Scaling Community of Practice

The Scaling Up Community of Practice (CoP) was founded in 2015 by Larry Cooley and Johannes Linn. The purpose of the CoP is to provide a platform for facilitating the sharing and cross-fertilization of ideas and best practices across sectors; developing and disseminating scaling knowledge and best practices; promoting a scaling mindset and practice for development and climate action; and mobilizing a wide range of host country and international perspectives (implementer, funder, academic and think tank) on issues related to scaling development and climate outcomes. Interest in scaling has greatly increased in recent years. The CoP has now more than 3000 members from over 400 institutions in the Global North and South (including national governments, multilateral development organizations, operating NGOs, grant making foundations, universities and think tanks) and from many different sectoral and thematic areas of professional expertise. The CoP is active in various ways: 1. It has organized seven annual workshops (the last three were virtual events with 11-12 webinars attended by close to 1000 participants each). 2. It operates ten sectoral and thematic Working Groups (education, health, agriculture, nutrition, social enterprises, youth employment, climate change, fragile states, monitoring and evaluation and mainstreaming scaling), which meet virtually for webinars. 3. It has issued 27 Newsletters to date, sharing news about scaling up research and practice from the Working Groups, from CoP members, and from the broader development community. 4. It has commissioned and posted numerous knowledge products, including working papers, policy briefs and blogs. 5. It currently is managing a major action-research initiative on mainstreaming scaling in funder organizations, designed to collect information and lessons on scaling in funder practice and to promote more and more systematic attention to scaling by funders.