What happens when a non-profit stops asking how it can do more, and starts asking how it can help others do more?
For non-profit organisations, scale is conventionally understood as expansion: more beneficiaries, more geographies, more programmes. Yet, the more consequential question is a different one: Can a non-profit’s proven model become part of an impact vehicle that already exists?
For eGov Foundation, that question emerged from a limitation in its own success.
Founded in 2003, eGov initially worked as a technology-for-good organisation, building digital solutions for government departments. Its early work in southern India established credibility with state governments and demonstrated that a small, mission-driven technology team could reliably deliver systems within complex public institutions. However, the model worked slowly, project by project, as eGov built solutions through individual government engagements.
By 2016–17, the organisation began asking whether this approach could ever produce the scale of change it dreamt of. The answer lay partly in looking beyond its own work.
The leadership team studied examples such as Aadhaar and UPI, where digital public infrastructure had enabled systems to spread far beyond the capacity of any single organisation. eGov began moving away from building bespoke solutions for individual states, and towards creating open, reusable and interoperable infrastructure that could be adopted across jurisdictions.
This meant that eGov could no longer be the organisation that built and implemented the solutions.
Instead, it began developing an ecosystem in which governments, market actors and other partners could use its platform to deliver services, while eGov focused on enabling that ecosystem. This marked a fundamental shift in its position: from being an organisation brought in to provide technology, to one that could work alongside government to define problems, shape solutions and enable the wider ecosystem needed to solve them.
Its experience in Punjab provided an early proof point. Within 90 days, around 100 urban local bodies went live on systems covering property tax, public grievances and trade licensing. When eGov attempted to replicate the approach in Bihar, Uttarakhand and Mizoram, however, progress was much harder. The difference was not the technology. It was the presence—or absence—of committed government champions.
The lesson was that a proven model cannot simply be transplanted. It has to find ownership within the system that will carry it.
eGov therefore invested in the capacity to work with an ecosystem rather than simply deliver a solution to it.
It built partnership-management capabilities, worked with firms such as PwC and EY that could implement and customise the platform, and partnered with organisations that already possessed domain expertise in areas such as sanitation and public health. The organisation slowly became an enabler rather than the sole implementer.
Rocket Learning's journey illustrates the same shift in a very different field.
Founded in 2019 with an ambition to improve early childhood development for 50 million children by 2030, Rocket Learning initially built its model around technology. Parents and anganwadi workers received bite-sized learning content through WhatsApp. By the end of its second year, the organisation was already working across three states, reaching more than 1,00,000 parents and children, and 15,000 teachers.
Technology provided extraordinary reach. However, as Rocket Learning expanded, it discovered the limits of reach without relationships.
To truly change early childhood learning outcomes, the organisation would need to complement digital engagement with people on the ground. Rocket Learning began deploying field coordinators in every district, who trained anganwadi workers, worked with government staff, gathered feedback and helped translate digital interventions into behavioural change. The field team grew rapidly, eventually becoming a substantial part of an organisation of nearly 600 people.
By 2023, Rocket Learning began moving from implementation towards institutionalisation. Rather than simply expanding its own footprint, it worked with district, state and national administrations to help governments adopt and adapt its solutions. Dedicated Project Management Units were created alongside government counterparts, while a policy and advocacy team translated field learning into playbooks, implementation frameworks and replicable models.
For non-profits, making change happen through partnering with government organisations requires more than a successful programme. It requires documentation, training, policy engagement, and understanding government workflows. It requires designing systems that can survive even if the organisation was to step away.
eGov pursued a similar logic through its eGov Academy, which makes the organisation's accumulated knowledge and technology practices available to governments, practitioners and ecosystem partners. The ambition is to allow others to use and apply those capabilities without requiring eGov's direct operational involvement.
Scale, then, is not always about making an organisation bigger. That can be an uncomfortable idea for non-profits, for organisations are often rewarded for the size of their programmes, the number of people they directly reach, or the number of geographies in which they operate.
Systems change requires a different kind of ambition. eGov moved from being a technology vendor to building public digital infrastructure that others could use. Rocket Learning went from being an implementation partner to helping governments institutionalise early childhood development approaches within their own systems.
Neither model depends entirely on the organisation continuing to deliver everything itself. This is a key idea that emerges in our report Capacity, The Impact Multiplier: Why Investing in Institutions Delivers Lasting Change. Scaling a proven model requires more than demonstrating that it works. It requires the institutional capabilities to document what works, build partnerships, influence policy, transfer knowledge and enable others to carry the model forward.
For funders too, this raises a question. Instead of only asking how many people an organisation reached, it is time to ask, “Who else can now do what this organisation has learnt to do?” That may be the more meaningful measure of scale.
This is the first in a ten-part newsletter series exploring ideas from our report Capacity, The Impact Multiplier.
In our next edition, we’ll turn to communication, and ask if it can really be treated as a peripheral function for non-profits whose work places them continuously in the public eye.