As with any business, measuring – and demonstrating – the success of a social investment will help the organisation driving that investment to grow. But if your organisation offers social programmes, you need to have proper systems in place before you can even think of expanding your services.
In fact, scaling a social investment can be a waste of time (and money) without the right systems, says Kimon Phitidis, managing director of Social Innovations, a corporate social investment consulting and programme management company in Johannesburg: “Regardless of how you choose to scale your social investment – scaling requires, probably more than anything else, systems that are considered, tested, adapted, well documented and that work well together. You cannot collaborate or share your methodologies if the systems are not strong. You can only grow a particular site if your systems can accommodate the growth. And of course, scaling by replication requires systems and methodologies to be replicated, implemented and managed at each site.
You may have all the funding in the world, but before you even consider scaling through replication or any other means, make sure your systems are in place. Without them, you risk wasting donor funds and diluting the impact of your programme.
For more, see Phitidis’ blog at socialinnovations.co.za
This article is a continuation of the ← lead article “The data that counts”
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