Seeking scale
I have long admired the work of the Mumbai NGO SPARC, led by the wonderful Sheela Patel. Working with India’s National Federation of Slum Dwellers, and in negotiation with state governments and the World Bank, they seem to offer almost a ‘third way’ between state and private provision of services. Last year, at a Skoll World Forum session organized by Volans, I heard Nancy Kete of EMBARQ talking and was blown away by her story of how they have revolutionized public transport in some of the world’s biggest cities.
It is always inspiring to come across an organization that seems to be involving other players and bringing in other resources and achieving results on a scale that is totally out of proportion to its own size, but there seem to be far too few of them compared to the overwhelming social and environmental problems we face.
Guest editor Alejandro Litovsky talks of the need for ‘system-level interventions’ and for ‘more effective forms of governance that can manage markets, institutions and social capital more intelligently’. Are there lessons to be learned from the experiences of these high-achieving organizations that could be applied more widely? This is the question this issue of Alliance seeks to address. We asked Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin empire, and Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype, what they had learned from their huge commercial successes that might be applied to their philanthropic enterprises. We talked to Jeff Raikes of the Gates Foundation. We looked at examples of organizations that have achieved a huge impact, including EMBARQ and Shack/Slum Dwellers International.
Are there universal lessons that will help us? The strongest message to emerge from this Alliance special feature on ‘Rethinking scale’ is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the importance of collaboration – or, as Litovsky puts it, ‘how new relationships, partnerships and networks can move particular solutions closer to a system-level intervention’. What is certain is that all the contributors offer their own practical insights on how foundations and social investors can be more effective in scaling the solutions they seek to support.
Visiting Flint
Two of the articles in this issue of Alliance resulted from a February visit to Flint, Michigan, home of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation – from many enjoyable hours spent talking with Mott president Bill White and members of his staff team. It was good to see at first hand what a foundation can mean to its hometown, especially one in such desperate need as Flint, and to realize that the classic foundation model of piloting initiatives then persuading government to adopt them can still work.
