How can funders accelerate impact at scale?
The social enterprises interviewed in Scaling Pathways have also shared ways in which funders can better support them in developing and accessing the talent, government partnerships and funding needed to drive impact at scale. See below a few highlights, and for more check out the associated links.
Supporting Talent
If human capital is the engine that drives performance—and ultimately impact at scale—for social enterprises, funders need to carefully consider how they can invest in and support building and maintaining that engine. Advice from social enterprises includes:
- Embed critical talent considerations in your due diligence, such as alignment of talent with future strategy, talent development, and a talent management infrastructure. Keep in mind that if you want organizations to prioritize these areas, you should consider how you will support them through funding, in-kind support or other means.
- Remove time pressure. Hiring, training and managing talent is an investment that takes time, so recognize the consequences of “hiring fast” and appreciate the time it takes for a new hire to become successful in his or her job.
- Invest in talent—including the hidden costs. In addition to investing in salaries, benefits and incentives, social enterprises suggest providing support for “hiring ahead.” This can help the organization position itself for more effective scaling, invest in proactive retention and resilience practices and move away from conversations about indirects or overhead to focus instead on mission-critical investments that are directly related to impact.
Read more on pages 51-54 in People Matter: Evolving Talent for Impact at Scale.
Supporting Government Partnerships
“Systems change, which includes working with and through governments, takes time. Results are both slow to come and less tangible for reporting. Relationship building is critical and must be widespread to not have all eggs in one basket because of constant changes. It’s critical for funders to understand and support it,” share Elizabeth Hausler, Founder and CEO of BuildChange. Other ways that funders can better support government partnerships include:
- Recognize trade-offs – such as those between long-term sustainability, impact and reach, and also between incentivizing contribution versus attribution.
- Effectively evaluate readiness for government partnerships by visiting the field to understand context on the ground, carefully evaluating signs of government buy-in and recognizing that up-front diligence is never fool-proof.
- Use your connections, influence and expertise to help connect enterprises to the right partners within government, advocate where helpful and share relevant knowledge from other partnership efforts.
- Inject some flexibility in your funding to allow for the start-up phase of partnerships and provide patient capital to move into scale-up and transition to government.
Read more on pages 21-22 in Leveraging Government Partnerships for Scaled Impact.
Supporting Financing Strategies
Social enterprises have a number of levers they can pull to bolster access to and use of financing, both internal and external to the organization. Ways in which funders can support them in doing so include:
- Provide access to flexible funding to allow organizations to pivot, adapt and innovate—including funding outcomes instead of activities, funding pilots and experimentation at all stages and measuring with milestones.
- Support efforts to diversify funder base by acting as a signal to other funders and helping organizations amplify key moments that can attract new capital.
- Help organizations understand if results-based financing is right for them by supporting outcomes-focused pilots and upgrades to enterprise performance management systems.
- Support efficient impact through earned revenue by serving as the insulation from earned revenue fluctuations and helping to set earned revenue goals that drive toward best value impact.
Read more on pages 22-23 in Financing for Scaled Impact.
The Skoll Foundation, USAID, Mercy Corps Ventures, and the Center of the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business have worked in partnership to create the Scaling Pathways series, sharing best practices and hard won insights in addressing scaling challenges from some of the world’s most successful social enterprises.
