Beyond the Numbers: How Funders Track Transformational Impact

Are you a funder who struggles with tracking the impact of networks and movements?

Do you:

• 🤯 Get lost in the myriad of tools for measuring complexity, emergence, and ripple effects?

• 🧰 Understand the centrality of networks and movements for systems change, but lack the tools to pull out the evidence that supports this?

• 📊 Know relationships are the key to systemic change – but struggle to make a compelling case to your boards and trustees?

We all know how we measure and track impact can make it or break it.

And, we know there are already plenty of tools and approaches that enable us to do this well.

At this year’s Networks Festival, we’re inviting you to a special funders-only event where we explore the diverse principles, methods, and approaches to addressing these tough but critical questions.

We are bringing together an incredible, diverse group of funders and MEL experts with practical and lived experiences in:

• 🤝 Measuring the impact of relationships

• 🌾 Indigenous and decolonial evaluation

• 🧠 Systems thinking and complexity-informed learning

• 📖 Storytelling and ripple effects

• ✊ Movement-aligned and power-shifting frameworks

• 🌐 Network and system health

• 🌱 Regenerative and values-rooted assessment

• 🟣 Participatory and feminist approaches

• 💸 You actively fund networks, movements, alliances / coalitions, grassroots and indigenous groups, and/or field catalysts
• 🔍 You’re looking to meaningfully track systems change, not just surface-level outputs
• 🤝 You value trust-based philanthropy and want MEL to reflect that
• 🧭 You want to move beyond impact reports and into learning partnerships

Meet The Co-Hosts

Robert Ricigliano is Systems and Complexity at The Omidyar Group, where he leverages his decades of experience to support funders and networks in driving equitable, sustainable impact at the societal level. He has pioneered influential work on both systems change and ecosystem philanthropy.

Gurpreet Singh leads initiatives at The Roddenberry Foundation that support bold, justice-driven changemakers. He bridges a lens of how to do cross-cohort learning and analysis for grassroots movements and alliances rooted in systemic transformation.

Gladys Rowe is a Muskego Inniniw Iskwew (Swampy Cree woman) whose work centers Indigenous knowledge, relational accountability, and storytelling as tools for impact. She has partnered with organizations like the Mastercard Foundation to move beyond conventional metrics, using tools like arts-based reflection and ceremony to surface truth and transformation.

David Jay is the founder of Relationality Lab and a leader in developing rigorous, scientifically grounded methods for measuring the impact of relationships within movements and philanthropy. He is the author of Relationality and has advisory roles with a wide range of grantmaking and social impact organizations, including the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Foundation for Social Connection.

Hafsa Mustafa is a learning and evaluation strategist with over 20 years of experience designing decolonized, feminist approaches to impact, particularly across the Global South. She has collaborated with funders like Thousand Currents and Urgent Action Fund to reframe MEL through movements around equity, justice, and community-driven knowledge.

Suzane Muhereza brings a community-rooted, complexity-informed approach to MEL through her leadership at UNDP’s MEL Sandbox. Her work connects values-based impact measurement with global systems learning, driving experimentation and innovation across Africa and beyond.

Mark Cabaj has been influential in shaping the field of developmental evaluation through decades of experience as a grantmaker, policymaker, systems change practitioner, and evaluator. He focuses on how diverse organizations and communities tackle complex issues collaboratively, and on strategic learning and evaluation.

Pradeep Narayanan is a participatory evaluation expert whose work advances decolonized, ethics-rooted approaches to systems change evaluation. With Porticus, Durham University, and grassroots movements in India, he recently led the development of the Handbook for Measuring Collectivism.

Shama Dossa is a feminist evaluator and systems change practitioner who co-leads Fenomenal Funds. She integrates movement wisdom, collective care, and decolonized methodologies to co-create learning tools and evaluation strategies grounded in equity and lived experience.

Peris Wanjiku Kariuki leads the design and implementation of feminist, participatory, and rights-based MEAL strategies. She facilitates and promotes culture of reflection and adaptation, and monitors ethical research standards in MEL.

Tim Strasser helps transformative movements evaluate systemic impact by bridging systems thinking, network development, and transformational change. He is interested in frameworks that include a focus on new ways of being and relating, and pioneered the new SCALE 3D model for evaluation.

Jannik Kaiser applies regenerative principles to evaluation, helping changemakers reimagine impact measurement as a life-affirming, participatory practice. At Unity Effect, he helped build the Impact Garden framework, and an online course on regenerative evaluation.

What You’ll Walk Away With...

• 🧰 Hands-on tools and methods to use in your grantmaking practice
• 💡 Insights into alternative, grounded approaches to MEL
• 🕸️ A support network of peers who are navigating similar tensions

Join the Whole Festival Experience

This event is part of the Networks Festival*, a six-week global gathering to connect, imagine, and rewire how change happens.

Explore the whole program at networksfestival.org | May 12 - June 22, 2025.

*Brought to you by Fito Network and Greaterthan Collective :)