4(b) Scaling
Figure 1. Like a mature tree that branches out, scaling your project can have greater impact on the community (Brandsberg-Engelmann, CC0)
What is scaling and why is it important?
Scaling means changing the size or scope of something. In the context of Youth Mayors projects, scaling refers to expanding a project so that it has even greater impact on people. If you have developed a successful intervention, service or product you should definitely think about how you can expand what you have done, to spread that success more widely.
What scaling looks like will vary depending on the project outcome. If you have created a physical product, it would entail making more of that product and promoting it so that it gets into the hands of more people. If you have created a service, it would entail having more people provide that service and promoting it so that more people use it. If you have created a social intervention, it would entail informing, inspiring and persuading others to make the change; this could involve lobbying for the local, state, or national government to implement the intervention on a wider scale.
Small projects are essential to test out ideas in a low-risk environment. But scaling is important because projects that stay small are unlikely to have the impact required to cause real change in communities, cities, countries or internationally. Small projects can also fizzle out quite easily when a few stakeholders lose interest.
Projects that have scaled can cause widespread, systemic change in communities, making a real impact on people’s lives. They can be made resilient through the networks of people that join together to support them. It is not possible or desirable to scale every project, but if you have the drive and can fulfill the conditions below, you may find that your Youth Mayors project grows into a powerful force for change.
Factors for successful scaling
Research on successful scaling shows that there are a number of important factors that determine whether a social enterprise or innovation can grow its impact effectively and sustainably. These include internal factors to do with your idea and team, and external factors that include your network. These factors are indicated in Figure 3 and further explained below.
YOU
You, as the changemaker, are probably the most important factor in the scaling of your project. It is important that you are extremely passionate and energetic about your project, and are prepared to invest your time, over a longer period, to see it scale. Your management skills are also important. You need to be able to show continued initiative, strategic thinking, people management, and good communication skills. Scaling entails more risk than your initial project, so you need to have an appetite for it, as well as being able to manage it well to safeguard success. You also need to be willing to delegate tasks, which brings us to the next point.
YOUR TEAM
The next most important factor is your team. It is very unlikely that you can scale a project on your own and having talented, reliable partners with a diverse range of skills is essential to grow your idea. According to Y Combinator, one of the most successful seed funders of startups, the first few team members you add to your project will probably determine whether it will succeed or fail. Choose wisely, and you can feel confident about giving up control of some areas of the project and scaling to others. Those new team members will also be a magnet for other talented people. Choose unwisely and hastily, and your team could sink the entire endeavor.
Figure 4. A talented team brings new ideas, spreads the work, and attracts others to your endeavor (maryalena, CC BY-SA 2.0)
YOUR PLAN
Just like for the original project, you must have a good plan. But now, you need to expand it to think more strategically. You need to plan to scale your project in a way that it endures long into the future and this requires more detailed thinking than the simple concept note or Social Business Model Canvas that you created for your initial project. You will need to develop a full business plan and there is a Business Plan tool listed below in the Tools section to help you do this.
Your business plan really needs to lay out how your product, service, or social innovation will grow. This involves a clear understanding and explanation of exactly what it takes to replicate your initial success to reach more people. Replicating your idea successfully on a larger scale means making sure that your product, services or innovation can be copied or extended without a decrease in quality and this can be very tricky.
A very important piece of this plan is the financial component. To grow your idea, you will certainly need money and you need to consider carefully where it will come from and how you can sustain funding for your product, service, or social innovation over the long term. Because donations and grants are limited and precarious, it can literally pay to consider whether there is a revenue component you can incorporate into your plans. Be creative with this!
Communication is also key and needs to be considered strategically. You learned about sharing in the previous Module 4(a), but you will learn more about persuading and inspiring in the next Module 4(c). Good communication takes time and a lot of effort, so be sure to make room for it in your planning and practice.
YOUR NETWORK
Finding the right people to collaborate with is also fundamental to your scaling success. Involving the right partners can build the resilience and longevity of your project, and give you valuable support over time to gain funding, reach a bigger audience, and gain new insights into growing your idea. You can think of it as building an ecosystem to help your ideas thrive. You will learn more about networking, the actions you can take to build strong support from others, in Module 4(d).
Practice / Project Activity
Consider what scaling your project would look like and create a mindmap or sketch to illustrate how you can scale your idea to reach more people. Remember, that this will look differently, depending on whether you have a product, a service, or a social innovation.
If you already know you will scale your project, you can examine the Business Plan tool below to consider the research you need to do to complete it. Get started if you want!
Examples in different contexts
Reducing plastic in the household
However, the student was dissatisfied with the low impact of purely household actions and wanted to address the larger systems problems in her local grocery store.
Thus, the student decided to start a second project to research and campaign in her local grocery store for a move to reduce plastic in the store, first by introducing the possibility to purchase dry goods and other products with own-brought packaging. The student worked to get her local zero-waste shop to partner up with the larger grocery store to provide the products in-house.
This new stage involved more investigating, including interviews and observations in the community. It involved designing a new solution, writing up a concept plan and pitching it to the store.
Mitigating CO2 emissions in the school
Through this partnership, the students participated in education initiatives in the local community, helped the forest department organise regular tree-planting and tree-care actions. They also participated in a pilot project to use new citizen science technology to help keep track of the health of trees in their community, to ensure prompt attention to those trees under stress.
Informing people with Down syndrome about social distancing during a pandemic
- Creating more videos on similar topics
- Doing the same type of video-slideshow for different countries and in different languages
- Writing their own version of guidelines for creating accessible video-slideshows and sharing them with relevant institutions and organisations.
By doing a SWOT analysis on all three ideas, they ultimately decided on the last one - creating guidelines for accessible materials so that government institutions and organisations could take ownership of the project and continue it themselves.
All the information from the documentation of the process came in handy, and the students created the guidelines in two forms: as a document that outlines the steps for creating materials and an accessible slideshow with the same information.
Tools
A template for writing a business plan to help you scale your project for greater impact. The tool is particularly useful if you are seeking larger amounts of funding, or are proposing a social enterprise.
Displays for exhibitions and reports
Don’t forget to document your work. For a reminder about documentation, see Module 1(e).
Ideas for documentation in this section include:
Mind map of ideas for scaling your project
Completed or in-progress business plan to scale your project
Works cited
Brandsberg-Engelmann, Jennifer. Tree, 2020.
Maryalena. “The Talent In Neon!!!” Flickr, Yahoo!, 21 Oct. 2011, www.flickr.com/photos/hookerplz/6266047952.
Saputra, Hardi. “Communication.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 10 May 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y2qb2ar2.
Images for examples in different contexts source information:
Samoilov, Yuri. “Coronavirus.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 20 Mar. 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ya2ngksd. CC BY 2.0
Webster, Tony. “Plastic Bottles - Waste.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 16 Sept. 2012, www.flickr.com/photos/87296837@N00/7992944072. CC BY 2.0
XoMEoX. “Tree.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 28 May 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8bw46ns. CC BY 2.0
