What does it take to make impact at scale?
Social Finance works towards a fairer world where we unleash the potential of communities. We tackle complex and enduring social problems to create lasting and widespread change in people’s lives.
But this work is hard. Making change happen at scale is complex, and there is no linear path or reliable recipe.
What do we mean by impact at scale?
The lasting and widespread change in people’s lives and society we see when products, services or practices sustainably expand their reach, when systems embed change or when society and culture shift their perspective.
Our definition is deliberately broad and descriptive.
It is not about reaching a certain number or proportion of people, but about what it looks like when lasting shifts have occurred.
It includes services, products or practices ‘reaching scale’, but also systems embedding change and shifts in culture and mindsets.
It deliberately allows for depth of impact (big changes for smaller groups) as well as breadth (smaller changes for bigger groups), and it reminds us that, in social change, the end goal is rarely “problem solved”.
Refining our approach to system change
In 2019 we launched a programme of work to help us refine and codify our thinking about system change and how to achieve impact at scale. We asked ourselves the following questions:
- How do we define what success means for us?
- How can we get there – what can we learn about methodologies to achieve scale?
- What can Social Finance and our partners do to practically work towards it?
- How can we tell whether we are making progress?
This programme led to the development of frameworks, case studies and a white paper – foundational tools that we now use to support our system change and impact scaling work.
The routes to scale framework
A tool designed to help you understand, target and plan for change that sticks. The framework outlines our definition of success and the means to achieve it.
System change roadmap
System change is challenging. The distance between where you are and where you want to get to can be overwhelming; your theory of system change can be highly complex; and the pathway forward, unclear and ever-changing.
Our system change roadmap can help you break down ambitious goals into a manageable workplan, and offer some prompts for making meaningful progress at each step.
Changing lives, changing systems – a series of case studies
As part of our system change programme we produced five case studies under the title Changing lives, changing systems.
Each case study explores an initiative we have worked on, setting out our lessons on what works – and what doesn’t – when pursuing impact at scale.
Navigating system change evaluation – a white paper
This white paper offers some reflections and insights on what we’ve learnt about why system change evaluation is hard, and why it throws up welcome provocations that help us engage more directly with what should surely be the primary question of any evaluation: what is the true value of what we’re doing – and could we be doing it better?
Ready to make an impact?
If you’re an organisation looking to make lasting change happen, or a foundation with a big ambition, please contact us.
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