Scaling Enablers
Scaling Enablers
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You need more than just a great solution to reach impact at scale. Even the most beautifully designed, high-impact solution will stall without three things in place:
A scalable solution - designed to work beyond the original team or context
A supportive environment - to nurture and grow the solution through its lifecycle
Demand for the solution - evidence that others want and will adopt it
A Scalable Solution:
Having a bold idea isn’t enough. To scale your impact, the solution itself must be designed and built for scale.
Clear Scale Vision:
A scalable solution starts with a clear and ambitious vision to solve a substantial problem. It’s not enough to have a general sense of impact, you need a well-defined problem, a strong use case, and a solution that’s both widely needed and well-suited to the places where that need exists.
Payers at Scale:
Sustaining delivery at scale requires a long-term payer. Most projects begin with philanthropic funding, but this rarely takes a solution all the way. Over time, funding must shift to more sustainable payers, such as:
Customers (if businesses deliver the solution)
Taxes (if delivered by government)
Big aid or development finance
You need to design your solution with this end payer in mind because they will shape how the model needs to work and what makes it viable.
Doers at Scale:
To scale, others must be able to deliver your solution. It might be: that’s:
Your own organisation
Many businesses
A network of NGOs
Government systems
Each option requires different design considerations. If you retain a lot of control, the solution can be more complex. If you rely on others, especially at large scale, it needs to be much simpler. Your choice of doer directly impacts how the solution should be built.
Cheap Enough:
To scale, your solution must be financially viable. The cost per unit of impact needs to be comparable to what funders or payers are already willing to pay for similar results. If it’s too expensive, it won’t go far - no matter how good it is.
Simple Enough: A scalable solution should be easy for others to implement. That means:
Clarity on what’s essential to impact
Simplification wherever possible
Avoiding rare skills or niche conditions
You’ll likely need to replicate it multiple times to learn what can be simplified without losing effectiveness.
Good Enough:
The solution must be proven at scale. That means:
It has been replicated enough to demonstrate impact
It’s adaptable (not one-size-fits-all)
The operations, systems, and M&E are in place to support scale
A Supportive Environment
Scaling doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The way your office or organisation operates behind the scenes plays a huge role in whether scaling efforts succeed. These “invisible factors” shape whether a solution stalls… or takes off.
Focus and Capacity:
Perhaps the single most important enabler. Teams can’t scale a solution while juggling five other priorities. Studies show that splitting attention across multiple projects undermines deep progress. Once a concept is validated and a team is tasked with scaling it, they need space to focus. That means reducing time-slicing, limiting distractions, and giving people the breathing room to build and deliver at scale.
Long-Term Thinking:
Scaling isn’t fast. It typically takes 10-17 years to reach full maturity. That means realistic expectations, especially over 2-3 year project cycles, and commitment to the long game. Teams need backing not just to start something, but to stay with it through the messy middle.
Supportive Leadership:
Scaling is a team sport. It takes coordinated support across fundraising, HR, MEL, legal, comms, and that only happens if leadership is visibly prioritising and backing the effort. Leaders need to advocate internally and externally, unlock resources, and model commitment to scale.
Flexible (Enough) Funding:
Everyone wants long-term, unrestricted funding. But we can’t wait for perfect conditions to start. Instead, we need a flexible mindset toward funding - getting creative with restricted grants, finding ways to sequence or layer funding strategically, and testing mechanisms that support sustainability. Traditional project-based funding can be used smartly if scaling is already a core goal.
Adaptive Management:
Scaling requires learning in motion. Impact trajectories need regular checkpoints - times to pause, reflect, and adjust. That means building in mechanisms for evidence-based reflection, adapting plans when needed, and not being afraid to course correct.
Portfolio Management:
Scaling should never happen in isolation. It should be part of an intentional office-wide strategy. This means looking at all your work as a portfolio, understanding which projects should start, grow, pivot, or close, and allocating resources accordingly. Projects that align clearly with strategy are the ones that should scale.
Skills and Competencies:
Scaling takes specific skills. Yes, teams need to understand scaling models and tactics. But perhaps even more importantly, they need strong partnership-building capabilities, the ability to form and sustain long-term, cross-sector relationships that are often essential for delivery at scale.
Culture of Ambition, Agility, and Resilience:
Underneath all these enablers is office culture. A culture that supports scale is one where people feel safe taking risks, thinking big, and adapting quickly. It's about psychological safety, bold thinking, and staying the course even when things get tough. If culture is closed, cautious, or brittle, scaling simply won’t thrive.
Demand and Appetite for the Solution:
Even the most scalable solution won’t grow without pull from the outside. Scaling depends not only on what you build, but on whether others want it, and are ready to support it.
Demand:
When governments, private sector actors, or the public actively want what your solution offers, scale becomes much more possible. This kind of demand is often triggered by:
New technologies
Policy shifts
Market openings
Crises or urgent events
You don’t always control demand but you can recognise it, respond to it, and design for it.
Nice-to-have Enablers:
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