NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Through supporting more than 50 social and digital innovations, Enabel has seen that scaling rarely happens as a clean progression from pilot to scale. Scaling is a series of messy transitions: from projects to an organisation built for scale; from scale-ready to ready for someone; from supply-ready to adoption-ready; and from fragmented support to collective action. These transitions rarely happen in sequence; they overlap and interact and often depend on different actors stepping in, stepping back or working together in new ways.

What is the Forum about?

The Scaling Forum will build on Enabel’s experience as a funder, scaling-support partner and connector between global (development) actors to bring the different sides of these transitions into the same room. Together with funders, public sector, investors, scaling partners, businesses and other partners the Forum will move beyond diagnosing where scale gets stuck to exploring the underlying causes, the roles different actors need to play , and practical ways of collaborating.

How will we go about it?

Through Enabel’s work supporting social innovations to scale four recurring transitions are emerging:

1. From projects to an organisation built for scale. How does the organisation itself need to change as its pathway to scale changes?
2. From scale-ready to ‘ready for someone’: What does a specific next funder or investor actually need? How do different actors sequence their roles and make the handoffs between them work?
3. From supply-ready to adoption-ready: What does it take to organise the demand side around innovations and what changes when we start with the conditions for adoption rather than the supply of solutions?
4. From fragmented support to collective action: How can we collectively organise and change as institutions around a shared goal?

The Forum will use these transitions as a practical lens. The aim is to get underneath the messiness: where expectations diverge, where responsibility becomes unclear, and where organisations can no longer solve the problem alone. The Forum is designed as a working space, bringing together people who experience these transitions from different sides, moving from a shared understanding to practical problem-solving.

Ahead of the release of the full programme, here is a preview of the organisations that will be taking part in the event:

• Catalyst Now‘s working group Shifting the Funding Paradigm will lead and co-faciliate a session on what/how do we need to fund differently to support organisations that are trying to move away from grant dependency?
• Bridges Outcome Partnership will discuss how grant funders and social investors could work together more actively through the delivery organisations financing transition.
• UNIDO will explore how venture clienting can be a way to support innovations from a demand side in the public sector through innovation procurement.
• CGIAR and Global Innovation Fund will lead a session together on strategic collaborations for scaling.

For a taste of the themes we’ll explore, read our latest piece on NextBillion: Moving Beyond Grants: How NGOs Can Diversify Toward Earned Revenue, and How Funders Can Support That Transition. 

Should you have any questions regarding the content of the event, please feel free to contact Toon Driesen (toon.driesen@enabel.be) or Latifah Abdou (latifah.abdou@enabel.be), who are the focal points for the programme and content. For any logistical or organisational queries, please do not hesitate to contact Lucile Ceglarski (lucile.ceglarski@enabel.be).