In Fall 2023, the Scaling Community of Practice (SCoP) launched a three-year action research initiative to study how organizations working in international development, principally funders, mainstream systematic approaches to supporting sustainable outcomes at scale – a “Mainstreaming Initiative.” In the course of this effort, it became clear that organizations interested in mainstreaming scaling could benefit from tools to support those efforts. In that context, the SCoP decided to commission a Mainstreaming Tracking Tool (MTT). The background paper presenting summarizing that effort and the rationale for the proposed Tool can be found here.
The MTT proposed in this paper is made up of an assessment matrix incorporating key elements of mainstreaming, each with five stages of progress from No Mainstreaming to Full Mainstreaming. The matrix is composed of six framing and enabling elements and seven operational and implementation elements. The five stages for each element contain criteria for assessing where an organization is in the progression towards Full Mainstreaming. The elements and criteria were derived principally from three sources: the SCoP’s work on scaling principles and practices, factors identified as important to mainstreaming by the mainstreaming case studies and synthesis paper, and similar tools found in the international development literature, particularly institutionalization trackers for scaling itself.
The MTT is designed and intended to be used by funding organizations – official donors, foundations, vertical funds, and impact investors – working in international development regardless of the countries and sectors in which they work. Other international development organizations may find it of interest as well. It can be applied either as an internal self-assessment exercise or by external evaluators. In the former case, we recommend that this be done in a workshop setting with professional facilitation and broad internal participation.
To the best of our knowledge, the MTT is the first tool designed to track and assess progress in mainstreaming scaling. By comparison, institutionalization trackers for scaling are used to assess progress in integrating specific innovations or intervention into permanent institutions at large scale.
