Author: Chris Allan

As funders we often talk about supporting movements – the environmental movement, women’s movement, etc. Yet how do we do that? What does it mean to support a movement with grants? We can learn from movements that have been successful in the past. The civil rights movement in the United States is a classic example.… Continue reading Supporting Social Movements With Grantmaking

When I first started hearing folks talking about complexity and social change 10-15 years ago, I figured that was fine for the ecologists and physicists, but not much use to me. Yet the more I heard, the more the ideas started making intuitive sense to me. When you’re working for social change, you’re mucking with… Continue reading Tools for taking social complexity seriously

Systems Stress Test I swear this won’t be another blog about a virus. OK, maybe a little bit. A few years back I wrote about learning to see systems – food systems, transportation systems, financial systems, governance systems, etc. In order to build our social resilience, we’ve got to know what systems we rely on,… Continue reading Systems Stress Test