It’s a humid afternoon in Chennai, and the office of a nonprofit working on education reform is buzzing with activity. A project lead is on the phone with a district education officer, prepping for the rollout of a teacher training module across government schools. Across the room, a partnership manager negotiates with a private tech firm and district officials to pilot a new model for community-led school monitoring and improvement. Nearby, a measurement, evaluation, and learning team combs through feedback from teachers and families in the community to identify patterns and problems that could inform their next steps. And down the hall, the founder prepares for a coalition meeting with civil society allies, state government representatives, and private partners to co-create a road map to improve educational learning outcomes.

In our years of working with nonprofits, we have seen similar scenes, though stylised here, unfold in a variety of organisations engaged in systems-change work. They reflect the everyday complexity and commitment required of organisations targeting the root causes of social and environmental issues and shifting the underlying structures that often exacerbate inequities. Progress is often slow and nonlinear. Success isn’t measured by outputs like workshops held or students reached, but rather by harder-to-measure shifts, such as how systems capabilities strengthen over time. This kind of work demands deep collaboration across government, civil society, communities, and the private sector, as well as a long-term vision that may take a decade (or more) to realise.

Over the past year, The Systems Thinking Collective—a community of more than 25 nonprofits across India spanning sectors like education, health, livelihoods, climate, and gender—has regularly come together to discuss what it takes to do systems change work.¹ Through shared learning and honest conversations about struggles and successes, the community has surfaced five critical mindsets that enable changemakers to move beyond delivering services to driving deep and lasting population-level change.

Mindset 1: Committing to the Challenge for the Long Haul and at the Scale of the Problem

When Lend a Hand India (LAHI) began its work more than two decades ago, its goal was ambitious: to integrate vocational education into mainstream schooling. The organisation aimed to create pathways for young people, particularly from underserved backgrounds, to build meaningful livelihoods across India. However, change at this scale doesn’t happen overnight. Over the years, LAHI collaborated with central and state governments, civil society organisations, and private partners to introduce vocational education as a core part of the school curriculum. Its model extended beyond textbooks to include establishing vocational labs, recruiting and upskilling trainers, facilitating internships, and providing placement support for students entering the workforce.

LAHI’s work was recently recognised in the Economic Survey 2023-24 published by India’s Ministry of Finance – an acknowledgement of how a sustained, systems-oriented effort can transform public services at scale. But this recognition wasn’t the result of a single project or pilot. It came after years of persistence, trust-building, and adapting to the evolving needs of public institutions. LAHI didn’t begin its journey with access to long-term funding. Like many nonprofits, it had to make the case for systemic work while navigating challenges that included short funding cycles and the need to demonstrate early wins to funders. LAHI stayed the course, steadily building credibility, evolving its models, and keeping its focus on the long term.

For nonprofits seeking to change systems, LAHI’s journey highlights a crucial truth: tackling root causes demands long-term vision and designing programmes that are scalable, resilient, and often deeply embedded in public sector institutions. Because this work doesn’t follow quarterly timelines, progress can be slow and nonlinear. But for those who think long term, and are willing to build patiently, layer by layer, the impact can be transformative.

Mindset 2: Stewarding Multiple Stakeholders Across the Moving Parts of the System

PlanetRead’s journey towards systems change began with a deceptively simple idea: same-language subtitling (SLS) of mainstream video entertainment to improve reading skills. However, as the organisation grew, its founder, Brij Kothari, realised that scaling the organisation’s impact wasn’t just about refining the innovation. Rather, it was about understanding the system it needed to move through. This shift—from focusing on a solution to appreciating the many interconnected forces shaping India’s education and media ecosystems—was pivotal, transforming his approach from that of an innovator to a systems thinker.

Kothari began engaging with stakeholders across (and beyond) the education ecosystem, including government officials, disability rights advocates, media professionals, and legal experts. In this way, PlanetRead could adapt its strategy to respond to shifting priorities. Its commitment to this cross-sector collaboration and reflection resulted in the widespread adoption of SLS by leading media platforms, bringing accessible, literacy-enabling content into millions of homes across India.

Appreciating the dynamic and interconnected nature of systems is essential for changemakers and leaders. A mosaic of actors with varying mandates, constraints, and incentives can influence systems. Thus, systems-change work requires a full view of the landscape, including the political economy in which you are operating, an openness to other perspectives, and the ability to identify the right coalition at the right time. It also requires humility, because no one stakeholder has all the answers.

Mindset 3: Centring Meaningful Inclusion

Across 500 panchayats in seven states, Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) is helping to reshape who holds power in local governance. Its work goes beyond ensuring women are included as beneficiaries by focusing on equipping them to lead. Through a dedicated curriculum, PRADAN has trained thousands of women to take leadership roles at a grassroots level, enabling them to participate in panchayat decision-making processes that directly affect their lives and communities.

Notably, PRADAN’s work with the community echoes internally through its commitment to building inclusion into the fabric of how the organisation runs. Gender audits, leadership representation tracking, and dedicated team training reinforce equity as a core operating principle.

This approach, particularly in systems work, treats inclusion as a necessary foundation to the organisation and its work, rather than a downstream benefit. This requires recognising that many barriers – social, economic, cultural – prevent women and other marginalised groups from fully accessing or influencing systems. It also calls for strategies oriented towards dismantling those barriers and elevating the voices of those previously unheard. By centring inclusion in both its work and its organisation, PRADAN demonstrates how systemic change becomes possible when those most affected by a problem are part of the solution.

Mindset 4: Cultivating Curiosity and a Willingness to Learn, Fail, and Innovate

With the hope of serving pregnant women and new mothers, especially in low-income, underserved, and rural communities, Advancing Reduction in Mortality and Morbidity of Mothers, Children, and Neonates (ARMMAN) took over the implementation of Kilkari, the largest mobile phone-based maternal messaging program in the world. The idea was simple: to send expectant and new mothers timed, stage-based audio messages about pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare to support informed decision-making and improve maternal, neonatal, and child health outcomes.

Despite launching in partnership with the government of India, ARMMAN didn’t assume it had all the answers. Instead, it identified barriers women faced when trying to access the service and refined its approach to meet real-world needs. When it became clear that the service wasn’t reaching the most marginalised, ARMMAN didn’t double down on its existing model. Instead, it experimented with new delivery mechanisms.

Experimentation is vital in the face of complex, evolving systems. Systems change work doesn’t offer guaranteed outcomes, and the way forward isn’t always immediately clear. Leaders must be comfortable with uncertainty, willing to challenge their assumptions, and remain open to feedback from a wide range of voices. Organisations that thrive in this space embrace failure not as a setback, but rather as an opportunity to learn by testing and iterating.

Mindset 5: Accepting Dilution of Recognition

In 2014, Breakthrough launched Taaron Ki Toli, a gender equity programme to provide a safe platform for adolescents to engage in conversations about gender, gender-based discrimination and violence, and rights. As the programme demonstrated early success in 150 schools across four districts in Haryana, and later on in 13 other districts of North India, Breakthrough made a bold choice: they partnered with the state government to embed it into the public education system. This meant letting go of sole ownership and remodelling its approach to fit government delivery, even allowing it to become part of the state’s intellectual property.

Systems change work isn’t about spotlighting one organisation’s success. It thrives on collective ownership and shared vision. This mindset – of accepting less recognition – requires organisations to prioritise contribution (to outcomes) over attribution, and to embrace the role of facilitator and co-creator rather than originators and sole drivers. It’s a shift away from my impact to our impact, from visibility to value. The holy grail of systems work is when an organisation’s approach is not just acknowledged but adopted by the system itself – when your way of working becomes the system’s way of working. That is the clearest signal of enduring, large-scale change.

An Invitation to Reflect

The five mindsets – long-term commitment, systems awareness, meaningful inclusion, curiosity, and the relinquishing of recognition – aren’t just abstract principles. They’re the lived experiences of organisations navigating the complexity of working with systems in India. They represent a shift from linear, organisation-centric approaches to collaborative, adaptive, and deeply human ways of working.

Adopting these mindsets isn’t always easy. Some may come naturally, shaped by an organisation’s founding values or leadership style. Others may need to be consciously nurtured, requiring unlearning, reorientation, and at times, discomfort.

As your organisation reflects on its journey, we invite you to ask: Which of these mindsets already guide your work? Which ones do you need to grow into? And what might be holding you back from embracing, more fully, what it takes to drive this work?

The path to systems change is not straightforward, but for those who are committed to lasting impact, cultivating these mindsets can be a powerful step forward, not just to differentiate from direct implementation models, but to unlock deeper, more equitable, and enduring change.

Footnotes:

1. Co-Impact funds The Systems Thinking Collective, which is comprised of its grant partners; The Bridgespan Group is a convenor of the collective.