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Scaling Up Social Innovations
China Effective Philanthropy Multiplier
China Effective Philanthropy Multiplier is an open platform for scaling up philanthropic products. It was jointly developed by Narada Foundation, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, One Foundation and several other NPOs, businesses, and media. Since its establishment in November 2016, the Multiplier has been scaling up effective philanthropic products and solving social problems efficiently and accurately at scale through measures such as grant-making, connecting resources, capacity building, promotion of brands and experience sharing.
Drawing on previous experiences and genuine needs when scaling up philanthropic products, the Multiplier kept innovating and exploring effective methods to scale up the impact of high-quality philanthropic products and achieved substantial results in 2019.
Opening the Scaling Up Academy to Facilitate Capacity Building for Scaling up Philanthropic Products
According to our survey, the biggest obstacle for scaling up is NPOs’ lack of capacity. Consequently, alongside capacity building and training for our partners, the Multiplier set up the Scaling Up Academy to provide them with upgraded support on capacity building.
The Scaling Up Academy was opened in May 2019 to strengthen capabilities to scale up impact. Its values are ‘mission first, lifetime learning, and cooperation and sharing’. The academy delivers a capacity-building programme (including compulsory and optional modules) and tailored funding based on the findings from its Research on Scaling Up Impacts project.
At the end of May, the Scaling Up Academy started its core modules in Jinan. The three core modules - ‘Ultimate Methods and Scaling Strategies’, ‘Identifying and Building Organisational Skills’, and ‘Evaluation Mindset Amid Scaling Up’ were developed together with PwC China, Global Development Incubator (GDI) and the Yiyan Yixing team respectively. The ‘Ultimate Methods and Scaling Strategies’ module, grounded in the Multiplier’s Research on Scaling Up Impacts project, is the first-ever module on scaling up impact that bridged the gap in the sector.
Additionally, the academy provides four optional modules based on surveys of needs. They are ‘Implementing Organisation Management and Quality Control’, ‘Joint Fundraising’, ‘Leadership Improvement for Managers’, and ‘Product Upgrade’. These modules were developed and opened for students from the end of 2019.
Monitoring and evaluation are essential for upgrading and demonstrating the effectiveness of philanthropic products. In 2019, the Scaling Up Academy worked together with the Yiyan Yixing team to carry out the Monitoring and Evaluation Capacity Building workshop and one-to-one consulting services to assist eight partners in clarifying the cause-effect chain and developing self-evaluation plans for their projects. The academy will also produce the Self-Evaluation Casebook and Guidelines for Self-Evaluation to benefit more NPOs.
Another vital function of the Scaling Up Academy is to provide tailored support for its partners. In 2019, the Scaling Up Academy selected eight partners to supply comprehensive one-to-one support, facilitating them in developing their scaling aims and action plans for the coming three years as well as offering annual funding of 300,000 RMB and one-to-one coaching, so that they will be able to break through the bottleneck and scale up their impact. Additionally, small funds were granted to each partner to enable them to learn about scaling up and build up their capacity.
Feedback from Partner
The Scaling Up Academy inspired us tremendously not only through the courses but also by continuously delivering subsequent targeted monitoring and evaluation services. The Modes of Scaling Up and Self-Assessment Design allowed us to update our products and aims. After this year, our understanding of scaling up methods have been significantly improved. Moreover, we achieved many breakthroughs in planning to upgrade our products.
-TANG He, Programme Officer, RiverWatcher
Amplifying the Role of Partner Hubs to Advance Successful Implementation of Effective Philanthropic Projects
The successful reproduction and promotion of philanthropic products depend on productive collaborations with local partners. The Multiplier uses the approach of philanthropic product roadshows, which allow face-to-face introductions of products to local government departments such as the civil affairs bureau, Women’s Federations, and Communist Youth League, our partner hubs, and local NPOs. The parties can negotiate the way to introduce our products according to specific local needs.
In 2019, there were 14 roadshows, including ten at a provincial level (first ever roadshows in Tianjin and Shanxi) and four at a city/county level. Thirty-six partners and over 1,600 NPOs across the country participated in the roadshow and achieved 1,363 initial cooperation proposals. According to our survey, the overall satisfaction rate of the participating NPOs and hubs is above 90%.
The Multiplier also emphasises finding the right partners to implement its products. Apart from the roadshows, it created courses on MOOC for individual products to find partners and produced short videos for 21 philanthropic products for online promotion. The online campaign attracted over 1,300 inquiries for cooperation and reached a success rate of 39% in getting its products off the ground.
The partner hubs are essential for the Multiplier, serving as core participants in the roadshows, a source of new philanthropic products and a significant force in building local philanthropic ecosystems. They play an active role in facilitating the accurate allocation of resources by local government, local foundations, businesses, and the general public. The Multiplier gained six new partner hubs in 2019. For these partner hubs, the Multiplier provided small funds, organised study trips, and analysed the internal logic and motivating mechanisms of the hub-driven construction of regional nonprofit ecosystems.
The partner hubs lent their expertise on local exhibitions of Multiplier’s philanthropic products, conducted online cooperation schemes, promoted the implementation of the products and raised awareness of the Multiplier. Lechuang Charity Development Center of Hunan opened a ‘project supermarket’ featuring mainly products of the Multiplier in a local incubator for children’s services social organisations. Yunnan Heart to Heart Center’s applet The Yunnan Multiplier Product Exhibition Hall enables online one-stop browsing of all the products. Inner Mongolia Ordos Together has continuously advanced the Ejin Horo Banner party-building Micro Facts of People’s Livelihood project and sponsored the implementation costs of Multiplier’s products. The above measures notably got the philanthropic products off the ground more efficiently in various regions.
Diverse Resources for Effective Philanthropy Projects
The scaling up of philanthropic products requires support for funding, marketing, and professional consultancy. The Multiplier strives to fully exploit its resource pooling skills and attract more resource providers to join the platform to help effective philanthropic products to overcome hurdles regarding resources in the process of scaling up.
Maximising the effective use of particular advantages of its co-founders, strategic partners, and resource providers, the Multiplier set up five special committees in 2019 including a product committee, a fundraising committee, and a transmission committee to speed up the scaling up of high-quality products in a more targeted manner.
After continuous exploration, the Multiplier and a number of partners developed a few unique joint funding models, for example, the ‘Flying Against the Wind - De Facto Orphan Assistance Plan’ jointly funded with China Foundation for Poverty; the transmission and fundraising of philanthropic products with Tencent Foundation; the core modules of the Scaling Up Academy with PwC China; and the scaling-up research project with China Merchants Charitable Foundation.
The Multiplier Brought Together Various Resources to Provide Partners with Fundraising and Branding Support on the 2019 Tencent 99 Charity Day
During the Tencent 99 Charity Day, the Multiplier, together with one of its co-founders Tencent Foundation, put up a special topic ‘Gathering Kindness and Connecting Love’ on the front page of the Tencent Charity website to raise funds for a collective of 19 philanthropic products from the platform. The cover photos of all these projects are marked with the legend ‘Product of China Effective Philanthropy Multiplier’ for easy recognition by the browsers. Additionally, the platform worked with Narada Hotel Group to display a welcome card with its products in over 7,100 guest rooms of 28 hotels in 12 cities covering the provinces Hainan, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Jiangxi and Shandong to enable a better understanding of the products and encourage donations. Together with Ergeng Video Platform, the Multiplier and its product providers participated in the 2019 Shanghai City of Design and STDecaux Annual Charity Exhibition and displayed advertisements on popular locations such as Shanghai South Railway Tube Station, Beijing Qianmen Street Bus Stop and Lama Temple Bridge Bus Stop. The 99 Charity Day Advertisements were also published on Caixin Weekly and China Reform magazine. The Multiplier, together with WeWork, held campaigns to encourage public understanding and participation in philanthropy.
According to our statistics, the 19 Multiplier philanthropic products received over 26.5 million RMB from 650,000 people during the 99 Charity Day event.
Building Up Competency, and Levelling up Professional Performance in All Aspects
Apart from providing tailored support for our platform partners, the Multiplier kept building up its own competency by upgrading product selection mechanisms and services for its partners, carrying out research, and enhancing monitoring and evaluation of its own performance and that of its partners.
The selection of philanthropic products is an essential area of work for the Multiplier. In 2019, the Multiplier upgraded the mechanism for selecting products to be more professional, normative and standardised. Specifically, the Multiplier optimised the criteria, adding a review session by a review committee in the selecting process, improving all the survey tools and procedures, and employing a variety of evaluation methods in different contexts to ensure the quality of the philanthropic products.
The scaling up of philanthropic products is still a new topic without precedents in China. The Multiplier has been actively researching on this topic. Grounded in the 2018 Research on Scaling Up Impacts, the Multiplier collaborated with Shenzhen Yixiang in 2019 and conducted in-depth surveys on typical organisations including eight partner hubs, 35 local social organisations, and two regional charity associations in eight provinces/cities. The 2019 surveys focused on analysing the underlying logic and mechanism of the hub-driven regional philanthropy ecosystem to give stakeholders the framework and facts to understand the niche for hubs in the ecosystem, support their development, and advance the regional philanthropy cause.
In 2019, the Multiplier also dedicated itself to improving the monitoring and evaluation mechanism and procedures, and designed monitoring and evaluation tactics for its philanthropic products and products receiving comprehensive one-to-one support. Further to this, the Multiplier developed and tested a platform data system which laid down a solid foundation for the Multiplier to collect and analyse the progress of scaling up more effectively and monitoring and evaluating its performance more accurately.
Effects of Scaling Up Further Revealed and Multiplier’s Thought Leadership on The Rise
According to a statistical survey, by the end of 2019, all the 50 products of the Multiplier increased their capacity. Most products achieved a breakthrough in claiming leadership of their field and sustainable development.
In terms of increasing the scale of services, the 50 Multiplier products benefited 65 million people in over 1,600 regions in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Across the country, 8,607 social organisations, volunteer groups, public institutes, schools and other partners implemented these products in nearly 50,000 project sites.
Increasing Service Scale
Regarding thought leadership, 50% of the products made significant efforts or progress in policy advocacy. 42% of the products advanced in engaging the public. 16% of the products achieved breakthroughs in the business field. In total, the products received 36 prestigious awards or awards at a provincial level and made 16 other contributions to their particular fields.
Thought Leadership
In respect of sustainability, 50 products have raised 922,537,394 RMB and mobilised 706,578 volunteers since they started scaling up.
In 2019, 66% of the products achieved upgrades, 62% of the products enhanced scaling up tactics, 54% of the products further refined their organisational capacity, and 32% of the products improved their financial sustainability.
Sustainability
Additionally, the Multiplier further shared experiences on scaling up and stimulated knowledge exchange by funding and supporting the scaling up issue network and organising activities.
Under the framework of the ‘scaling up issue network’ jointly funded by Narada Foundation and One Foundation, the Multiplier supported CDR's workshops centring around 'policy advocacy' and 'issue network' to produce knowledge and carry out advocacy on this topic. The workshops produced 11 local scaling up cases as well as writing and translating 15 cases, tools and action frameworks.
In November 2019, the Multiplier held a parallel forum of China Foundation Forum titled The Scaling Up Mindset-Diverse Explorations and Sector Development in Fuzhou, inviting front-line nonprofit workers to share different models of scaling up philanthropic products, discussing with senior nonprofit workers and researchers the advantages and challenges of different models, and their contributions to the nonprofit ecosystem in China. It shared its research findings on Hub-driven Regional Philanthropy Ecosystems with over a thousand peers through the Lightning Release function of the forum, which highlighted the significant role of hubs in developing regional philanthropy ecosystems and attracted more support for the hubs.
The Path of Zero Domestic Violence after Joining China Effective Philanthropy Multiplier
Zero Domestic Violence is designed to combat domestic violence and joined the Multiplier in April 2018. It solves the problem that domestic violence victims have nowhere to turn to by creating a collective action mechanism by the police, women’s federations, social organisations, and more.
In 2019, Zero Domestic Violence project team improved its ability to scale up by participating in the core modules of the Scaling Up Academy as well as the Monitoring and Evaluation Workshop, the One-to-one Consulting and the Design Mindset Workshop organised by Multiplier’s strategic partner SAP. With the recommendation of the Multiplier, the team members attended ‘Tencent Charity Experience Officer’, which attracted much media attention and generated a series of interviews and reports. The project director WAN Fei, recommended by the Multiplier, entered the Xinhua Network’s 2019 Online Inspiring Figure award and was honoured as the Inspiring Figure in the Second Quarter of 2019. Moreover, the Zero Domestic Violence project took part in four roadshows and one online roadshow, receiving 43 cooperation proposals. The small fund from the Multiplier provided sufficient financial support for 23 training activities of the project team.
At the same time, Zero Domestic Violence has made significant progress in policy advocacy, social impact, scaling up impact, and organisational development. The project enabled the Hubei Province Public Security Bureau and the Provincial Women's Federation to issue the Implementation Measures for the Domestic Violence Warning System and encouraged the Hubei Province Public Security Bureau to adopt compulsory anti-domestic violence law enforcement training for new recruits and trained more than 2,000 police officers. The project has received a number of media reports including CCTV News 1 + 1, Xinhua News Agency, Southern Weekly, China Women's News, and Tencent News. It was also invited to attend the Gender Violence Prevention and Response event by UN Women to introduce China's anti-domestic violence experiences to international peers. The project has a more standardized management structure and three full-time employees up from one. Zero Domestic Violence was registered as a trademark and enjoys copyright protection. Up to now, the number of institutions implementing the project increased from 7 to 15, expanding from Hubei to Hunan and Inner Mongolia and helping 2,500 victims of domestic violence.
The Path of Zero Domestic Violence after Joining China Effective Philanthropy Multiplier
Influencing Policy
- Motivated the Hubei Province Public Security Bureau and the Provincial Women's Federation to issue the Implementation Measures for the Domestic Violence Warning System
- Published suggestions on law enforcement against domestic violence on the Internal Reference of Legal Daily under the Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs
- Published Rigorous and Standardised Law Enforcement Against Domestic Violence on Police Internal Reference
- Submitted a draft of National Written Admonition Template to China Law Society
Encouraged the Hubei Province Public Security Bureau to adopt compulsory anti-domestic violence law enforcement training for new recruits and trained more than 2,000 police officers
Social Advocacy
CCTV News 1 + 1
Xinhua News Agency
Southern Weekly
China Women's News
Tencent News
Diverse Media Coverage
-Attended the Gender Violence Prevention and Response event by UN Women to introduce China's anti-domestic violence experiences to international peers
- Shared anti-domestic violence experiences at CC Jiangtan, People.cn MOOC and Netease Open Courses
Multiplication
Number of Organisations Implementing the Project
7 2018; 15 2019
Covering 15 Regions
Helped 2,500 Victims of Domestic Violence
Projects Currently Carried out in Three Provinces - Hubei, Hunan and Inner Mongolia
Organisational Development
-WAN Fei, head of the organisation, has broadened his horizons and improved his ability in pooling resources
-Zero Domestic Violence was registered as a trademark and enjoys copyright protection.
-The organisation has three full-time employees up from one.
-More standardized management structure after the re-election of the board
The above efforts ensured the continuous rise in Multiplier’s thought leadership in the field of scaling up impact. In June 2019, HUANG Shuxian, the then Party Secretary and Minister of the Ministry of Civil Affairs paid tribute to the Multiplier’s work mode of promotion and replication effective nonprofit projects to solve the imbalance between supply and demand of these projects when visiting Hunan on a work trip. The Blue Book of Social Organizations (2019), published in July, took in the Multiplier’s research results of scaling up impacts which was the first time the blue book contained contents on this field. In August, at the invitation of the Department of Charity Promotion and Social Work of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the platform director shared its work concept with 20 online fundraising platforms. The Multiplier was also invited to share its experience on scaling up efficiency and solving social problems at scale at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) Annual Conference and received excellent feedback.