Last week, our CEO, Elizabeth Ames, and Senior Account Director, Austyn Close, travelled to Oxford for the annual Skoll World Forum and its grassroots counterpart, the Marmalade Festival. After last year’s more downbeat gathering, the mood this year was markedly more positive and firmly focused on the future of philanthropy and the role of the social impact and innovation sectors.
Across all the conversations and sessions we attended, a clear theme emerged, scale is important but it cannot be achieved through individual institutions or organisations no matter how large, the route to sustainable, embedded impact at scale runs through connectivity and strategic partnerships.
Reflecting on our time in Oxford, we’ve distilled three core pillars of how partnerships are evolving to drive impact at scale.
The courage to build evidence
One of the most persistent hurdles to scale is the gap between a proven "program" and a scalable "policy." Raquel Mata of the Rare Impact Fund reminded us that we must invest in systems, not just isolated programs. To bridge this gap, we need the "courage to build evidence."
In the same session, Richa Gupta from Labhya noted that for too long, concepts like children’s well-being have been dismissed as "fluffy." By building a rigorous evidence base, social entrepreneurs can move from anecdotal success to systemic adoption. However, this transition is costly.
Juliette Seban, the Executive Director of the Fund for Innovation in Development (FID), highlighted that while governments may be hesitant to pay for the "tweaking" required to prep a program for national rollout, using partnerships with philanthropy and private funding can play a critical role in helping NGOs to bridge this financial "valley of death."
2. Aligning funding with impact
A standout session on the nature-positive economic transition examined the role of the financial sector in driving impact. The takeaway? Finance is a mirror of the economy, it follows demand but rarely drives it alone.
Pavan Sukhdev of GIST Impact pointed out that the risks of not prioritising nature are already factored into many long-term financial investments, with impact numbers being used as surrogates for risk. Analysis has shown that long-term profitability is inherently aligned with impact, and identifying "impact intensities" should be essential for all investors.
But relying on active decision-making is not enough, Jenny McInnes from Ostara explored the critical role played by robust institutional frameworks in helping to make impact outcomes passive, that is built into the very architecture of economies.
This is where working in partnership to build an evidence base becomes critical, being able to define, track, and share credible impact metrics makes it easier for governments and regulators to build the frameworks needed to bend investment, both public and private, towards impact at scale.
3. The role of connectivity
When thinking about the role of funding partners, Pajani Singah, Co-Founder of Amazonia Impact Ventures, made an impassioned call for a bottom-up approach. Don't start with a funding commitment, start by finding out what is actually needed at the community level and ensure that funding also factors in any externality costs.
There can also be unexpected impact gains from connectivity. Dr Kevin Carney from the University of Michigan, shared a lovely insight into how, when collecting evidence of the impact of the daily wellbeing classes pioneered by Labhya, they discovered that children participating often shared the lessons and insights with their parents, ensuring that the impact of the educational intervention extended beyond the individual child and into the community.
To ensure localisation isn’t just a buzzword, partnerships need to involve local communities and leaders from the start, understanding that the route to scale runs directly through grassroots engagement.
At Atalanta, we know that strong partnerships are critical to resilience and scale. Our most recent White Paper explored the key strategies that help organisations design resilient, equitable, and impactful partnerships.
Read the White Paper here.
