Imagine you’re walking by a lake and spot a single fish floating belly-up. You might assume something was wrong with that fish. Maybe it was sick?

But then, you notice half the fish in the lake are dead. Now, you’d probably start asking bigger questions: What’s wrong with the lake?

And what if you discovered that multiple lakes in the area all had the same problem – fish dying at the same alarming rate? At that point, you wouldn’t just blame the fish or even the lakes. You’d start looking deeper – at the groundwater that feeds them all.

This is the Groundwater Approach, developed by the Racial Equity Institute. It helps us see that persistent problems – whether in education, healthcare, or justice – aren’t isolated incidents but symptoms of deeper, structural forces that sustain and reproduce issues.

Where’s your biggest leverage point?

At Spring Impact, we use this metaphor to help organisations think about how they scale.

• Fish-level: Helping individuals through direct services (e.g. scholarships, emergency support, mentoring).
• Lake-level: Strengthening institutions or communities (e.g. improving recruitment practices, reforming schools, training leaders).
• Groundwater-level: Changing entire systems (e.g. influencing policy, tackling structural racism, shifting cultural norms).

What we want to emphasise: No level is inherently better than another.

The question is: Where can your organisation have the biggest impact, and how does your work connect to others tackling the same issue at different levels?

An ecosystem approach to change

Let’s apply this to racial injustice:

A frontline organisation providing legal aid helps individuals navigate discrimination. While they’re not changing the system, they could collect data on patterns of injustice that can support advocacy groups pushing for policy reform.

An institutional reformer works to change recruitment policies within businesses or make schools more inclusive. They aren’t shifting national policy, but they’re creating environments where inequities are less likely to persist.

A systems-change organisation might campaign for anti-discrimination laws or push for economic justice policies. They need stories and data from frontline groups to build their case.

Each level of impact is interconnected. The work of one strengthens the work of another. No single organisation can do it all – but understanding where you sit in the ecosystem helps you scale smarter.

How to apply this to your work

Take a step back and ask yourself:

Where is your organisation currently focusing its efforts?

Is this the most effective leverage point for your mission?

Who else is working on this problem at different levels, and how can you collaborate?

This free tool helps you find your leverage point and define your Intended Impact.

Scaling isn’t just about doing more. It’s about understanding how to position your work within a broader system to create deeper, lasting change.