Widespread Impact: How an organization builds the capacity of partners to implement elements of its program model. This involves trade-offs across breadth versus depth of impact, fidelity and control, level of investment, what can be measured, and the target market for partners.
Systemic Impact: How an organization shifts mindsets, relationships, and power to, in turn, shift policies, practices, and resource flows.*
Systemic Impact: The Only Path to Scale, Success, and Sustainability. Launched in 2025, this was a 16-month effort to research Systemic Impact more deeply, test content to train 10 organizations on how to design and execute Systemic Impact strategies, and then publish everything we learned.
Social problems must be addressed at scale through social systems that have the ability to enact policy, direct funding, and hold stakeholders accountable for implementing changes in practice. Systemic Impact is “philanthropy’s only exit strategy,” and for nonprofits, Systemic Impact is “the ultimate in business development.”
This work was released as a set of seven publications (and a downloadable template) to support organizations in designing and executing Systemic Impact strategies.
Systemic Impact: The Only Path to Scale, Success, and Sustainability. Publication #1 discusses what Systemic Impact is and why it is a critical strategy for nonprofits and philanthropy to pursue in order to achieve population-level impact. It also answers key questions about how to design and execute a Systemic Impact strategy for organizations integrating this approach into their work.
Systems, Markets, and Infrastructure. Publication #2 examines how nonprofits can use Systemic Impact strategies to reframe their approach to their work. In particular, it explores how to influence the rules of the markets they compete in so those markets operate to their advantage.
Mapping Authority in Postsecondary Systems. Publication #3 details the roles of various stakeholders in determining how postsecondary systems operate. It serves as a tool that higher education organizations can use to understand how authority operates within and across postsecondary systems and to inform their approach to pursuing Systemic Impact strategies.
Introduction to Designing Effective Strategies. Publication #4 explores how organizations can create effective Systemic Impact strategies to move their work forward, including defining a future-state vision, identifying the systemic barriers to that vision, and providing an overview of Systemic Impact campaigns to address those barriers.
Designing and Executing Effective Campaigns. Publication #5 provides guidance on how organizations can design and execute Systemic Impact campaigns, including a five-step guide.
Using Measurement to Manage, Maximize, and Demonstrate the Value of Campaigns. Publication #6 focuses on the importance of using measurement in designing and executing a Systemic Impact campaign to manage, maximize, and demonstrate impact. It also outlines the steps that organizations can take to integrate measurement plans into this work.
The Importance of Implementation. Publication #7 explores why implementation matters before, during, and after a Systemic Impact issue campaign “win,” and how organizations can navigate implementation challenges.