LocationsA shift in logic
Portfolios represent a fundamental shift in how development is delivered.
Here are some key changes driving this transformation
New Publication
Modernizing Development – Introducing Portfolios
Based on the experience from over 100 countries and cities, it highlights how governments, communities, and development partners—working alongside UNDP Country Office teams—are turning system and portfolio approaches into action. Together, they are shaping an emerging development practice.
What is a portfolio?
A UNDP portfolio is a dynamic set of interconnected interventions aimed at addressing complex development challenges. Designed for flexibility, portfolios can quickly adapt to changing contexts and new insights. This approach enables the continuous generation of systems-level options to maximize impact across societies and economies, beyond any single sector.
How do portfolios work?
Portfolios deliver new benefits to stakeholders by adopting a logic of work suited to a complex, changing world. Key benefits include:
Maximizes the Impact of Development and Public Finance.
A portfolio unites previously siloed investments towards shared objectives, reduces management redundancy, and directs funds to the highest risks and opportunities. This improves efficiency and impact, ultimately attracting more investment
Stimulates continuous, context-relevant options for action.
Portfolios continuously gather insights, data, expertise, and lived experiences, using them to create a range of improvement options. This iterative approach, backed by dynamic management, helps partners seize emerging opportunities and build the 'adaptive muscle' needed to address rapidly changing challenges.
Aligns Resources and Political Support for Change.
Portfolios foster shared ownership among diverse groups with different interests, levels of influence, and resources. This supports more sustainable, inclusive, and effective change, with greater political traction. By taking a systems approach, progress in one area can unlock opportunities in others—building momentum and amplifying overall impact.
Empowered by a new policy
In Q2 2024, UNDP approved a new portfolio policy, the first systems oriented development instrument institutionalizing these efforts.
Integrated approaches combine multiple interventions—like health, education, and livelihoods—to address a problem holistically, but they usually operate within existing systems. Systems change goes deeper, aiming to transform the underlying structures and rules that sustain the problem.
For example, an integrated approach to youth unemployment might offer job training, education access, and mentorship. A systems change approach would tackle the root causes—such as how education is designed, hiring practices, policy gaps, social norms, and power dynamics that exclude youth from opportunities.
This new instrument enables partners to collaborate with UNDP and others to design a portfolio that integrates their existing efforts, offering a more holistic and effective response to complex, systemic challenges. In the process, partners gain insights that strengthen their own policies—on issues like migration, employment, or climate change—while reducing the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions.
As this policy is adopted in more countries, interested partners have a new opportunity to align their efforts with the portfolio approach. They can collaborate on shared goals, and contribute to long-term, adaptive solutions with greater effectiveness.