Implement the Intervention

Capacity Building

Identify and prepare needed resources.

 Delivering an intervention often requires personnel, funding, physical products, partnerships, and more. Without a clear understanding of the resources needed for proper implementation, an organization is unlikely to achieve its desired results. As part of the implementation process, it's crucial to measure the amount of necessary resources in the first iteration and appropriately assess how those needs might change as the efforts increase. As new challenges arise with the intervention, the need to secure additional resources is likely. However, by considering the logistics of capacity building now rather than later, the intervention will be better situated to grow.

What resources will your intervention require?

Funding & Legal Structures

Be strategic about funding streams.

 Understanding how to best secure funding in accordance with an organization's legal structure is a key part of successful implementation. Different sectors have distinct sources of funding, which can greatly impact a social problem-solving organization’s (SPSO) financial sustainability and growth potential.

Public sector organizations typically rely on taxpayer funding, government appropriations, and public grants, which provide stable but sometimes inflexible funding streams. Private sector entities may depend on investors, sales, venture capital, or social impact bonds, offering potentially unlimited growth but requiring profitability and returns on investment. Nonprofits are often more reliant on donations, grants, and fundraising, which can create financial uncertainty but also provide access to special tax exemptions and support.

As part of the implementation phase, develop a plan for how to secure and distribute the funding needed to sustain the intervention and support organizational goals. Set specific funding targets or estimates and clearly define where those funds are likely to come from.

What is the best course of action to secure funding for your intervention?

Scaling the Intervention

If your intervention is successful, consider scaling it.

 Scaling an intervention can amplify its efforts, extend benefits to more people, address additional facets of a problem, or even replicate successful models in new contexts.

However, scaling is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It requires thoughtful consideration of an organization’s goals, the nature of the problem they’re addressing, and the unique needs of the population. There are three primary approaches to scaling an intervention: depth, reach, and replication.

Depth: Deepening an intervention means focusing on a new aspect of the same social problem and developing a means to address it. Intervention efforts remain committed to the same population or geographic location but now extend to more than one facet of the problem, thereby deepening the scale.

Reach: Broadening reach increases the number of individuals receiving the program within the same community. Expanding the number of people receiving the product or services highlights what additional resources are needed and how the intervention functions at a higher capacity.

Replication: Replication involves taking a successful intervention or model and implementing it in new geographical locations, different communities, or even across different cultural contexts. This approach broadens the scope of the interventions' impact by reproducing successful methods, strategies, and operational models in other settings where similar problems exist.

Each pathway offers new insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the intervention with practical steps toward improvement.

What type of scaling would best fit your intervention?