Scaling Social Impact: NYC Edition

Earlier this month, we attended the Social Impact Exchange’s annual Symposium on Scaling Social Impact. The Symposium brought together nonprofit organizations, funders, consultants, and evaluators to share knowledge about bringing social solutions to scale. We were there to share what we learned as we created More to Most, a guidebook on scaling up effective community college practices, and to learn from the experiences of others. Here are a few themes from the conference that we’d like to share:

• If “scaling social impact” sounds like a nebulous phrase, that’s because it is. As the meeting organizers readily admitted, “There are many ways to achieve scaled impact—from replicating programs in new locations to developing breakthrough products and services; from scaling policy initiatives and social movements to online expansions through the use of toolkits and platforms. And there are other types of expansions too that include knowledge sharing, network building and collaborations.” While many of the symposium attendees were focused on replicating a nonprofit’s services across multiple geographies, More to Most is focused on scaling within a system. Our big question: how can community colleges go from serving some students in effective programs, to expanding those programs to more students, and finally reach most of those who can benefit from them.
• Is the ideal funder a thought partner, too? According to a panel on grantmakers and nonprofits working in partnership, yes. One panelist used a food metaphor (always our favorite) to explain: she said funders should help build the kitchen, but they don’t need to be in there cooking with you; in other words, there’s a place for funder input in program design, but implementation should be left to the delivery organization. Another pointed out that when funders are engaged as thought partners, they are usually willing to be more flexible with timelines and shifting plans. 
• Making the most of opportunities is usually good, but being too opportunistic and losing coherent priorities is bad. Know yourself and your non-negotiables. If you adjust a working solution to meet the preferences of a new funder or for the sake of simply making the program larger, you may risk your effectiveness. 
• To get results, make talent development a priority. A panel of philanthropic leaders drove the point home at the symposium, reminding us that a key indicator of job satisfaction across sectors is the feeling of continual challenge. The panelists recommended that the social sector pay more attention to cultivating talent and leadership over time. For community colleges, this means that any successful scaling effort should be linked with professional development and faculty engagement. 
• Sustainable funding is crucial to scaling success. A program can’t rely on a continuous stream of grants to operate. While grant funds work great for start up and proof of concept, a program needs to identify a long-term sustainable funding stream. Many grantmakers are hesitant to fund an idea that doesn’t have a plan for revenue generation. At the community college, this usually means finding a way to get resources reallocated in the general fund. Use the grant money to demonstrate the effectiveness of your program, so that college administrators recognize the value of incorporating the program into the annual budget.

SCALERS Series: R is for Replicating Impact

Welcome to the sixth week of our seven-week series exploring the seven drivers of the SCALERS model, a framework of organizational capacities that are essential for successfully scaling-up effective programs. If you’re joining us for the first time, check out the series intro and the posts on the first five drivers: Staffing, Communicating, Alliance-Building, and Lobbying/Demonstrating Impact, and Earnings Generation/Resources.

“Replicating impact” means developing and maintaining institutional expertise and commitment as you scale up a program. This driver is an important part of sustainability planning and broader institutional improvement. Maintaining quality while scaling up effective programs is part of the college getting better at what it does.

Consider your college’s track record at expanding interventions in the past:

• How do you capture organizational learning? 
• What is your system for process improvement?
• How do you involve the individuals responsible for implementing the strategy in learning and process improvement?

Some of this learning will be gleaned from your analysis of program outcome data, as discussed in the demonstrating impact post, but your institution should make space for interpretation of these data and integration with qualitative information.

To ensure the continuous improvement of your expanded strategy, you will need to systematically approach professional development. Expectations for participation in professional development should be clearly communicated to everyone involved in program delivery and management. Another essential piece is a plan to capture learning—both program and process-related—that can be incorporated into an existing continuous improvement strategy. Such knowledge development can actually be part of professional development, encouraging those who are implementing the strategy to innovate. The college should compare pre- and post-expansion data and take time to consider necessary modification. All of these processes and relationships will incorporate parts of other SCALERS drivers, including staffing, communicating and sustaining engagement.

The Faculty Inquiry Group model from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an example of an approach to professional development that sets the stage for continuous learning.  As defined by the Foundation, faculty inquiry is:

“…a form of professional development by which teachers identify and investigate questions about their students’ learning. The inquiry process is ongoing, informed by evidence of student learning, and undertaken in a collaborative setting. Findings from the process come back in the form of new curricula, new assessments, and new pedagogies, which in turn become subjects for further inquiry.”

Danville Community College has employed this model in their Developmental Education Initiative work, convening faculty inquiry groups to pursue curriculum alignment among local high schools, adult basic ed programs, dev ed faculty, and college-level faculty. The groups have also proved vital to the college’s response to major dev ed redesign efforts led by the Virginia Community College System.

Abby Parcell is a Program Manager at MDC.

DEI College Convening Recap, Part 1

Hello again from Indianapolis! With temperatures dipping below zero, we’re all happy we had a full program that prevented any need to venture outside.

Yesterday, the DEI colleges, technical assistance providers, and partners met to discuss the initiative’s progress and future. As we reported yesterday, the day included a panel on effective implementation and scaling up with Maria Straus of Houston Community College and Lisa Dresdner of Norwalk Community College. But there was so much more.

The day began with Byron McClenney of the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas questioning the group to find out how many had taken some key steps he believes are important to improve the retention of students in dev ed (or to help them bypass it altogether). He asked questions like: How many colleges have eliminated late registration? Are doing individual assessments for every new student? Are doing in-depth diagnostic testing for each student? Are taking special steps for students who just miss the dev ed cutoff? Offer student orientations? Require student success courses? Are tracking retention of dev ed students after they start regular coursework? At most, half of the hands in the room went up to each question. “If you didn’t raise your hand, be thinking about that conversation you’ve been having at home,” McClenney said. “Are we doing all that we need to do, especially for those students who don’t have a history of success in school—which is most of our students?”

The rest of the morning was spent discussing professional development design, with a panel featuring Carolyn Byrd of Patrick Henry Community College and Nick Bekas of Valencia Community College. Bekas talked about the importance of having a strong faculty development program in place—and not taking grants without having plans to institutionalize the work. Byrd emphasized the importance of engaging all stakeholders, looking at the data—but always working closely with the faculty because “they’ve got to be the ones to lead this charge.” She went into detail about Patrick Henry’s cooperative learning model—which was a faculty idea. Faculty were sent to training to implement it, and were trained to train more faculty. The hardest part: training all the adjunct faculty. But now, some adjuncts are being trained as trainers. Bekas cited the way Valencia developed its supplemental learning program by starting with a pilot on one campus, proving its effectiveness, then recruiting more faculty to participate, with faculty then taking the lead on recruiting students to help. There are now 300 sections serving around 8,000 students in the program, he said.

Other key insights: Have faculty development covered in the accreditation process; use technology and faculty blogs to keep track of what’s going on; provide incentives to faculty and adjuncts who participate (at Valencia they use some student activity money); have faculty who go to conferences report back on what they’ve learned; integrate the programs into budget planning; math faculty are sometimes the hardest to bring on board, but they’ll usually come around; cooperative learning has the additional benefit of teaching social skills, which is important to employers; and never have a program that’s dependent on one person (who might leave).

Check back in a bit for a recap of the afternoon.


Richard Hart is MDC's Communications Director.

2 X 2

According to Jeff Bradach, 2 x 2 actually equals 100. A recent article from Bradach in the Stanford Social Innovation Review investigates strategies that expand the impact of organizations well beyond what you’d expect from their size. Rather than just duplicating a program’s structure, high-impact organizations use approaches that allow them to realize their objectives in less conventional ways. Bradach identifies eight concepts that organizations can employ to increase impact without greatly increasing organization size. Here are a few examples of Bradach’s suggested approaches as they play out in DEI colleges:

• Build Networks. Valencia Community College is engaging students and faculty in new ways through learning communities and supplemental instruction. And DEI’s learning network of 15 colleges creates opportunities for idea and resource sharing, which can enhance our effectiveness.
• Develop talent. Patrick Henry Community College is providing faculty professional development focused on cooperative learning. With 95 percent of developmental faculty, both full-time and adjunct, receiving this professional development, PHCC is pollinating the college with active learning strategies. They’ve also opened the Southern Center for Active Learning Excellence to offer similar training to faculty from other institutions.
• Change the Perception of What is Possible. That’s what DEI is all about. We are proving that investing in students that need dev ed is important, and that students can successfully move on to college-level work and a degree. As more decision makers, community leaders, citizens, and potential students see the progress that DEI institutions are making, we’re hopeful that more resources and support will flow to colleges and communities, generating developmental education innovations at non-DEI schools.
• Strengthen the Sector. Remember, the 15 DEI institutions also are part of Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. For the last five years and more, these colleges have been working at the institutional and state level to eliminate policy barriers, improve institutional research capacity, and engage leaders at every level of the college and community. Achieving the Dream’s model of continuous institutional improvement creates an environment that encourages the scaling of evidence-based strategies focused on student success.

One aim of the Developmental Education Initiative is to bring more effective programs to more students that need a jumpstart or a refresh as they tackle college. But like Bradach’s new math, we’re also interested in multiplying student success across the campus and community. The focus of scaling at the community college is to have a sustainable impact on students, faculty, and systems. We’ll be using this blog to share our continued thinking with you on what scaling means and what resources you can use to realize it.


Abby Parcell is MDC's Program Manager for the Developmental Education Initiative.