As of Wednesday, the International Center for Social Franchising will be known as Spring Impact. The organization took Devex behind the scenes of its rebrand. Under the new name, the nonprofit hopes to influence not only individual organizations, but also the social sector as a whole, to consider replication as a pathway to scale.

Why social franchising?

Working in the social sector taught Spring Impact's Dan Berelowitz that one of the things that holds progress back is the tendency to reinvent the wheel, rather than to build on what is already working. In 2011, a fellowship allowed him to explore commercial models for scale that could be applied to the social sector. Berelowitz spent six months at the United Kingdom headquarters of the fast food franchise McDonald's, followed by six months at Oxfam, and produced a report on why organizations might consider replicating rather than innovating ...

He launched ICSF in 2011. Since then, the organization has worked with 120 clients in 30 countries to unpack and demystify pathways to scale. The team explains that organizations can scale their impact directly, for example by diversifying the solutions they provide or the communities they serve; indirectly, for example through advocacy; or through replication. That could include dissemination, via training or consulting; it could include direct replication, such as through branches, or mergers and acquisitions; or it could include affiliation, such as through licensing, certification, subcontracting, and franchising.

Impact at Scale

Scale usually involves replicating via others, but most organizations don’t put enough thought into how to do that, Kevin Starr, director of the Mulago Foundation, told Devex in an interview on achieving impact at scale. That is part of why the foundation decided in its last board meeting that it would give an extra $100,000 to organizations that were serious about replicating via others.

Reason to Rebrand

“Some of you might be wondering why we changed our name,” Berelowitz said, as he stood before the ICSF logo at the rebrand event in San Francisco in late November.

“This captures the energy of what we do so well,” he continued, before the backdrop of the new-and-improved name and logo: Spring Impact. “It’s about new beginnings. It’s about freshness. It’s exciting. It’s dynamic.”

Beyond their work with individual organizations, the Spring Impact team hopes to drive change across the sector, getting more people to think about scaling a proven solution rather than coming up with new solutions to problems someone else is already solving.

Read the full article about replication and scaling in impact philanthropy by Catherine Cheney at Devex International Development.