There is no such thing as a fish​

That’s a real statement from biology. “Fish” is a catch-all label that bundles together creatures with almost nothing in common. A starfish and a salmon share less evolutionary history than a salmon and a human do. The category feels obvious — until you look closely! ​

Researcher Keren Perla made the same observation about social change portfolios. With Mark Cabaj and Brent Wellsch they noted that people use the word “portfolio” for almost any collection of initiatives — and then wonder why our strategies don’t cohere, why projects don’t reinforce each other, why the whole feels smaller than the sum of its parts.

The problem isn’t the projects. It’s the category error. A ‘portfolio’ built to maximise financial return operates on completely different logic from one designed to shift the structures of a complex system. Lumping them together under the same word is like trying to care for a starfish and a salmon the same way because they’re both “fish.“​

The particular irony is that the starfish isn’t even a fish! And in that spirit (and for the lack of a better word), we actually continue to use the term ‘portfolio’ in this chapter to describe the aggregate investments made by the Explorers. ​

(By the way, if you have been reading all our chapters, you’ll know that we also talked about an Elephant.)

Six archetypes for social change portfolios

Cabaj, Wellsch and Perla identify six distinct portfolio archetypes for social change work. Each has its own logic, its own strengths, its own appropriate moment:

• Cabinet of Curiosities
  Initiatives selected for being bold, unusual, and hopeful. Entry is entrepreneurial, opportunity-driven. The portfolio reflects diverse perspectives and genuine energy rather than a single theory of change. 

• System Probes
  Safe-to-fail experiments designed to reveal how a system actually behaves. The goal is learning where meaningful intervention is possible, not fixing anything yet.
• Stage Gate
  Small bets before big bets. Many ideas enter; only the most promising advance. Disciplined filtering toward what’s scalable.
• Strategic Gaps
  The system is stalled because specific pieces are missing. The portfolio identifies and fills those voids to unblock what’s already trying to move.
• Risk-Reward​
  Hedging. Reliable “sure things” create the social license and financial stability to take bolder swings elsewhere.
• Synergies
  Initiatives explicitly designed to amplify each other. One plus one equals three, or more. The whole is genuinely greater than the sum of its parts.​​​

No archetype is ‘better’ than the others. Each fits a different context, a different moment, a different question.​

Not alternatives – a funnel​

Here’s what we’ve noticed — and what we think might be true for most wealth holders who come to systemic investing with genuine intention:
These aren’t alternatives. For us, they form a funnel.​

People tend to start in the Cabinet of Curiosities. That’s not because they have no idea of what they want to do! But it’s where trust gets built, how real networks form, how you discover what actually moves you rather than what you think should move you. There are no clear boundaries, no defined systems. It’s really a space for exploration. We call that our Portfolio of Possibilities​

From there, patterns begin to emerge. You start to see what your collective choices are producing, and what’s missing. This is the where the heatmaps we introduce below play a crucial role moving into the Strategic Gaps logic: using what you see to identify what’s absent.​

Our idea is that if the right pieces connect, something shifts. The portfolio stops being a loose collection. System boundaries can be set, clearer change hypothesis can be formulated. Initiatives grow in numbers and begin to unlock each other’s potential. That’s Synergies — and it’ll be worth the journey!

The Explorers Club is somewhere in this funnel right now. Probably further along than we were a year ago. Not as far as we’ll be in three years. The point is to know where we are — and to move with intentionality.​​

So where are the explorers?​
Why is the relational infrastructure a thing? ​
And what do heatmaps have to do with it?