At the 2024 Skoll World Forum Marmalade Festival, Spring Impact, Global Innovation Fund and Grand Challenges Canada co-hosted a side event to unpack key lessons for mission-driven organisations scaling with government. We were joined by guest speakers from Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre, Fresh Life, Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) and Ilifa Labantwana, as well as a fantastic audience. 

Here, we distil the key lessons shared on the day, relevant particularly for mission-driven organisations and funders.

There are many different ways to scale with government:

While we often label any approach to scale that involves government as ‘scaling with government’, there are a wide range of forms this scale pathway can take. For many mission-driven organisations, scaling with government will mean improving the capacity and systems of government to embed and deliver a solution on an ongoing basis.

For others, scaling with government will mean something different: Fresh Live for example plays a number of different roles in its work with government, including supporting government sanitation planning through participation in policy frameworks, providing data, offering advisory services and fostering collaboration between public and private stakeholders. Defining an approach to ‘scaling with government’ helps align expectations about roles and responsibilities of both government and mission-driven organisations looking to scale impact.

The diversity of routes to scale with government also stems from the fact that government is not a monolith. In reality, working with government means working with one or more of the various entities that make up a government system (e.g. government departments, or individual states and municipalities), each of these with their own priorities and constraints that need to be considered for scaling to be successful. 

For many organisations scaling with government, there may be no such thing as an ‘exit strategy’:

It’s stating the obvious that whichever approach an organisation takes to scale with government, it will require a patient and long-term outlook. As Polly Markandya from WSUP put it, ‘It won’t be done overnight. You need to have that horizon and accept that it takes time to reach that scale.’ 

Funders are also aware of this: both Global Innovation Fund and Grand Challenges Canada explicitly recognise the time and effort required for successful scaling with government and provide long-term flexible investment as a result. 

What is less widely known, or accepted, is that for many organisations there is no exit strategy. Although this may seem daunting, it should actually be considered a crucial part of any successful scaling approach with government, as government adoption without a wider system supporting and keeping that government accountable for impact and delivery will not lead to sustainable impact and wider systems change. 

According to Spring Impact’s latest research study on funding models, organisations tend to transition away from programme delivery into work that supports government, such as offering training and technical assistance, playing an ongoing role in innovation or continuing to advocate for the solution to remain on the government agenda. But the idea that, over time, solutions can be solely owned by a government with no role for the originating organisation seems to be a myth.  

Organisations should not depend on government as their sole ‘payer at scale’, and philanthropic funders should be prepared to support them:

Many organisations aspire to government paying 100 percent of the costs of sustaining a solution at scale once government has adopted it. Unfortunately, this seems to be an unrealistic aspiration.  Of the 30 mission-driven organisations included in the Spring Impact’s research study, 22 of whom are scaling with government, no solution was fully paid for by government. Organisations have, on average, three different payer types, with an average of 63 percent of funding coming from philanthropy. Many organisations cited the additional value of philanthropic funding in allowing them to innovate, and the importance of diversified funding sources given the risk of government priorities changing over time.

As important as this insight is for mission-driven organisations as they plan their funding strategies, it is arguably more crucial for philanthropic funders to understand the realities of what government adoption means for their grantees’ funding requirements and the vital role of long-term philanthropy for organisations scaling with government. 

Collaboration is a two-way street:

Regardless of where the funding is coming from, it is no surprise that collaboration is crucial to effective scaling with government. But collaboration is more than simply working together; it also means mutual trust, empathy and accountability. This means there is a critical role for individuals within mission-driven organisations who understand government systems and can act as bridges, translating the needs and challenges of both sectors and fostering trust and mutual understanding.

In their work to drive system change in early childhood development (ECD), Ilifa Labantwana shared the importance of not only bringing viable solutions to government, but also being empathetic to the barriers that government faces and providing support to address them. In return, government trusts that Ilifa Labantwana knows what approaches to ECD actually work on the ground, and doesn’t try to impose its own untested ideology and models. The lessons from Ilifa’s process of partnering with government to unlock systems change have been captured in this newly published case study here. 

In terms of mutual accountability, government scrutiny ensures that proposed solutions align with broader national priorities and adhere to established standards. At the same time, mission-driven organisations have a role to play in helping shape government objectives and holding government to account to deliver on them. RWAMREC, for example, worked closely with government partners from the outset to design and evaluate their innovative Bandebereho programme to ensure it aligns with national priorities and build the necessary buy-in. This paid off, with the government requesting RWAMREC work alongside them to test scale up via its community health worker cadre.

Collaboration also extends to actors within the wider ecosystem. For example, we heard from the audience that strategic collaborations with research institutions can play a critical role in generating the evidence needed to convince governments to adopt solutions. We also heard about the value of bringing coalitions of non-profits and other actors together to align on priorities and advocate to government in a coordinated way. 

Scaling with government helped all of the organisations on the panel for this event to reach millions of people with solutions to improve gender equality, enable access to water and sanitation and enhance early childhood development. However, building and maintaining effective government partnerships all required a clear strategy and vision for what scaling with government means, the funding and organisational capacity to stay the course for the long-run, and the commitment and empathy to be a radical collaborator and partner. If done right, the results are well worth it. 

Nikesh Sharma is a Senior Consultant at Spring Impact, where he leads the delivery of projects across a range of sectors and helps mission-driven organisations around the world to scale their impact and reach more people.