Scaling Impact through INGOs
Humanitarian and environmental challenges are growing faster than our ability to solve them. Aid and philanthropic resources are shrinking. Time is running out. With just five years left to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we urgently need to rethink how we work.
Scaling our impact isn’t optional - it’s essential.
Scaling impact to meet the scale of the humanitarian and environmental challenges we face is one of the biggest questions INGOs are grappling with right now.
There’s no single recipe, no one-size-fits-all pathway to transformational impact. Each organisation, each landscape, each project faces its own barriers and opportunities, shaped by context, mandate, and ambition.
What we do share is a commitment: to learn, to experiment, and to strengthen our ability to support initiatives to design and deliver for scale.
This page is here for that purpose. A place to bring together insights, tools, and lived experiences from across our network.
Basic Scaling Concepts
Scale isn't just another word for growth. Scale is about busting out of a linear trajectory into an ever-steepening - exponential, even - curve of impact over time. A scalable solution is one that has the potential to make a big dent in a big social problem, maybe even solve the whole thing.
Kevin Starr, Managing Director of the Mulago Foundation
Scaling is a nuanced and often debated topic, with different thinkers, sectors, and organisations offering their own definitions and approaches. We’ve cut through the noise to bring you a clear, simplified introduction to what scaling impact really means and why it matters. This section highlights the most relevant ideas to help you build a strong foundation for thinking about scale in your work.
Why Scaling Matters
Explore why business as usual isn’t enough to meet our goals.
What is Scaling Impact?
Learn what we really mean by scale; and why growing your organisation isn’t the same as scaling your impact.
Pathways to Scale
Explore the different routes impact can take and how your endgame shapes the path.
How IFIN Members are approaching Scale
Every organisation approaches scaling in its own way: shaped by mission, structure, and experience. This section brings together how different INGOs are thinking about and supporting scale today.
DIY Scaling Tools, Frameworks & Courses
Here you’ll find a collection of tools and resources developed by, or used within, different INGOs to support scale. They’re organised by the specific scaling need they address, so you can quickly find what’s most relevant to your work.
Designing a solution for scale
Spring Impact: Scaling Toolkit
This is the most comprehensive and user-friendly toolkit available, guiding users through six stages—from understanding the problem to managing scale. It includes actionable worksheets, checklists, and a Scale Pathways worksheet to match your model to the right approach.
Scaling Value Playbook Toolkit
A playbook-style toolkit built for iterating through scaling challenges, combining diagnostic tools, system mapping, partnership guidance, and strategic design frameworks. Rich with examples and templates.
Strengthening your existing model for maximum scalability
Progress to Scale Framework by Elrha
Offers a clear maturity framework across five stages of scaling. Focused on readiness and transition from idea to systemic uptake. Especially useful for communicating progress with funders or internal stakeholders.
Addressing the enabling conditions for Scale
Identifying the Scalable elements of a solution
PPPLab: Scaling Strategies for Systemic Change
Provides a realistic, systems-savvy lens on scaling, including 10 strategic scaling routes and the “Scaling Scan” tool to assess enabling conditions. Strong on the limitations and trade-offs of scaling in messy, real-world contexts.
Building a portfolio with the highest scale potential
FOS Scaling Challenge
Provides a set of provocative statements (the “scaling challenge”) to spark honest conversations about what scaling really takes. Rather than presenting a how-to model, the tool reframes scaling as a testable challenge: “If this worked, why hasn’t it spread?” and identifies deeper blockers like incentives, resourcing, capabilities, and systems leadership. Designed to disrupt simplistic scaling assumptions and guide more grounded strategy.
IFIN Scaling Case Studies
The FSC
Improving global forest management through credible certification efforts.
Interviewees: Andrey Shchegolev (WWF Global Forest Certification and ACAI Forest Sector Transformation Lead, WWF-Adria) and Fran Price (WWF’s Global Forest Practice Lead)
SMART
Transforming wildlife protection through scalable technology.
Interviewees: Alex Wyatt (member of SMART Technology Council, WWF SMART focal point and technical expert) and Rohit Singh (member of SMART steering committee)
Key Scaling Texts & Reports
Articles by IFIN Members
Fundamentals of Scaling
What big international NGOs—BINGOs—need to learn about growing external social enterprise solutions.
By Kate Garder
Keystone Scale Reports
Leaders' Key Insights on the Scaling Status Quo in WWF
The Innovation team at WWF spoke with 18 WWF Leaders about their experience and opinions on scaling within the organisations.
By WWF
Other Ressources
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What’s Your Endgame?
By Alice Gugelev & Andrew Stern – Stanford Social Innovation Review (2015)
This influential article argues that scaling isn’t about getting bigger—it’s about knowing when you're no longer needed. It outlines six nonprofit “endgames” (e.g. government adoption, open source) and urges organisations to define their intended pathway to lasting impact early.OECD DAC Guidance on Scaling Development Outcomes (2024)
By OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC)
A comprehensive guide offering policy and operational insights for funders, implementers, and governments. It provides a structured approach to scaling development outcomes, including enabling conditions, entry points, and how donors can support sustainable scale.Strategy: Go Big or Go… Oh, Just Go Big
By Kevin Starr – Stanford Social Innovation Review, May 4, 2022
This article offers a clear, four-step strategy for scaling impact to match the size of complex global challenges. Starr emphasizes the importance of defining your Big Idea and Dream, identifying the Doer‑at‑Scale and Payer‑at‑Scale, designing a replicable operating model, and continually refining your strategy.Not Invented, but Scaled Here
By Anita Sundari Akella – Stanford Social Innovation Review (2023)
Akella makes the case for INGOs to act as scaling platforms—not by inventing new solutions, but by adopting and amplifying proven innovations developed elsewhere. It’s a call for humility, collaboration, and building scale through existing ecosystems.Pilots Never Fail, Pilots Never Scale
By Ian Johnson – NextBillion, originally based on CIMMYT research (circa 2018)
This in-depth article argues that while pilots often "succeed" in controlled environments, they almost never translate into scalable, sustainable programs. Johnson explains that pilots typically operate within a "greenhouse" protected from politics, markets, and systemic constraints, leading to outcomes that fail when removed from those conditions.