The Catalytic Philanthropy Podcast
Jul 22, 2026 · 19 min · 9 segments
Systems change requires understanding the entire landscape and ecosystem of an issue - the people and organizations who touch the issue in all sectors; the economic, social, and political dimensions…
Lauren BlitzerGuest
Andy CarrollHost
I came into philanthropy at a time when balanced scorecard and other highly quantifiable evaluation metrics were really popular.
And I came to this work through an evaluation and a quantitative evaluation specifically lens.
But having been in the work for over 15 years now, I've come to realize that some of the most powerful work isn't easily measurable.
The foundation that I work for, the family that I work for, I think has come to a similar conclusion over the years, partly because of the issues that we are focused on and partly because of the location that we're in.
But a lot of the work that we're doing is at the center of really complex, interrelated challenges.
And if it were as simple as, if solving food insecurity was as simple as providing a million meals to people then the foundation and the broader philanthropic sector would have long ago pooled our money, provided the meals, and we would be living in a world without hunger.
And it's certainly not the case on the issues where our foundation is really focused.
And so we've had to think about how we shift the entire ecosystem and invest in a range of different strategies in order to move the needle.
And so we think about our grant making in terms of a diverse portfolio of strategies that will impact the short, medium, and long term.
We feel like that's the only way to create lasting change on some of these issues, but that if we move only to culture change and advocacy and policy work, It is longer term.
And so balancing across all of those different types of strategies with direct immediate service as well is how we feel we can best meet people's needs today and work to change the system so that they don't have those needs in the future.
And we have been able to continue that learning and evolution together over the last six years as we have iterated on how we do the work and how we show up for our communities together.
I came into philanthropy at a time when balanced scorecard and other highly quantifiable evaluation metrics were really popular.
And I came to this work through an evaluation and a quantitative evaluation specifically lens.
But having been in the work for over 15 years now, I've come to realize that some of the most powerful work isn't easily measurable.
The foundation that I work for, the family that I work for, I think has come to a similar conclusion over the years, partly because of the issues that we are focused on and partly because of the location that we're in.
But a lot of the work that we're doing is at the center of really complex, interrelated challenges.
And if it were as simple as, if solving food insecurity was as simple as providing a million meals to people then the foundation and the broader philanthropic sector would have long ago pooled our money, provided the meals, and we would be living in a world without hunger.
And it's certainly not the case on the issues where our foundation is really focused.
And so we've had to think about how we shift the entire ecosystem and invest in a range of different strategies in order to move the needle.
And so we think about our grant making in terms of a diverse portfolio of strategies that will impact the short, medium, and long term.
We feel like that's the only way to create lasting change on some of these issues, but that if we move only to culture change and advocacy and policy work, It is longer term.
And so balancing across all of those different types of strategies with direct immediate service as well is how we feel we can best meet people's needs today and work to change the system so that they don't have those needs in the future.
And we have been able to continue that learning and evolution together over the last six years as we have iterated on how we do the work and how we show up for our communities together.
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