Apolitical puts the spotlight on scaling social impact
Published May 24, 2018
We have been working with Apolitical, a platform for public servants, on a series of articles about scaling social impact (scaling up programmes for young children and families). You can read three articles per month on Apolotical for free, or if you’re a public servant you can sign up to read the rest of them.
- The replication puzzle: why do policies work there but not here? A four-step framework to avoid making the most common mistakes.
- “The world is scattered with pilot projects trying to work holistically”. Q&A with Karen Levy of Evidence Action, the NGO that delivers solutions to hundreds of millions of people.
- The only scheme proven to end poverty – but too bespoke to scale? Pilots have worked in 99 countries, but that doesn’t mean it can reach billions.
- Data, nudges and design are changing the way we reach scale. Many governments and NGOs lack the ability to capitalise on big data.
- Scaling social impact – a checklist, and a warning. Scaling a program against the grain of the system is like rowing against the current.
- Britain’s Studio Schools: when best practice met political reality. Specifically designed to scale up, the experimental schools soon ran into trouble.
- How to design for scale: lessons for ambitious new interventions. Many programs are developed with features that make them inherently difficult to scale up.
- Reach Up: how a Jamaican early childhood intervention swept the world. A 50-year-old program from Kingston has been trialled in 10 countries.
- How to scale up social impact — the challenge of the 21st century. An introduction to the critical policy questions, controversies and new ideas around scaling.
- “You can’t worry about scaling second — you have to worry right at the start”. Q&A with Larry Cooley: ministerial advisor, public sector reformer and global scaling expert.
Our partnership with Apolitical also involves funding separate channels on early childhood and cities, with articles focusing on examples of innovations and scaling.