Forging Ahead: Early Lessons
This paper presents experiences and lessons from the Scale Academy, a three year initiative that the Citi Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation launched in 2007. The Academy supports a set of high-performing microenterprise organizations that demonstrated a commitment to scaling up their operations to serve more clients. An important lesson from the early years of the Scale Academy is that an organization's ability to reach scale is affected by the context in which it operates. Some of the strategies that grantees used include:
- Using traditional and innovative strategies to reach out to emerging entrepreneurs;
- Expanding geographic coverage;
- Working more intensively within their traditional target markets;
- Developing cultural capacities to serve new immigrant markets;
- Expanding outreach to new industries;
- Leveraging the power of technology;
- Implementing sectoral strategies;
- Employing social enterprise strategies to deliver services.
Grantees have learned several lessons about the process of growing to scale. The paper describes these lessons to indicate the work that program leaders must undertake to achieve transformative growth. It also describes the supportive roles of donors, investors and other key microenterprise players.
