SVA report shares frameworks to help social initiatives achieve greater scale

A new report from Social Ventures Australia (SVA) has been released today sharing frameworks that aim to help successful social initiatives achieve greater scale and broader impact.

“When we are faced with large-scale challenges as a society, we need to create large-scale solutions,’ SVA CEO Suzie Riddell said. 

“Australia is set to experience some huge opportunities for applying impact at scale,” she continued, highlighting major changes to the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector in many states and territories, changes underway for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and changes for Workforce Australia. 

“Now is the perfect time for us to rally as a social impact sector. By applying this expertise that enables large scale design, we can support these reforms and create lasting change for people who need support,” Ms Riddell continued.

“By designing these solutions for this large impact or taking the right existing initiatives and scaling them effectively, we can meet the needs of more people and see a more efficient investment of program funds.”

Bringing together insight from over 400 leaders driving social change, the Impact at Scale Report reveals the key enablers and barriers to achieving impact at scale. Almost four in five (78 per cent) not-for-profit leaders revealed they do not have the funding required to achieve impact at scale and only one in four (25 per cent) have the required resourcing to work towards achieving impact at scale. The report is part of a broader initiative by SVA to identify and overcome these challenges in the Australian context to achieve impact at scale.

Goodstart Early Learning is one of the case studies highlighted in the report, with CEO Dr Ros Baxter speaking about the importance of making an impact at scale. 

“At Goodstart we know that every child should benefit from inclusive high quality early learning,” she said. 

“We’ve used our commitment to inclusion and tackling vulnerability to demonstrate what works, and where changes of policy are needed to ensure children experiencing disadvantage aren’t missing out. By testing and learning from our network of 660 centres and driving change through advocacy and research we are driving impact at scale and better outcomes for all Australian children.”

Ms Riddell said that while achieving impact at scale can be tough going, requiring perseverance and problem-solving, and a variety of perspectives and approaches it is a worthwhile endeavour. 

“We created the Impact at Scale Report to contribute to the ongoing conversation and provide tangible examples and frameworks to aid these leaders in transforming promising ideas into widespread impact,” she said.

Access the Impact at Scale Report here.