Giving Compass' Take:

• In this My Social Good News post, Jessica van Thiel from PATHFINDER discusses how startups and other smaller entities in the social sector can scale in strategic ways. 

• The first step is knowing when to do it: The key is to have patience, knowing that quality is more important than quantity. Also, constant self-assessment should help keep things on track.

• Here's how to fund a scaleable feedback solution for nonprofits.

In the past few decades, social entrepreneurship has gotten a lot of attention. From academia to business, people are recognizing the importance of social entrepreneurs and the invaluable work they do. Social enterprises are like any other business; they must have a strategy for growth and to scale once they are out of the startup stage ...

While every business has to consider its customers, social enterprises have a particularly important task; they need to consider social impact and how to measure it. Measuring social impact is often one of the most difficult things to do as it’s not tangible. From education to gender equality and environmental impact, these issues often take years before one can see results and even then, how can an entrepreneur really know if they are using the right indicator or measurement? You’re not selling t-shirts after all, so how do you know you’ve done well?

The key might lie in the research. You need to really understand what your service is, and what your goals are. Once you’ve identified it all, and it may take months or even years to define, you can then start to look at what works and what doesn’t. By eliminating what doesn’t work you can adjust and refine the way you approach solving the issue.

Read the full article about scaling your social enterprise by Jessica van Thiel at My Social Good News.