During UN General Assembly week, Lively Minds and Spring Impact co-hosted a panel discussion on scaling non-profit organisations interventions with government, joined by Grand Challenges Canada, Elma Philanthropies, TaRL Africa and the African Center for Early Childhood Development. Spring Impact shared insights from its research into what it takes to scale with government, drawing on 12 case studies across health, education, WASH and rural transport.
When panellists were asked to name the biggest gap between what scale requires and what philanthropy rewards, the answer that came up unanimously was simple: time. Scaling with government is typically a long journey, often 10 years or more. Most grant cycles, milestones and success metrics are built for something much shorter.
Why scaling with government takes time
Spring Impact’s research found that government adoption depends on three gates opening at the same time: Is this a genuine political priority? Can government actually budget for it, given procurement rules, staffing caps and rigid budget cycles? And does a viable system exist to deliver it? Getting all three to align seldom happens quickly, and it very rarely happens on a funder’s timetable.
Governments also weigh risk as heavily as impact: financial and delivery risk, but also personal political risk for the officials involved. Trust is built slowly, by non-profit organisations that present themselves as complementary to government, not above it, and that are prepared to learn and adapt alongside government.
Then there is ownership. Only one of the 12 cases in the research preserved the non-profit organisation’s solution largely intact at adoption. Most were substantially reshaped so that they really met the need the government was seeking to address. Water for People‘s work in Rwanda started not by asking government to adopt its model, but by asking what problems the government was trying to solve. That kind of co-creation builds a deep partnership, but it cannot be rushed.
Progress is non-linear, and there is no clean exit
Time on its own is not enough; funding also needs to be flexible. Political windows open unexpectedly and close just as fast, and ministers change. TaRL Africa described flexible funding as the connective tissue that lets non-profit organisations plan across rigid grant cycles and act quickly when an opportunity appears. Its programmes have survived ministerial changes in Côte d’Ivoire and Zambia because they were embedded across policy, the school timetable, middle-tier officials and teachers. That depth of embedding takes years to build.
Rigid milestones can actively get in the way. Lively Minds shared how, in Ghana, funder deliverable deadlines clashed with the pace at which government could move, creating tension between the non-profit organisations and their government partners.
The panel also challenged the idea that non-profit organisations should “do themselves out of a job”. Alison Naftalin described non-profit organisations as ‘nimble’ and governments as ‘tankers.’ They play different roles that are mutually supportive, not interchangeable. This echoes Spring Impact’s earlier research on funding models, which found that organisations almost always retain an ongoing role in sustaining scale, even after government adoption. Funding built around a quick exit sets programmes up to fail.
