Preface The Scaling Community of Practice (SCoP) launched an action research initiative on mainstreaming scaling in funder organizations in January 2023. This initiative has three purposes: to inform the SCoP members and the wider development community of the current state of support for and operationalization of scaling in a broad range of development funding agencies; to draw lessons for future efforts to mainstream the scaling agenda in the development funding community; and to promote more effective funder support for scaling ...

Executive Summary The Adaptation Fund (AF) has played a pioneering role in delivering community-focused, innovative, and direct-access climate adaptation finance to developing countries. In the context of rapidly increasing global adaptation needs and in response to the COP29 mandate to triple adaptation finance by 2030, the AF is now at a pivotal moment in its scaling journey. This study, conducted as part of the Scaling Community of Practice’s (SCoP) Mainstreaming Initiative, assesses how scaling is currently embedded in the AF’s ...

Executive Summary Echidna Giving is a private funder solely dedicated to getting more girls into better schools to live better lives. It is one of the largest and fastest-growing philanthropic actors dedicated to education in lower-income countries. This case sheds light on how a relatively young philanthropic organization, which began grantmaking in 2008, has rapidly evolved its strategy, systems, and organizational principles in support of scaling impact for girls’ education. Echidna Giving has considered what, where, who, and how they ...

This is a draft report open for comment until August 17th. Readers are invited to share comments to richardkohl@strategyandscale.com. Abstract This paper presents a comparative analysis of case studies on mainstreaming scaling within international development organizations, with a particular focus on agri-food funders and research organizations. Drawing on roughly fifteen studies - six from the agri-food sector, including CGIAR, HarvestPlus, IFAD, the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, and two from USAID’s Feed the Future program – it compares the extent ...

This FfD4 hybrid side-event—co-hosted by AFD and the Scaling Community of Practice—gathered development leaders, funders, and implementers to tackle one big question: how to achieve impact at scale in a world of shrinking aid budgets. Rather than pilot after pilot, speakers called for systemic change: long-term, locally-owned, evidence-based scaling strategies embedded in institutions from day one. We have eight takeaways: Stop stacking pilots. The international development sector is a “junkyard of pilots”—solutions must be designed from the start to scale, ...

This CGIAR Mainstreaming Scaling Webinar presents three integrated approaches that are shaping how innovation scaling is embedded across CGIAR research and implementation. First, it introduces the Scaling Readiness approached —developed in the late 2010s and now applied to >1000 of CGIAR innovations to clarify scaling intent, assess readiness, identify bottlenecks, and engage scaling partners. Second, it explores CGIAR’s Innovation Portfolio Monitoring and Management system, which uses Scaling Readiness data to track innovation maturity and scaling progress within a robust performance ...