Increasing Scale and Impact in a Brazilian Social Entrepreneurial Initiative

Social entrepreneurship offers innovative solutions to solve social challenges, but it tends to remain small and local. This paper aims at exploring the decision-making processes as an organisation navigates a scaling path, including the internal cracks and tensions in its structure. The enquiry was grounded on an intra-organisational case study, following the points of view of the actors themselves. It examined the awarded Instituto Dara in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which developed an intersectional method to tackle poverty alleviation. The organization has pursued scaling for over two decades and has experimented with multiple strategies, including networking, dissemination, social franchise, licensing, and government consultancies. The research found that the scaling process has been flexible and contingent on opportunities and resources that presented themselves, as opposed to a carefully considered strategy that may be more common among for-profit enterprises. It led to a reconceptualization of the link between scaling and impact.