Scaling Social Impact: Marketing to Grow Nonprofit Solutions

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations addressing societal challenges such as hunger, poverty, and racial inequities seek to grow the impact of their promising solutions to these problems—scaling social impact. Yet, local, community-based nonprofits often struggle to identify a path to scale their impact. To address this problem, we partnered with eleven nonprofits engaged in social impact scaling. By integrating insights on scaling from our nonprofit research partners together with academic research on scaling across a range of disciplines, we outline a framework for scaling community-based nonprofits and the marketing practices that support it. Our research advances a two-stage social impact scaling framework. We term this framework T-Shaped Scaling. Within our framework, the vertical bar of the T refers to scaling deep, grounding solutions within a community, and the horizontal bar of the T represents scaling wide, adapting and transferring the scaled deep solutions to new communities. This framework advances both our conceptual and practical understanding of social impact scaling. Finally, we explore the policy implications of social impact scaling and call on researchers in marketing to further investigate the scaling strategies and marketing practices that grow social impact.

Resilient City: Characterization, Challenges and Outlooks

“…There were 839 nodes and 2226 links in the mapping, indicating that 839 institutions have conducted research in this field and 2226 collaborations have been generated, which means more authors and closer collaboration in RC research (Figure 4). The Chinese Academy of Sciences (80) published the highest number of publications, followed by Arizona State University (76), which had the most prominent mediated centrality of 0.12 among research institutions, indicating its solid scientific influence in the field of RCs. Other institutions with centrality ≥0.1 include Stockholm University (56) and the University of Exeter (55).…”

“…This exemplifies the use of the notion of resilience in psychology. According to research, relational networks comprised of families, community members, and organizations strengthen community attachment and establish powerful social support systems that contribute to community cohesion and resilience [76]. Emotional governance and inclusive institutional frameworks decrease the associated psychological risks originating from preventing and controlling public health crises comparable to those seen in megacities [77].…”

Measuring Societal Impact in Business & Management Research

“…The series provided implications for managers and policy makers, as well as a future research agenda on topics such as coping with supply chain challenges, the impact of the pandemic on communities of color, and the psychological underpinnings of marketplace scarcity. This type of research, which involves academics working with governmental agencies or nonprofits can be scaled wide and deep in its application to new settings (Nardini et al, 2022).…”

The effects of scaling strategies on the scaling of social impact: Evidence from Chinese social enterprises

“…By contrast, scaling in the commercial sector usually aims at maximizing economic values and focus on organizational growth. Thus, external scaling strategies, such as knowledge dissemination to which NPOs give priorities, are usually not an option for commercial enterprises for they rather tend to ensure their unique competitive position in marketplace by keeping their capabilities or knowledge a secret (Nardini et al, 2022; Weber et al, 2012).…”

“…However, the conventional NPOs are facing increasing difficulties in maintaining organizational sustainability (Besel et al, 2004; Hailey & Salway, 2016; Hayman, 2016; Michaud & Tello‐Rozas, 2020; Weerawardena et al, 2010), pursuing organizational growth (Bradach, 2003), and scaling social impact (Bloom & Smith, 2010; Ebrahim & Rangan, 2014; Nardini et al, 2022; Newbert, 2012; Richmond et al, 2021; Waitzer & Paul, 2011; Westley et al, 2014). For instance, in the context of the US nonprofit sector comprised of cottage organizations, as Bradach (2003) observed, time, funds, and imagination are poured into new programs that at best reinvent the wheel, while the potential of programs that have already proven their effectiveness remains sadly underdeveloped.…”