You have a solution you’re ready to scale.

You have a strategy on how you’ll scale it.

But….

You don’t know who you can trust to help you deliver your solution.

You’re not confident you can fund the necessary work.

Does that checklist look familiar?

After working with hundreds of organisations in 2024, we ran an in-depth analysis of the challenges in the way of scaling impact.

Finding the Right Partners was one of the top issues most organisations struggled with. Not just selecting them, but knowing what to look for from the start. When key factors like capacity and commitment weren’t considered early, partnerships often struggled to sustain or scale.

In fact partner selection was such a high priority issue that it was only surpassed by Financial Sustainability Challenges. This is a more permanent issue, many times requiring a bespoke and flexible approach.

Below, we have curated a selection of tools, based on our consulting experience, to help you start addressing these challenges and reduce the pressure of uncertainty.

1. Choosing the Right Partners

Partners are key for wide-reaching success. With the right partners you can scale your impact exponentially. However, too often there has been a loss of value (and resources invested) when partners couldn’t meet the long-term need.

What’s the solution? Spending more time in recruitment/setting up partnerships well from the get-go will likely save on wasted resources in the long run. First, we need to get clear on what we are looking for in a partner. Next, test our assumptions early, and then develop ways to activate and support them.

These three tools can help you create structure around this process, reducing risk, increasing mutual value and making the assessment of partner readiness a lot easier:

• Partner Profile Tool – For a structured approach to selecting the right partners.
• Value Propositions Tool – For showing the benefits and values your scale model offers to your partners.
• Support Packages Tool – For strengthening partnerships and supporting your partners more efficiently.

If you want even more structure, check out this collection:

Working with stakeholders – A curated selection of tools designed to take your through the process of finding the right partners, step-by-step.

To avoid wasted time & resources: Knowing what you need in a partner—and what you bring to the table—is just the starting point. Think of it as a hypothesis. To move forward, test it as early as you can: map out potential partners, reach out, and get their take on your value. Here’s how to do it.

2. Financial Sustainability Challenges

Financial sustainability remains a top concern. Even before recent global developments, many nonprofits struggled to secure consistent funding, forcing them to shift priorities or de-prioritise critical work.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, these resources can help you think about cost-effectiveness:

• Critical Rates & Rough Cost Calculator – For a grounded assumption of costs and clarity around what it will take to reach your goals.
• Collection on Financial Sustainability – To help you work out how you can scale your solution sustainably.

In addition, to help you navigate funding uncertainty, here are some useful resources from the sector: 

• Impact Funding Opportunities – March 2025 provides a curated list of funding and grant opportunities for purpose-driven organisations worldwide.
• NEID Global 2025 Resource List keeps a comprehensive log of funding opportunities, events, advocacy tools, and more.
• Unlock Aid, in collaboration with other partners, is raising an emergency fund to enable high-impact organisations with sustainable business models to get back to work to prevent unnecessary harm and disruption to millions of people.

If looking for even more support addressing challenges you’re facing on your way to scale, feel free to reach out to us.