Giving Compass' Take:

• The Bridgespan Group gives us a comprehensive overview of "scalable learning" in the social sector, detailing common mindsets, features and challenges.

• Is your organization adapting and evolving with the changing times? Which one of the platforms described aligns best with your mission? Getting the big picture here may help in finding a path to quicker growth.

• Here are three tradeoffs for smaller nonprofits trying to get big.

Many in the field have written about replication as one approach to scaling impact. In the vast majority of cases, however, it is becoming clearer that strict replication of a program by a single organization can only get us so far.

Take Year Up, a nonprofit that delivers an intensive training program to prepare low-income young adults for professional jobs. Year Up has a proven track record of results with program participants. And it has served nearly 20,000 of them since its founding in 2000. Yet some five million young adults in the United States remain underemployed or not in school. Eager to do much more, Year Up (like many other organizations) is complementing its replication strategy with another path to scaling impact — its Systems Change initiative.

Why are replication strategies often so limited? Among the explanations: philanthropy's bias for new over proven initiatives; thinning government funding flows; insufficient coordination and integration with complementary services; and variations in local contexts that bridle against prescriptive "proven" models. Consequently, many exemplary social entrepreneur-driven programs of the last few decades remain tiny compared to the scale of the problems they seek to address. That's not to minimize their impact: 20 years ago it was unimaginable that they would be at the scale they are today ...

"Platform for scalable learning" is a role played by various types of field-building intermediaries, including field catalysts, capability specialists, evidence-action labs, place-based backbones, and hubs of aligned-action networks. Despite this range of intermediary types, organizations assuming this role share a number of commonalities in the mindsets they embrace, the features that distinguish them, and the challenges they face. Here are some of our latest observations on each of these commonalities, based on our preliminary review of organizations that appear to play the role of a platform for scalable learning.

Common Mindsets

A multidisciplinary mindset: Platforms for scalable learning engage in a diverse mix of activities, all within the boundaries of one organization. These include a mix of basic research, action research, direct service, implementation support, learning networks, communications, movement building, and policy work.

A learning mindset: They view learning from their networks as key to identifying, improving, and scaling solutions that work across a wide variety of contexts.

An adaptation mindset: Organizations that act as platforms for scalable learning see adapting a program to the local context as critical to determining the appropriate implementation strategy and, thus, to getting the desired results.

Common Features

Their research about "what works" is deeply informed by practice. In many cases, their own small direct-service programs serve as learning laboratories. These intermediaries pressure test big ideas in real-world situations, creating a tighter link between theory and practice that heps learning and improvement happen at a faster pace.

They establish rigorous data collection and outcomes measurement systems. Cross-site comparisons, in particular, help these intermediaries gain insight into what is (or is not) working in different contexts, and why. They use data to orient learning and inform strategy for achieving progress, enabling improvement over time.

They emphasize the spread of principles and problem-solving frameworks. For example, Harvard's Center on the Developing Child shares its IDEAS Impact Framework — a design process for developing, evaluating, and iterating on programs for children and families facing adversities such as economic hardship, child maltreatment, or maternal depression. The framework is rooted in precisely defining and measuring a program, iterating on it in fast-cycle fashion, co-creating it with researchers, practitioners, and community members, and sharing learning using common measures.

Read the full article about platforms for scalable learning by Jeff Bradach, Emma Park and Rayshawn Whitford at The Bridgespan Group.