How we can solve the challenge of scaling impact…
In the public sector, when something is proven, or so the theory goes, it can be mandated or rolled out through policy or statute. In the private sector, ideas get scaled through investment or acquisition, usually by a bigger player who can take it to the next level.
It’s only in civil society, where innovations abound at local and grassroots level, when new social impact through a myriad different routes is pioneered and demonstrated every week, that we seem to have a chronic inability to scale them.
If we’re ever going to punch our weight as a sector, let alone reshape society to meet the vision statements most of us espouse, scaling impact is one of the biggest challenges we need to crack.
The reason most often given is that charities are small; the sector is small; and we don’t get given enough money to scale.
But that’s often because we don’t understand the difference between scaling impact and scaling an organisation.
Plenty of small nonprofits, from ASH to Stonewall, to the FairTrade Alliance, have punched way above their weight on impact, and they’ve done it in a variety of different ways.
Some have innovated, or developed new, more impactful practices, and then given that knowledge away to be used by others.
There are some fantastic examples – CERN and Tim Berners-Lee probably topping the table, but there are far, far more, less-successful examples, of recycled handouts and un-clicked web links.
Just because you write it up, doesn’t mean it gets read.
Sometimes the knowledge doesn’t translate to wider impact because we don’t really want to share, or nobody is actively marketing and promoting it, and that’s often because nobody is funding us to do it.
Other times it’s simply because we write impact reports with our eyes on the next grant, rather than on the next organisation who might want to put it into practice.
But while money is often a barrier to promoting and sharing knowledge, it’s also a solution of its own.
Many nonprofits have chosen to commercialise their knowledge, packaging it in training courses or consultancy, and offering it across different sectors and industries. Some have even franchised the work.
It means that promotion more than pays for itself, and it also plays into the often-valid belief, that people value what they pay for more than what they get for free – they’re more likely to implement, and you’re more likely to witness the impact, if they’re paying you for the privilege.
Similarly, some nonprofits have scaled impact by demonstrating commercially attractive business models – ones that address some of the issues they care about but also make money.
If what you’re demonstrating is profitable for someone else to do, you’ve got everything you need for scaling impact without necessarily scaling your own organisation.
But there’s also a third solution. One that can accelerate either of those first two, or work almost as well in the absence of either. That third solution is convening others.
Whether they have, or could have, a financial interest; or a mission-related interest; or simply because they may have a role to play and some expertise to contribute. Convening can be an extraordinarily powerful route for scaling impact – both your own and everyone else’s.
All three solutions are important, but they each require a commitment to scaling impact beyond your own footprint – to making that distinction between the organisation you work for and the outcomes you work towards.
This topic of scaling impact is such an important one for us all right now, that I’ll be spending an hour discussing it live with two brilliant sector leaders who’ve been there and done it.
On Thursday 6th February I’ll be in the exceptional company of Paul Farmer, CEO of Age UK, former CEO of Mind and the driving force behind Time to Change; and Ndidi Okezie, the inspirational CEO for five years of UK Youth, and the powerhouse behind setting up the JoinedUp Institute.
We will be talking all things convening, scaling, and systems change, and we’d love you to sit in on the conversation. Simply register here to get the link and all the details.
Hopefully we will see you there.