Beyond Scale: How to Make Your Digital Development Program Sustainable

"[T]here is little advice available to NGOs that have already piloted solutions and are now at the four-to-five year mark in their programs, trying to figure out how to deliver sustained impact with less reliance on donor dollars. Beyond Scale aims to fill the information gap. "


This online guide from the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL)  presents key challenges and potential solutions when" scaling and sustaining digital development programs beyond the problematic phase many digital development implementers face when the pilot is over and the funding may be running out. The Digital Impact Alliance partnered with BBC Media Action and Esoko, both implementers of long-term, large-scale digital development programs, to share their learning and experiences of what works – and as importantly – what does not. It also partnered with Vital Wave and Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative to source digital development emerging best practices from around the world."

The guide consists of seven modules, each on a different ‘make or break’ topic:

• Strategy - For example, this module suggests that sca;ling up numbers of users may require strategic shifts, realignment of internal and external stakeholders with a new vision, and mapping changes including finan cial and business management, solution design, and human capacity. Key steps are: assessing the programme health; answering strategic questinos such as relicate or diversify, public or private sector, and adopt redifined vision, goals and indicators; identifying risks; and revising strategic plans. A sample in practice is the Esoko programme providing farmers digital informatoin in Ghana, moving to Kenya, but losing money such that the roganisation moved to financial services for which farmers were willing to pay.
• Business Model
• Legal, Policy and Regulatory
• Solution Design
• Roll Out
• Human Capacity
• Partner Relationships

Each module offers a series of key steps including examples from BBC Media Action, Esoko, and a  range of digital development implementers. The examples highlight challenges the organisations faced when replicating their digital development programmes in new geographies, diversifying their products and services, transitioning ownership to a government, throwing out their business model and starting from scratch, or restructuring their organisation to reach scale and financial sustainability.  "[T]ools and templates are included in each module and provide actionable how-to tips to help readers apply learning to their own work."