Essex County Community Foundation: Pivot to Systems Philanthropy

2023 marked five years of the Essex County Community Foundation (ECCF)’s “systems philanthropy” approach to grantmaking. Located in northeastern Massachusetts, the community foundation served 800,000 residents across 34 cities and towns that varied widely by demographics and income levels. Before the pivot, ECCF operated like a typical U.S. community foundation, one that passively gathered assets from donors and distributed them to local causes. The new “systems philanthropy” strategy, led by COO Stratton Lloyd, applied design thinking concepts, data assessments, and an iterative process that collected ideas from local stakeholders and turned them into actionable projects that reflected the community’s stated needs. The collaborative process yielded five well-received and wide-ranging initiatives, including one in digital equity, to bring the Internet to the roughly one-fifth of Essex County families that currently lack access. ECCF had cumulatively invested $40 million into initiative-related programs that could act as “levers” of change. They had established a reputation as a responsive and engaged community leader. In late 2023, local priorities were moving towards climate resilience. As ECCF’s staff of twenty people were working at full capacity on existing projects, Stratton Lloyd and CEO Beth Francis needed to decide how to balance their outstanding commitments with the community’s shifting interests.