Understanding and Evaluating Field-Building Intermediaries Series

This series explores field-building intermediaries and how to evaluate them, with a focus on field catalysts.  Field catalysts are organisations that unite and amplify efforts across a field to achieve large-scale, systemic impact - not by running programs themselves, but by uniting system actors, identifying leverage points for change, and nudging systemic shifts. 

The two discover papers included are:

1.  Catalysing Change at Scale: Discusses the main types of intermediaries in systems transformation and their role in catalysing impact at scale. 

2. Evaluating Field-Building Intermediaries: Explores the challenges and emerging approaches for evaluating their work and discusses why accountability should shift toward learning and adaptation of catalytic functions, rather than relying only on short-term KPIs, to better support system transformation. 

The series was commissioned by the Early Years Catalyst and produced by Clear Horizon. The Early Years Catalyst initiative received support from the BHP Foundation.