Financing for Scaled Impact: Part of the Scaling Pathways Series

Posted on April 11, 2018 by CASE

What Successful Social Enterprises Want You to Know…

Googling “social enterprise” calls up over 20 million results. Indeed, there are hundreds of thousands of new ideas for mission-driven ventures emerging around the world. And there are some notable social enterprises who have started to solve social and environmental problems at scale.

What can we learn from the experiences of these organizations? How can their hard-won lessons benefit other social enterprises, funders, and the surrounding ecosystem?

Announcing the launch of the Scaling Pathways Theme Studies.

Building off the success of our Scaling Pathways Case Studies, CASE, the Skoll Foundation, USAID, and Mercy Corps are excited to launch the scaling pathways theme studies. We will go in-depth on five of the most vexing topics for social ventures looking to scale their impact: financing, forging government partnerships, defining pathways to scale, gathering and using data, and attracting and retaining the right talent. These theme studies gather best practices from successful social ventures across the Skoll Foundation portfolio and beyond, uncovering their strategies and lessons learned in navigating these areas core to successful scaling.

Today, we are excited to release the first paper in this series: Financing for Scaled Impact. As those who attend today’s Skoll World Forum session on this topic will know, the paper provides a new framework for considering the levers an organization can use to finance impact at scale. Using stories and lessons directly from B Lab, Educate Girls, Living Goods, One Acre Fund, Root Capital, VisionSpring, Water.org, WaterEquity, WSUP, and WSUP Advisory, Financing for Scaled Impact provides tips and advice around six main strategies. You’ll also find a 2-page “cheatsheet” of key takeaways for social enterprises, as well as a takeaway for funders that includes advice on how to support social enterprises in applying these strategies.

Visit Scaling Pathways now

About the Scaling Pathways Theme Study Papers:

	Financing for Scale Which financing strategies best support your impact at scale?
	Government Partnerships How can you effectively cultivate and manage partnerships with government and other actors to increase impact?
	Pathways to Scale Which of the many pathways to scale most efficiently and effectively drives toward your end game?
	Data How can you best use data to drive impact, performance management, and decisions-making as you scale?
	Talent What talent strategies are needed to identify, train, and retain the human capital needed for scale?