The Five Meanings of Scale

Being effective means more than just carrying out an initiative well and meeting the needs of a small group of people. Effectiveness also involves reaching many people and taking the social leverage that an intervention creates and amplifying it even more broadly.

Given the interest in having a real impact, donors speak variously of taking program to scale, going to scale, and scaling up.

What exactly is meant by scale? 

At its core, the idea of scale is focused on creating a lasting and significant impact. Beyond the broad idea of more or larger impact, the idea of scale becomes more enigmatic when it is subject to sustained scrutiny.  

Scale has at least five overlapping meanings in philanthropy, which are often collapsed in practice. Scale can refer to:

• (1) financial strength
• (2) program expansion
• (3) comprehensiveness
• (4) multi-site replication
• (5) accepted doctrine.