How do you overcome risks when scaling up your programs?

1 Assess your readiness

Before you embark on scaling up your programs, you need to conduct a thorough assessment of your organization's readiness and capacity. This means evaluating your mission, vision, goals, and theory of change, as well as your financial, human, and technical resources. You also need to identify your target population, market, and demand, and analyze the external environment and potential partners. A readiness assessment will help you determine if scaling up is feasible, desirable, and aligned with your core values and competencies.

2 Choose your scaling strategy

When scaling up your programs, you must consider your objectives, context, and resources. Horizontal scaling involves expanding your programs to new locations or groups within the same sector or domain. Vertical scaling focuses on influencing policy, advocacy, or system change at higher levels of decision-making or governance. Functional scaling involves adding new components or services to existing programs to increase their value or impact. Finally, organizational scaling involves growing your internal capacity, structure, or culture to support scaling up. It is important to choose a scaling strategy that suits your organization's strengths, needs, and opportunities and is consistent with your theory of change and impact measurement.

3 Design for scale

Designing your programs with scale in mind is essential for successful scaling up. Your programs should be simple to understand, implement, and replicate; adaptable to different contexts, cultures, and preferences; cost-effective in delivering high impact at low cost; and evidence-based in demonstrating clear outcomes and impact. Additionally, you should create standard operating procedures, manuals, tools, and training materials that can be used by your staff, partners, or beneficiaries to consistently and effectively deliver your programs.

5 Monitor and evaluate your progress

As you scale up your programs, you need to monitor and evaluate your progress regularly and systematically. This means collecting and analyzing data on your inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impact, and comparing them with your baseline, targets, and indicators. You also need to conduct qualitative and participatory evaluations to capture the stories, perspectives, and experiences of your beneficiaries and stakeholders. Monitoring and evaluation can help you track your performance, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and make informed decisions and adjustments to improve your programs.

6 Learn and innovate

Scaling up your programs is a dynamic and iterative process that requires constant learning and innovation. You need to be open to new ideas, opportunities, and challenges, and willing to experiment, test, and refine your programs. You also need to share your learning and best practices with your staff, partners, beneficiaries, and other actors in your field, and learn from their experiences and insights. Learning and innovation can help you enhance your programs' quality, impact, and sustainability, and stay ahead of the curve in a changing world.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?