DIY Framework to help social enterprises and social businesses to scale their impact and operations.The PATRI Framework takes you through each step of the scaling process, from defining vision to rolling out your solution at scale.

1. PATRI Framework
for Scaling Social Business
Rizwan Tayabali
Supported by Ashoka Globalizer

2. 2

3. Adapted from
The PATRI Framework
for Scaling Social Impact
© Rizwan Tayabali, 2014
3

4. Pre-Conditions
1. You are a social business i.e. Your purpose is to create
impact, ideally through the use of business models.
2. You are structured either commercially or as a non-
profit with revenue streams.
3. You have a proven business model that creates impact
on a localised level, and that impact is tested and
proven.
4. You have grown the business model to some degree
already and understand what it takes to replicate it.
5. You want to know if your social business model is
scalable, and whether or not it makes sense to invest in
scaling.
4

5. Caveats
1. There is no magic one-size-fits-all process that will
apply across the board. This framework covers the most
important considerations but you may have to pick and
choose what applies to you.
2. Scaling is rarely a linear process. While the framework
is necessarily laid out step-by-step, you can work
through the different pieces in parallel or separately as
needed.
3. This framework is focused on scaling rather than
growth. If you are looking to incrementally set up
operations in another location or enter another market,
then this framework will still offer you value, but some
aspects of it may only be applicable a bit further down
the line.
5

6. Scaling vs. Growth
6

7. While scaling is often used as an
interchangeable term for growth, there is
in fact an important distinction ...
7

8. Growth refers to an incremental increase in
impact or revenue with a directly correlated
(incremental) increase in resources
Scaling however, refers to an exponential
increase in impact or revenue but with only an
incremental increase in resources
8

9. Given the size of need related to many social
issues, combined with the fact that there are
limited resources for addressing those needs, it
is often more practical to think in terms of
scaling rather than growth.
9

10. Unless your model was designed for scaling
right from the start, separating the scale of
impact or revenue from being limited by the
size of your operations typically requires a
degree of redesign.
10

11. Growth therefore has primarily operational
implications, while scaling has both design
and operational implications.
11

12. Understanding This Guide
12

13. This guide adapts the PATRI Framework for
scaling social businesses in particular.
13

14. It will take you step by step through
a series of key questions that will help you
decide whether or not scaling is feasible for you
and if so, to produce an effective scaling plan
that you can follow during implementation.
14

15. The level of robustness with which you
review each question will strongly influence
your ability to scale without necessarily
suffering the growing pains, financial stresses
and impact losses that organisations can
experience when scaling.
15

16. The 5 major risks to successful scaling are
1. Unclear purpose
2. Inapplicable design
3. Non-transferable processes
4. Unprepared teams
5. Poor implementation planning
16

17. Each stage of the framework addresses these
different pitfalls in scaling, and is split into
a series of key factors that will help you
manage both risks and outcomes.
17

18. At it’s core, the Framework asks 5 questions
18

19. 1
Is your purpose clear and well defined?
19

20. 2
Is your solution applicable at scale?
20

21. 3
Is your model systematised and transferable?
21

22. 4
Is your organisation ready to scale?
22

23. 5
Is your implementation planning robust?
23

24. PATRI
Framework
I
Purpose
II
Applicability
(Viability)
III
Transferability
IV
Readiness
V
Implementation
24

25. I
Purpose
25

26. The 1st step of the Framework is to define
purpose and targets, without which you have
no sensible basis for planning or design.
Purpose
26

27. Scaling social businesses can become a
highly operational and financially focused
activity that can cause focus to shift towards
operational growth and away from
outcomes when scaling.
Purpose
27

28. To mitigate against mission drift, it is
critical to ensure that you have clarity of
purpose and direction before embarking on
your scaling endeavour.
Purpose
28

29. Key
Factors
Primary Goal
Problem
Definition
SelectionVision
Targets
29
Purpose

30. As a social business, is your primary goal to
increase impact or drive business growth?
Purpose
30
Primary Goal

31. Do you understand the true scale of
the problem you are trying to address?
Purpose
31
Problem
Definition

32. Do you have an initial selection of
areas or demographics for scaling
based on urgency of need?
Purpose
32
Selection

33. Do you have a clear vision of
what the problem will look like
when it’s fixed on a larger scale?
Purpose
33
Vision

34. Do you have outcome based targets for scaling?
Purpose
34
Targets

35. Clarifying your purpose will play a key role in
ensuring that you have a strong basis for
decision-making, not only when reviewing
design but also in situations where financial
survival threatens quality of impact.
Purpose
35

36. If you need further help with addressing
purpose, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Defining Purpose: A Guide To
Scaling Social Business”
Purpose
36

37. II
Applicability
37

38. The 2nd step of the Framework is to
understand whether or not your solution is
capable of achieving your chosen targets
i.e. if it will still be applicable and viable
at the scale you are aiming for.
Applicability
(Viability)
38

39. Operating practices and models that apply
on a local level do not necessarily apply on a
larger scale.
Depending on your model and how it is
designed and delivered, scaling can either bring
economies or a series of additional costs.
Applicability
(Viability)
39

40. In the case of social businesses, whether or not
a solution will be applicable at scale hinges
primarily around whether or not it will be
financially viable at scale.
Applicability
(Viability)
40

41. The main aim of assessing viability is thus to
check whether or not your model is likely to
1. Scale as is
2. Need some tweaking,
3. Require significant rework, or
4. Not be scalable at all
Applicability
(Viability)
41

42. Key
Factors
Demand
Market
Variances
Cost
Effectiveness
Competition
Feasibility
of Organic
Growth
Efficiencies
& Scale
Economies
Financing
42
Applicability
(Viability)

43. Is there a demand for your impact-oriented
product or service?
Applicability
(Viability)
43
Demand

44. Are there significant variations in
market dynamics at scale?
Applicability
(Viability)
44
Market
Variances

45. Will your business model be
cost effective at scale?
Applicability
(Viability)
45
Cost
Effectiveness

46. Does your model have competitors in the
environments you have chosen for scaling?
1. Non-profit providers
2. Equivalent social businesses
3. Purely commercial competitors
Applicability
(Viability)
46
Competition

47. Could you realistically grow your
business model organically to meet
the size of need or demand?
Applicability
(Viability)
47
Feasibility
of Organic
Growth

48. Will scaling generate economies
that could improve viability?
Applicability
(Viability)
48
Efficiencies
& Scale
Economies

49. Will you need significant external financing,
and will that finance be affordable?
Applicability
(Viability)
49
Financing

50. By this stage you should have a good sense of
whether or not your business model is likely to
be financially viable when scaling.
Applicability
(Viability)
50

51. If your business model appears viable,
then it is worth testing the waters externally
to see if you can raise interest in terms
of support or finance.
For this you will need:
1. A high-level business plan
2. A summary pitch for raising money
Applicability
(Viability)
51

52. If it doesn’t seem to be viable, then you could
loop back through the process and reconsider
1. Your chosen areas or demographics
2. The pathways you have chosen for scaling
Applicability
(Viability)
52

53. If you do however find that it isn’t feasible to
scale at all, then you could still consider
increasing the reach of your impact indirectly,
by making your business model open and
available for others to copy and improve upon.
Applicability
(Viability)
53

54. If you need further help with addressing
applicability, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Applicability at Scale: A Guide To
Scaling Social Business”
Applicability
(Viability)
54

55. III
Transferability
55

56. The 3rd step of the Framework is to
enable your model to be replicated
or delivered by others
i.e. to ensure that it is systematic and
transferable for use in scaling, either by your
own teams or by external partners.
56
III
Transferability

57. Transferability essentially refers to having
systematic ways of working that allow you to
grow, develop, evolve or replicate
methodologies and processes in a quality
controlled fashion.
Applicability
57
III
Transferability

58. It is a critical foundation for the replicability
needed in scaling, and for ensuring a
standardised quality of output and impact..
Applicability
58
III
Transferability

59. Finally, systematising your processes will also
improve efficiency and effectiveness in delivery.
Applicability
59
III
Transferability

60. Key
Factors
Core
Components
Critical
Programmes
Chronological
Priority
Impact
Monitoring
Quality
Control
60
III
Transferability

61. Do you have a good understanding of how the
components of your model fit together in order
to create both impact and financial viability?
Applicability
61
III
Transferability
Core
Components

62. Do you have a good understanding of which
programs are critical for each component?
&
Do you have systematic guidelines, processes
and operating standards for each of these
critical programs?
62
III
Transferability
Critical
Programmes

63. Do you have a good understanding of the
chronological operational priority for setting up
the delivery of these programs in the order
needed to ensure impact and financial viability?
Applicability
63
III
Transferability
Chronological
Priority

64. Do you have a systematic
impact monitoring methodology?
64
III
Transferability
Impact
Monitoring

65. Do you have a formal quality control
mechanism?
III
Transferability
65
Quality
Control

66. At this stage, you should ideally aim for a
practical level of documentation that is
enough to ensure that your model is at least
consistently replicable by within the boundaries
of your own organisation.
Applicability
III
Transferability
66

67. If and when you do get to the stage of
working with partners, you can then formalise
this documentation for external use.
Applicability
III
Transferability
67

68. If you need further help with addressing
transferability, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Transferability for Scale: A Guide To
Scaling Social Business”
III
Transferability
68

69. IV
Readiness
69

70. The 4th step of the Framework is to establish
whether or not your organisation and people
are ready for scaling, and if not,
what you can do about it.
IV
Readiness
70

71. Once you know exactly what it is you plan
to scale, you can begin to evaluate if scaling
will in fact be something you can feasibly
follow through without putting your impact or
organisation at serious risk.
IV
Readiness
71

72. It is worth evaluating organisational readiness
prior to implementation because the costs
involved are typically significant, not just in
terms of hardware, but also in terms of time
and effort required to embed new working
practices.
IV
Readiness
72

73. Once you go past this stage, you will also begin
to commit significant resources to scaling,
and it will get harder and more painful to
back out or change direction if things don’t
work out as planned.
IV
Readiness
73

74. As the costs and implications aggregate, this
therefore is the final stage at which you can
safely decide whether or not to proceed with
scaling in the way you expect.
IV
Readiness
74

75. Key
Factors
Organisational
Design
Optimal Size
Decision
Making
Resistance to
Change
Knowledge
Technology
Infrastructure
IV
Readiness
75

76. Does your organisational design aid scaling?
IV
Readiness
76
Organisational
Design

77. Do you understand the optimal size
and structure needed for achieving your
chosen impact and scaling targets?
1. Skills
2. Capacity
3. Teams
IV
Readiness
77
Optimal Size

78. Is your organisation dependent on a
single/primary decision maker for operations
and management?
&
If so, do they have spare capacity to manage the
design and implementation needed for scaling?
IV
Readiness
78
Decision
Making

79. Are you and your teams/staff aware of,
and bought into, the changes and challenges
that scaling will bring?
IV
Readiness
79
Resistance to
Change

80. Does your organisation have a strong
knowledge sharing and learning culture?
IV
Readiness
80
Knowledge

81. Do you have a capable and scalable
technology infrastructure?
IV
Readiness
81
Technology

82. Is your current physical infrastructure capable
of supporting the organisational growth that is
likely to result from scaling?
IV
Readiness
82
Infrastructure

83. If the costs of organisational readiness seem
too high, you could consider sharing and re-use
strategies, or limit your scale ambitions to
prevent overloading your physical
and logistical resources.
IV
Readiness
83

84. You could also adjust your design to increase
independence and autonomy of partners or
local units to reduce the load on your
organisation, or simply decide to let others
scale your impact for you by making your model
replicable and openly available for them to
independently use and apply.
IV
Readiness
84

85. If you need further help with addressing
readiness, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Readiness to Scale: A Guide To
Scaling Social Business”
IV
Readiness
85

86. V
Implementation
86

87. The 5th and final step of the Framework is to
plan the journey and manage implementation
when scaling.
V
Implementation
87

88. Everything up to this point falls under the
category of due diligence, not only to help you
adjust your design to work on a larger scale,
but also to decide whether or not to scale at all.
From here on however, your primary
challenges will relate to the practicalities of
execution (implementation).
V
Implementation
88

89. A robust scaling plan will be essential
if you are to be successful in raising
the support needed to scale.
It will also be critical in helping you scale
without all the usual growing pains that
organisations typically suffer from.
V
Implementation
89

90. For this you will need
an implementation roadmap
V
Implementation
90

91. A roadmap is an outline of all the different
activities that comprise implementation, laid
out in dependency order, over whatever
timeframe you believe is sensible for execution.
It is a useful visual aid for planning, and if
converted into a Gantt chart, should become
your primary implementation management tool.
V
Implementation
91

92. The process of scaling can be broken into
five phases ...
V
Implementation
92

93. Key
Phases
1
Planning
2
Resourcing
3
Set-up
4
Execution
5
Impact
Monitoring
& Quality
Control
93
V
Implementation

94. While these phases have a chronological order
of dependency, in practice various aspects
can and do happen in parallel.
For clarity however, it is worth starting with a
plan that clearly shows dependencies and
delineates between the phases.
V
Implementation
94

95. This is the first stage of implementation,
primarily involving diligence around purpose,
applicability, transferability and organisational
readiness.
If you've worked your way through the previous
sections of this framework, you should already
have most of the planning phase covered.
V
Implementation
95
1
Planning

96. Once you’ve got your planning done, the next
phase is to find the necessary resources
1. Financial
2. Human
3. Technological
4. Infrastructural
V
Implementation
96
2
Resourcing

97. Set-up is where you get your operations ready
and make them scalable.
V
Implementation
97
3
Set-up

98. Execution involves delivering and rolling out
impact and revenues on your chosen scale.
V
Implementation
98
4
Execution

99. Once you’ve scaled up, and your new operations
are reaching need and servicing demand, you
will reach the final stage, which essentially
involves maintaining quality and supporting
your planned rate of expansion.
V
Implementation
99
5
Impact
Monitoring
& Quality
Control

100. When planning implementation, you may
need to break your activities into a series of
work-streams that reflect different
operational aspects ...
V
Implementation
100

101. Core
Implementation
Streams
Strategy &
Planning
Finance and
Fund-raising
Human
Resources
Infrastructure
Technology
Internal &
External
Communications
Partner
Management
Handover
Materials
(as necessary)
Training /
Advisory
(as necessary)
Impact
Monitoring &
Quality Control
V
Implementation
101

102. You can then visualise the phases and
work-streams as a roadmap
to support both communication and
time planning ...
V
Implementation
102

103. Sample Implementation Roadmap
Implementation
Source – PATRI Framework for Scaling Social Impact © Rizwan Tayabali, 2014

104. Once you have the roadmap visualised,
you can convert it into a formal Gantt Chart for
managing implementation, and combine it with
your business plans or funding proposals for
added robustness.
V
Implementation
104

105. If you need further help with addressing
implementation, more detail is provided in a
linked presentation called ...
“Implementation at Scale: A Guide To
Scaling Social Business”
V
Implementation
105

106. To summarise, many of the pitfalls in scaling
can be overcome simply by considering the
factors involved. However, it isn’t necessary to
address them all to prohibitive levels of detail.
If done reasonably well, in combination with a
good roadmap, you should be able to inspire
confidence both within your organisation and
also amongst the supporters that you need to
back your scaling endeavours.
106
PATRI
Framework

107. ©Rizwan Tayabali, 2014
107