Funder - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

Having an opportunity to expand what you do is always exciting, but as well as posing operational and financial risks, taking an opportunity to grow can challenge your goals, values or motivations.

We undertook research to identify five contrasting social innovations that had scaled up in order to understand what had worked, what had not, and the different ways in scaling up can impact on an organisation or an emerging social enterprise sector.

We identified five key tensions that social sector organisations need to navigate when making decisions about scaling up, and created a toolkit to help them make better decisions about scaling.

We produced three publications to help groups that are considering scaling up:

• A set of short case studies outlining the challenges and successes faced by five social innovations
• A set of thought guides outlining the tensions faced by social sector organisations when making decisions about scaling up
• A group decision making toolkit to help groups make better decisions about scaling

We run training sessions, workshops and webinars to support others to use these resources.