iScale is a social enterprise network of organizations and people that develops, promotes, applies, and shares innovations for scaling impact.

The world is rife with complex, unyielding, and often brutal problems that cross all kinds of boundaries—geographical, sectoral, and functional—from the local to the global levels. These problems range in fields from finance to health to environment to human rights to corruption. Meanwhile, an ever broader range of stakeholders in government, private sector and civil society are creatively working to address these problems. iScale works around the world from the local to the global levels to dramatically scale the impact of these efforts.

Just released: An Advocacy Toolkit for the Campaign to End Pediatric HIV/AIDS

iScale and the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA) have just released a toolkit that provides step-by-step guidance for those who want to replicate the Campaign to End Pediatric HIV/AIDS (CEPA) in their countries.  iScale's Impacts Planning, Assessment, Reporting, and Learning (IPARL) framework which links together strategic planning, monitoring and learning (for real-time adjustment) and impact evaluation, features prominently in the toolkit.  The toolkit is based on iScale and GAA's CEPA work, but it can be easily applied to other advocacy settings. For more information download the toolkit or contact us.

iScale welcomes Rashmir Balasubramaniam

iScale welcomes Rashmir Balasubramaniam as the Senior Steward for Market Innovations. Prior to iScale, Rashmir spent five years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she led a cross-sector initiative on private sector engagement and market development and drove strategy and built and managed a diverse portfolio of grants for the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Program. With 15 years of experience across the public and private sectors, Rashmir has led and managed a variety of cross-sectoral development projects, including work on malaria, reproductive health, human resources for health, and institutional development.

Campaign to End Pediatric HIV/AIDS is underway!

Various stakeholders are making final preparations for the rapidly approaching XVIII International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Vienna, Austria. Among them are the partners of the Campaign to End Pediatric HIV/AIDS (CEPA). Having undertaken months of planning in partnership with Global AIDS Alliance (GAA) and iScale, the Campaign is fully underway in Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia and is already making progress.

During the Campaign's careful planning process, iScale has supported CEPA to develop an Impacts Planning, Assessment, Reporting, and Learning (IPARL) framework through which partners have developed and aligned strategic objectives at various levels, from local to global, to scale up prevention of parent-to-child transmission (PPTCT+) and pediatric diagnosis, treatment, and care programs. The IPARL framework will now help Partners to track Campaign progress in real-time and make adjustments along the way to most effectively achieve the Campaign's goals. Recently, iScale and GAA used their CEPA planning experience to collaborate on the the development of a CEPA advocacy toolkit, which provides a step-by-step guide to those interested in replicating CEPA in other countries. This toolkit will be made available for the first time in Vienna during the IAC.

Development is not an intervention presentation

Fred Carden, Director of Evaluation for the International Development Research Centre, recently presented (link to video, also embedded below) during the Witwatersrand Virtual Conference on Methodology in Programme Evaluation.

The content of the presentation draws heavily from iScale's Impact Evaluation for Development Effectiveness project. A full paper further elaborating these ideas will be available shortly.

Recently completed Comparative Constituency Feedback Survey for transnational social change network

Keystone, in partnership with iScale, has recently completed a pilot project to gather comparative feedback from constituents across nine transnational social change networks. Keystone and iScale helped the nine networks develop and administer a common questionnaire that explored the value proposition of networks. Each network was provided with an individual report (see a sample comparative survey report) that detailed their specific results and how they compared to the rest of the cohort. The project is intended to help increase networks' understanding of their relationships with their constituents and identify areas for learning and improvement.

As part of the project, Keystone and iScale have also produced an overall survey report, which anonymously compares the survey results across all nine networks (see also the annex with the survey questionnaire). The survey will be repeated in 2010 with many of the members of the current cohort continuing to participate. Other networks are also invited to join.

Peacebuilding Project

Prompting stakeholders to engage in strategic conversations by examining the roles, relationships, and linkages of organizations working to address conflict. Read More

Strategic Mapping

Identifying high leverage points and creating broad understanding of how to take joint action in organizational networks by using mapping tools that reveal the underpinnings of the "system".

Read More

Impacts Community of Practice

Exploring the challenges networks face in measuring their impact and developing innovative solutions in a Community of Practice including representatives from various networks, evaluation experts and practitioners.

Read More

Global Finance Initiative

The global finance crisis is a unique opportunity to create a 21st century global financial system that responds to social, environmental, wealth generation and stability concerns. The GFI is about how to realize that.

Read More