The level of funding needed to enable a process of scaling up to occur is perhaps the most obvious prerequisite. Yet few donors are willing to sustain commitment to an organisation as they undergo the “trial and error” process of expanding their operations, and these challenges are arguably more arduous in the field of HIV/AIDS. Indeed, the proliferation of highly visible pilot projects that the World Bank (1999) among others criticises, is at least partly due to the lack of available funding to replicate these on a larger scale. But equally important as the level of funding is the time-scale of support, if one considers the time needed to prepare for scaling up, including conceiving and communicating ideas, encouraging participation of beneficiaries, adapting to diverse contexts and preparing the organisation for change. Given the time demands and major institutional change scaling up requires, there is a need for donors to shift from short-term project finance to more longer term institutional support.47 Uvin refers to the simultaneous need to “scale up the grassroots and scale down the summit” (by which he means international organisations) – that is, that they should “adopt structures and modes of operation that allow local communities and NGOs to build their conceptual, operational and institutional capacities” (Uvin 1995). This suggests the importance of providing sufficient resources and time to encourage reflection and learning, even when these do not necessarily translate into short-term, demonstrable outputs. Funding for expansion should take into consideration not only the external, programme context but also the institutional prerequisites to scaling up, and the kind of intensive internal work required, such as conducted by KANCO, for example.

47 This view is endorsed by the latest World Bank report on HIV/AIDS in Africa which states that: “Sporadic or isolated activities are ineffective unless they are evaluated as pilot activities and revised and expanded based on what has been learned. To maximise their impact, programmes should be implemented for long periods based on need rather than on funding cycles.” (World Bank 1999: 24)

In many cases, the nature of donor funding may even complicate and undermine the scaling up process of NGOs. For example, it may contribute to the lack of planning of scaling up by making a sudden rash of funds available that has to be spent in a finite period. As the director of ASI put it: funders caused “chaos” with the rapid pace of expansion they imposed on that organisation. The experience of ASI suggests that donors did not envision the scaling up process as such, leading to a “feast and famine” financial situation at ASI. As they put it: “There were periods of rapid growth and periods of no growth due to erratic funding…A more comprehensive evaluation of the scaling up process was difficult because no funding was available for the process itself. This made it difficult to assess the overall progress at the early stages.”

In some cases, where organisations receive funds from more than one donor, which may be the best way of reducing the risk of relying on a sole source, there may be competing objectives of programming imposed on the organisation. This was noted, for example, in the case study of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.

A more fundamental critique of donors – and indeed other external agencies – is that they may ignore existing community initiatives to address HIV/AIDS and even – unknowingly or not – undermine them (Foster papers). The risk of such a trend is, if anything, greater with the increased influx of resources devoted to HIV/AIDS.

At the same time, the pressure to scale up should not be applied indiscriminately across the board. As mentioned earlier, not all organisations or aspects of programmes are amenable to scaling up. Donors and NGO-support organisations should not necessarily focus on selecting the most professional organisations for support, but should recognise that a range of types and sizes of organisations are complementary to one another and thus a portfolio of different types of investments at varying levels may be more effective.48 Similarly, within individual organisations it is conceivable that certain activities are more amenable than others to scaling up or require different time-frames for scaling up. Instead of concentrating all its resources and staff time on scaling up all interventions, an organisation could, for example, scale up a particular intervention while leaving time, energy and creativity to experiment at a pilot-level with other activities. Thus, while there are synergies to be gained in scaling up several HIV/AIDS programmes together (UNAIDS 2000), which may also yield greater economies of scope, these may be better gained through complementarities among organisations rather than single organisations scaling up several demanding activities simultaneously.49

48 I am grateful to David Hulme for suggesting this “portfolio” approach.

49 This discussion draws on comments on this publication by Chris Castle.