The European Social Catalyst Fund (ESCF) has been established and co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and a Consortium involving the Genio Trust, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the King Baudouin Foundation. The ESCF was developed to help address the problem that many innovations have already been developed, tried and tested that could contribute to tackling priority social challenges across Europe, but they are not being scaled. Given the investment in the development of and testing of social innovations it is critical if we are to exploit the potential benefits of successful innovations that we find ways to scale those that represent solutions to societal problems being faced across our countries.
The purpose of the ESCF grants is to support (with grant funding and capacity building support) the development of detailed scaling plans aimed at reducing, or overcoming, priority social challenges. Priority was determined based on the Sustainable Development Goals and the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights.
Successful innovations do not scale by virtue of their potential to overcome or solve problems. Detailed planning is needed which requires support. The experience of the Consortium has been that financial support in the form of planning grants is very useful, particularly when combined with non-financial support. Investing in planning helps to identify what is realistically scalable and what is not and can serve to test the required stakeholder buy-in and identify potential funding opportunities. Most importantly, planning can allow for consultation with end-beneficiaries who have most to gain or lose from scaling an innovation.
Innovations were identified through a pan-European call and all eligible applications were evaluated against published criteria (
https://www.euscf.eu/applications(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)). Preference was given to innovations that had the most robust evidence of success and that aimed to reach the most significant scale. Each selected application received a planning grant of up to €100,000 along with capacity building support.
These plans developed as a result are offered as examples to illustrate the kinds of issues that need to be thought through if planning for scaling is to be realistic and robust. Investing in planning is a helpful way to identify what is scalable and where conditions exist that can support scaling. Planning enables sufficient information to be gathered to facilitate appropriate tailoring to specific locations. It can be challenging to manage potential trade-offs between adapting innovations to fit local circumstances, whilst retaining the essential ingredients of the innovation to ensure some predictability regarding outcomes.
The objectives of the ESCF are:
1. To provide financial support, guidance and information to proven social service innovations selected through a pan-European competition to develop implementation plans to upscale.
2. To stimulate a broader range of public sector, philanthropic and social investment collaborations that foster the scaling of social service innovations to meet social challenges across EU Member States aligned with the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights.
3. To produce exemplar plans across a range of priority social challenge areas that can be implemented to a substantial level of scale within two years.
4. Plans also must be relevant to the social and implementation challenges in at least five EU Member States, two of which will be Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs).
5. To develop and disseminate knowledge and skills on how to successfully plan the scaling of social service innovations.
6. To design a further phase of the European Social Catalyst Fund based on learning obtained in the process of achieving these objectives.
