BIGGER ISN’T NECESSARILY BETTER

BIGGER ISN’T NECESSARILY BETTER

(Title’s inspiration from “It’s Not All About Growth for Social Enterprises” by Kimberly Dasher Tripp, January 21, 2013 – HBR Blog Network)

Meherban Education Movement (MEM) started its pilot project – an inclusive school, almost a decade ago with four children keeping the mix of special and normal to a perfect half. It was a tough challenge for the founding team to launch, establish and sustain this innovative mode of education with a lot of resistance from all stakeholders, the project being first of its kind in the country. At present, the school is running successfully imparting education to more than one hundred students, with the same composition of its student-mix. But, when it comes to quantifying evaluation on the basis of number of school branches, geographical presence, upgradation to the level of college, amount of funding and recognitions, unfortunately MEM does not carry much weight.

The impact of MEM is very visible if it is measured in terms of the attention and retention of the target population and the quality of difference this project has been making to the lives of special and needy children of the area since its inception. If impact is measured on a quantitative scale then the performance of MEM might not be very well appreciated but if the scale is quality then it has performed very well. This fact can be supported by another very prominent and important factor – sustainability. In case MEM was not performing well, counting the numbers only, then it would have not sustained over a decade. Whereas, MEM has not only sustained but is growing every year. Based on this finding I would like to add SUSTAINABILITY as the EIGHTH organizational capability to the seven listed by Paul Bloom’s in his blog “How to Take a Social Venture to Scale – June 18, 2012 HBR Blog Network”.

The following pictures are of students studying at Mehereban Institute of Inclusive Education, Lahore, Pakistan:

Is there a quantitative scale that could measure the impact of MEM’s Inclusive School on the lives of these less-fortunate special children or to the quality of life of their parents? Can the feedback these eyes are providing be translated in terms of numbers? It will not only be hard but also misleading to evaluate performance of a social enterprise in mere numbers because for social enterprises there is much more to scale their growth. I strongly agree with Kimberly Tripp when he talks about scaling the impact of a social enterprise, and would conclude by saying that neither bigger is necessarily better nor small is necessarily worse. Evaluation of commercial and social enterprises cannot be done on a common scale because the very spirit of foundation of the two types of organizations is different, and the two derive their ability to grow and sustain form very different sources.