Dear colleagues,
As the Scaling Community of Practice (SCoP) enters its 10th year, we are pleased to present Newsletter 30, marking two significant milestones at the same time.
Once again, we are delighted to offer you, our 4,200+ members, the latest news about SCoP activities and other exciting scaling news you have shared with us. This cover letter also provides an update on some recent developments regarding the SCoP and on progress with our flagship action-research initiative on Mainstreaming Scaling in Funder Organizations.
Institutional Transition of the SCoP
As we previously informed you, we have been pursuing options – with the guidance of our Executive Committee – for establishing the SCoP on a more formal and sustainable organizational footing than is currently the case. After careful review, we decided against establishing an independent nonprofit. Instead, we have focused our attention on finding a suitable host organization. We considered four alternative hosting organizations and concluded that Results for Development (R4D) offered by far the most exciting opportunities for sustaining and amplifying the SCoP’s activities and impact. For those of you who don’t already know them, R4D is a well-known and highly respected global nonprofit organization with staff in 10 countries. Their mission is to support change agents who are building strong systems in a variety of sectors of interest to SCoP members. R4D is known for designing and leading collaborative learning networks, and has a long-standing interest in scaling.
Our goal is to agree with R4D management by the end of 2024 on a suitable governance structure, strategy, business model, and financing arrangement that preserves and grows the SCoP as a largely volunteer-based, member-driven learning network and as a platform for promoting systematic approaches to scaling for development and climate action. Many details remain to be worked out over the coming six months, but we have agreed to start from our Strategy 2024-2033 in co-creating a path forward that meets the SCoP’s interests and needs as well as those of R4D. R4D’s leadership is very excited to collaborate with SCoP members.
We, Larry and Johannes, expect to wind down our executive role in managing the SCoP as the transition of a new hosting arrangement is completed, but look forward to continuing to engage with the SCoP and its members in a substantive and advisory capacity. As this transition proceeds, we appeal to all members to let us know if you have any suggestions or preferences for how the work of the SCoP should evolve. We also note that, under the new hosting and management arrangement, the SCoP will need additional financial support, and any ideas will be much appreciated on how we can best raise critical core resources needed to continue providing the public good of an effective scaling knowledge and advocacy network. We intend to send you a survey during the next few weeks to solicit your views and suggestions on the issues involved in managing the organizational transition of the SCoP.
Mainstreaming Scaling in Funder Organizations
In June 2024 we posted the Interim Synthesis Report for the Mainstreaming Initiative. It compiles and analyzes the experience from 12 collaborative case studies for a wide range of funder partners, including bilateral and multilateral funders, foundations, challenge funds, and large international operating NGOs. In addition, we issued a Policy Brief that summarizes the key lessons for funders wishing to mainstream scaling into their operating practices. We also produced a companion document on Scaling Fundamentals, which brings together different strands of the scaling literature – scaling innovations, scaling projects, and scaling through systems change – in a holistic approach to scaling that funders and their development partners can draw upon.
As many of you will recall, the SCoP launched its flagship Initiative on Mainstreaming Scaling in Funder Organizations early last year as a two-year action-research project designed to gather the experience of development and climate funders in integrating scaling systematically into their operational practice. This Initiative is based on the presumption that funders have an important role to play in supporting the pursuit of sustainable development and climate impact at scale, but often have not effectively done so or even hindered scaling by the recipients of their financial resources. The objective of this initiative is to share best practice and promote more effective support for scaling among funder organization with the ultimate goal of helping countries achieve sustainable impact at scale.
Work under the Mainstreaming Initiative will continue for another twelve months. We expect to carry out additional funder case studies, with a special focus on private foundations and on funders supporting health sector interventions. We will complement this work with an analysis of the recipient experience, with a review of evaluation approaches of official funders, and with the preparation of a “mainstreaming tracker” tool that will allow funders to assess their mainstreaming progress and approach. We will pull together the final conclusions of the Mainstreaming Initiative by June 2025.
We welcome any comments, critiques and suggestions from SCoP members on the results so far since this will inform our continuing work and will ensure that this effort is as helpful as possible to all scaling stakeholders.
Revisiting the content and structure of the Newsletter
Over the next few months, we intend to take stock of the experience with our newsletter with a view to adapting it to the evolving needs of our membership. The above-mentioned member survey will solicit your views and suggestions, and we look forward to your response.
