Three steps to scaling impact
It seems there’s no shortage of new ideas, schemes and solutions with projects and working groups cropping up all over the place focused on all manner of ills and goods. We see a common propensity among many of our clients who assume a seemingly logical approach to initiating multiple pilot projects with a view to learning and scaling said projects later. Yet the convoluted pathways by which positive social change can be brought about at scale, continue to confound the most well-intentioned policy and practice efforts, including those to tackle the SDGs.
This isn’t new — and nor is it likely to be solved any time soon. But within this complexity, might be some relatively simple steps to advancing scaling-up successes. Here’s three to start with:
1. Fund it
Increasingly, funding agencies are creating the conditions where scaling up is positioned front and centre, rather than as an afterthought. The Adaptation Fund recently announced $63M for new projects, including First Innovation and Scale-up Grants. These projects are part of the Fund’s more than $720M investment into strengthening the adaptive capacity of developing countries to respond to the adverse effects of climate change. They also form a cornerstone of the Fund’s 5-year strategic plan, which includes scaling up as a core component within its ‘innovation’ pillar.
Similarly, the Global Innovation Fund (GIF) is a hybrid investment fund with an intentional focus on supporting scaling up positive social impact within low-middle income countries. Through grants, loans and equity investments, GIF supports a pipeline of innovations from piloting, testing and transitioning, through to scaling up — in this context, expanding innovations for which strong evidence of effectiveness exists. Importantly, all investments made by GIF are designed to support an innovation’s pathway to scale — whether they be early, developmental initiatives, or late stage innovations suitable for widespread delivery.
A focus on funding support for scaling up cannot, and should not, crowd out funding for exploratory innovation development — however, without intentional and explicit funding vehicles that supports efforts to increase uptake and coverage, scaling up efforts are likely to be, well, scaled back.
2. Do it together
Zia Khan, Senior Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation noted that “the big social challenges require system transformation, which means that markets, the private sector, and communities have to start changing what they do and how they interact. This requires a paradigm shift in how people think about solving a problem and their role in driving the solution. Neither of these is easy, but they are possible.”
While few would dispute the need for multi-stakeholder action to drive scaling up efforts, the challenge in shifting the paradigm noted by Khan, remains significant.
Yet insights from some multi-stakeholder platforms and partnerships are instructive. Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) is now a global initiative with an ambition for a world free from malnutrition by 2030. SUN is led by governments in ‘SUN’ countries, uniting civil society, UN agencies, donors, private businesses and academics — to scale up solutions to malnutrition. Scaling up is a critical step in SUN’s transformational pathway, where resources are mobilised to support expanded local coverage of nutrition specific solutions and actions.
In our own work with clients, we’re seeing real efforts to build strong, mission-led platforms that bring together public, private and civil society actors around sustainable development challenges. Central to these efforts is scaling up — and a shared recognition that all sectors of society have a meaningful role to play in achieving scaling up ambitions.
Yet, collaborative approaches to scaling up are not without their criticisms. This includes the very real, and very pressing human rights risks that may be posed by multi-stakeholder partnerships. Using SUN as an example, Michele et al. recently examined how challenges in making collaboration truly collaborative, can lead to a focus on short-term, technical solutions, at the expense of addressing the underlying social, cultural, economic and political drivers of social problems.
The paradigm shift, it seems, might still have a way to go.
3. Learn about it
There’s now a growing literature on scaling up — within and across sectors — that provides rich insights into the theory and practice of scaling up. This literature continues to build and test models for scaling up, gathering evidence from diverse examples and challenging what is known about expanding reach and coverage.
Consistent with the notion to fund scaling up efforts, it’s critical that funding is provided to support the creation and curation of knowledge related to scaling up efforts. Considered as a sub-field of the broader Implementation Science endeavour, funding is needed to support researchers in gathering evidence of what works to effectively scale up social impact. Encouragingly, some research funding streams, such as the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD), are investing in research to better understand pathways to scale, in this case, in the context of diabetes and hypertension. With a funding stream dedicated to scaling up, GACD is helping to build and share evidence around how interventions can be delivered at scale in both treatment and preventive settings.
Meeting the ambitious targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals will require planned, sustained and shared scaling up efforts. Ensuring such efforts are funded, have broad cross-sectoral engagement, and are the focus of ongoing learning and improvement efforts, will go some way in helping innovations reach and improve the lives of those most in need.
