Brad Rourke

Against "Scale"

The White House announced yesterday that the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation “would fan out to every region in the country” (according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy) to search for worthy recipients of the $50 million social innovation fund created by the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The idea is to find and grow worthy programs and help them scale up.

I’ve been hearing that word “scale” a lot lately, I think because it sounds exciting and technological. Ten years ago everyone in the community benefit sector — nonprofits and foundations — talked about “replicating” programs. I think that word was popular because it sounded smart.

Either way, it amounts to a similar idea: If you think it through properly, and apply money properly, you can take what works in one context and make it work elsewhere.

Purple Mushrooms by Flickr user c.j.b
"Purple Mushrooms" by Flickr user c.j.b

It’s a reasonable thought and in many cases it’s probably right. But there’s something missing.

To me, the “scale” and “replication” terminology is too mechanistic and doesn’t capture what is at play. It implies that with a big enough brain you can do just about anything.

But good programs grow — organically. Like mushrooms. Instead of going around and try to find them to give them more funding, we perhaps ought to look more at creating the right conditions for them to grow and spread from place to place. In some cases this might be funding, but in other cases (perhaps more cases) it might be leadership training, or some other catalytic intervention.

We’re in danger, in the policy world, of being too clever by half. Indeed, I am growing to fear that we’ll look back on this period as “that time when we were overoptimistic about the power of our plans and technologies.”

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3 responses to “Against "Scale"”

  1. Rebecca Townsend

    I appreciated this critique & suggestion. From my background as an ethnographer, I am drawn to the particular, to noticing the differences in cultures and communication. What works in one place may not work in another; any attempt at “sharing” good ideas or practices ought to be cautious about generalizing so much that the particulars get lost.

  2. bradrourke

    Hey, Margaret, thanks so much for the note!

    Yes, it was a pretty star-spangled evening up here, that’s for sure.

  3. Margaret Holt

    Brad, I’m glad you are talking about this (scale) because it reminds me of the old false beliefs in “trickle down”, but we all know that not much of anything ever trickles down. I think a related challenge is that so many people think they have to come up with something really novel, really new, and somehow it doesn’t seem to make sense to take some of the best ideas out there and build on them. I always have found the metaphor of standing on the shoulders of others to be useful – that is, we recognize dynamics and dimensions of the work of others that has applicability and authenticity for our work and we adapt and adjust it to fit our circumstances and situations to make it work well in our contexts. Hope the 4th was star-spangled for you.

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