The holy grail for any development innovation is reaching people at scale, but there is frequently a disconnection between small and medium organizations that are innovating, and large organizations with the ability to scale up new initiatives. It’s especially rare to find examples where governments have successfully and sustainably scaled up an innovation from a smaller nongovernmental organization (NGO) or social enterprise. Yet doing this successfully has the potential to unlock much more effective and efficient service delivery for millions of people.

So how can organizations make these kinds of partnerships work? It goes without saying that national governments are complex organizations with multiple, pressing responsibilities, and often little capacity or resources for innovation. In some instances, governments that directly partner with NGOs to co-design system or service improvements can yield positive results. But this often requires a commitment from both parties at the outset, with specific resources and established relationships to drive and enable scale.

While rare, there are some successful examples of government programs integrating, or “institutionalizing,” projects designed and proven by smaller nonprofits. These include the Government of Bihar adopting the women’s health Mobile Academy program (originally designed by BBC Media Action), Kenya’s embrace of school-based deworming (based on a program run by ICS-SP), and the Government of Malawi’s health hotline (originally developed by Village Reach). Recently, IDinsight conducted a qualitative case study that examines another success story: The government of Andhra Pradesh, India’s adoption of a video-based, agricultural extension program pioneered by the NGO Digital Green. The study supports the idea that scaling through government is a viable strategy for smaller organizations to achieve impact, given the right environment and tactics, and offers lessons on how to do it.

Read the full article about social innovation in development work by Daniel Stein, Rupika Singh, and Madhav Seth at Stanford Social Innovation Review.