Executive Summary

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a not-for-profit operating foundation based in the US but with an international remit that seeks to improve the quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. With its roots in the writings of Henry George, the Institute developed over the last 50 years from an organization funding land-related research and teaching into an organization that has pursued a broad range of activities, including research, teaching and training, tool development, data assembly and management, networking, advisory work and publication and dissemination. The Institute has funded its research traditionally from its endowment, but in recent years also leveraged its own resources with external grants resources and extensive partnerships.

This case study of how the Lincoln Institute has mainstreamed scaling into its activities assesses the last twenty years of the Institute’s programs based on a review of a wide range of documentation, including management reports to the Board, external evaluations of programs and budget documents, and on interviews with Board members and managers. The review included detailed assessments of the scaling experience of five specific program areas. The case study employs a framework of analysis developed for the Scaling Community of Practice (SCoP) that focuses on key enabling factors that support – or whose absence constrains – the mainstreaming of scaling in an organization.

Key features of the Institute’s approach were the following:

• Mission and vision: The Institute had a clear mission and vision to pursue systemic change for impact at scale, nationally in the US and internationally, in support of the effective use, taxation and stewardship of land, pursued consistently and systematically over decades.
• Leadership: The Institute’s Board, presidents and program managers provided sustained and effective leadership over the last twenty years in implementing the mission and vision of the organization. The longevity of strong program and center managers in key positions contributed substantially to the persistence of the Institute’s engagement in its core program areas.
• Strategy: The Institute’s management developed and implemented five-year action plans during 2005 and 2014 and successive strategic frameworks during the period 2014-2025, but did not identify long-term quantitative outcome goals nor pathways linking current activities to long-term goals. The Institute’s approach to scaling can best be described as “feeling the stones, while crossing the river.”
• Financial resources: The Institute’s endowment underpinned its ability to pursue a persistent set of programs over the last twenty years. During the last decade, the management effectively leveraged the endowment by attracting external grant funding to expand the scope of the Institute’s programs and the scale of its impact.
• Human resources: The Institute has been home to a stable contingent of highly qualified experts in land policy and effectively marshalled networks of external experts to implement its programs. In recent years management aimed to strengthen the in-house staff capacity of the institute with reduced reliance on external capacity.
• Instruments: The Institute combined and sequenced its multiple instruments in the form of a “value chain” from upstream research and data compilation, to mid-stream teaching, training and tool development to downstream advisory work and publication and dissemination, thus aiming for long- and short-term impact at scale.
• Publication and dissemination: The Institute has consistently focused on publication and dissemination of its knowledge assets, with a stronger focus on academic style publications in 2005-2014, and more attention to an audience of policy makers and practitioners over the last decade.
• Organization: With its significant expansion of size and scope after 2014 the Institute moved from a simple four-program vertical organizational structure to a matrix structure that encouraged goal-oriented collaboration among its expanding number of organizational units. The Institute’s program design, implementation and monitoring processes until recently appear not to have included an explicit and systematic focus on scalability and sustainability of the program and project activities.
• Leverage: The Institute has been effective in increasing the scale and sustainability of impact by leveraging its own financial and human resources, i.e., attracting external funding, working with partners, building and expanding networks, and fostering local engagement (“localization”).
• Monitoring and evaluation: The Institute has a long tradition of evaluation of its work, which has been strengthened over the last two decades by bringing in external experts as evaluators and giving the Board an explicit role in managing the evaluation process. In addition, programs and centers regularly report on their activities to Management and the Board. This evaluation and monitoring process has contributed valuable insights for assessing the Institute’s approach to scaling, but has not explicitly and systematically addressed the scaling agenda by considering scalability and progress towards long-term impact at scale.

Based on an analysis of issues, tradeoffs and tensions which arise if the Institute wishes to pursue a more systematic approach to scaling, the case study draws the following list of implications that the Board, Management and staff may wish to consider:

• Maintain the clear focus in mission and vision on land.
• Develop quantitative long-term goals/targets, projects, portfolios, programs and centers and perhaps even for the Institute as a whole.
• Track progress towards these goals along with tracking progress against base lines.
• Preserve LILP’s tradition of persistence in core programs.
• When starting new program areas, manage the risks of diffusion of focus and loss of identity as an organization with a clear mandate in the important and under-represented niche of land policy.
• When exiting program areas or ending projects, ensure that the knowledge assets created by the Institute’s investment are preserved and further built on by effective hand-off to well-prepared and committed partners.
• When engaging with partners and co-funders of programs and initiatives, assess and budget for the costs of managing the partnerships and ensure that LILP retains control over the strategic direction and brand of the externally funded initiative.
• Take a dynamic portfolio management approach in managing the “value chain” of instruments (research, education and training, tool development. networking, community engagement, data management, dissemination and communication); that means balancing and sequencing upstream and downstream activities in an effective manner; this requires active engagement by upstream and downstream managers and staff across the value chain to ensure that downstream users of upstream knowledge outputs can effectively advise on what audiences or clients need and offer timely support for and uptake of upstream outputs.

• Incorporate scaling criteria into program and project design, selection and implementation by assuring that longer-term sustainability and scalability of project activities are considered from the outset and in the monitoring and evaluation of the activities; ensure that Foundation managers and staff “think beyond project end.”
• Continue with LILP’s practice of program evaluation, complemented by reviews of the impact of LILP’s long-term engagement in selected core areas such as property taxation, land value capture, land conservation, etc.; in these reviews, the Institute may wish to incorporate an analysis of political economy factors supporting or limiting progress.

The case study concludes with the following lessons for the funder community as large:

• Clarity and focus of vision of impact at scale at system level are critical for both the funding and the recipient organization; sustaining that vision while also adapting it over time helps to grow an organization and its impact, while keeping it relevant as external conditions change.
• Continuity and persistence in program support is essential; successful scaling of development initiatives takes many years; one-off projects will not do the job.
• Strong, consistent leadership at all levels – Board, CEO and senior management, program and project management – is needed to drive the scaling agenda. Mainstreaming of scaling will generally not be achieved from bottom-up initiative alone.
• A clear linkage between funding and the persistent implementation of the vision of scale is needed; in the case of the Lincoln Institute, its endowment has provided the capacity to do so; funders more generally need to consider how they ensure effective deployment of their finances in support of implementing entities’ long-term goals.
• Funders must consider where and how they engage along the scaling pathway; in the case of funders that support knowledge generation and diffusion, a clear view of where and how they can best support an effective “value chain” from research through education/training and networking to community engagement, dissemination and communication will be important.
• Leverage through collaboration and co-financing with local and international partners is an effective way to increase and sustain impact.
• Monitoring and evaluation approaches need to reflect the scaling perspective; long-term retrospective assessment of impact is needed to assess whether or not a funder has achieved sustainable, transformative impact at scale, and if not, why not.
• Scaling and the associated system change will inevitably result in winners and losers; funders need to be considered how best they can deal with the political economy of the economic and social impacts which their financial intervention brings about.