Cutting Costs to Increase Impact
Focusing on reducing costs can be the key to unlocking results at greater scale. Nonprofits in India and the United States provide important lessons for NGOs around the world on just how to do that.
Focusing on reducing costs can be the key to unlocking results at greater scale. Nonprofits in India and the United States provide important lessons for NGOs around the world on just how to do that.
There is no rigid recipe for scaling quality learning, but successful efforts require attention to design and delivery, stable access to finance, and an enabling policy environment.
Five lessons on scaling educational technology for the most vulnerable children.
Evidence-based practice has great potential to improve social outcomes, but only if we do a better job marketing and adapting it to address the specific problems at hand.
Rather than focusing so much effort on creating services that are “innovative,” nonprofits need to develop a more sales-driven approach to social change.
Since 1970, more than 200,000 nonprofits have opened in the U.S., but only 144 have reached $50 million in annual revenue. They got big by doing two things: They raised the bulk of their money from a single type of funder. And just as importantly, these nonprofits created professional organizations that were tailored to the needs of their primary funding sources.
A decade of applying the collective impact approach to address social problems has taught us that equity is central to the work.
How do innovations move from the edges to the core of what an organization does? For maximum impact, innovations must cease to be innovative and become institutionalized and normalized.
Impact evaluations are an important tool for learning about effective solutions to social problems, but they are a good investment only in the right circumstances.
Scaling requires not only fidelity to core processes and programs, but also constant adjustments to local needs and resources.