Sustaining Social Science Impact at Scale

In the venture capital (VC) space, funding for a cutting-edge innovation or idea typically comes with deep guidance designed to support the team building something new to thrive in their industry. Though Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) is no VC, we too invest in teams focused on building out cutting-edge innovations or ideas, in the form of solutions to pressing social problems. Alongside the financial resources we invest in “impact labs” — solutions-focused collaborative research teams — we also provide funded teams with tailored support so they can thrive during, and beyond, our window of funding. 

After five years of investing upwards of $20M in impact labs and, along the way, learning what works best to support teams, we are delighted to expand our capacity-building offerings to funded teams. We’re making this shift in tandem with our recently reduced reporting requirements and are excited to unveil our updated non-financial support offerings below.

But first, who are we? SIL’s accelerating impact strategy is led by the Innovation & Partnerships (I&P) team. Our team also leads SIL’s regional coalition-building work on activating higher education to address the racial wealth divide in Silicon Valley. By practicing deep partnership work, we’re better able to advise labs on what it takes to cultivate thriving collaborations.

We believe that to accelerate and sustain impact at scale, teams need to:  

1. Bring a scaling mindset to the work and practice iterating along the way
2. Develop and sustain equitable partnerships
3. Invest in organizational development needs

On bringing a scaling mindset to partnership-based social science research:

Marina Kaneko, Scaling & Policy Program Manager shares: The hundreds of mission-driven nonprofit organizations I’ve interacted with as a scale strategy advisor over the years have each charted a unique path, but a consistent lesson I have learned is that scaling up your impact is rarely a direct path from point A to point B. 

Often, your original plan for replicating success doesn’t work perfectly in the real world, where time and resources are limited, stakeholders have competing priorities, and social issues are deeply embedded in systems that take sustained effort to change. This is why it’s so important to have a mindset of being open to learning as you go, and perseverance in the face of setbacks. SIL understands that the same is true on the path from science to impact. We are committed to supporting labs as they test different pathways to scale their impact during the course of their award, with the goal of sustaining those positive outcomes for long after.

On developing and sustaining equitable partnerships in social impact work: 

Jenny Kauffman, SIL’s new Partnerships Program Manager notes: Unlocking real change within entrenched and complex social issues requires close collaboration with partners who have intimate experience and knowledge of a given issue area. Our acceleration offerings support labs in developing and strengthening these critical partnerships to uplift the expertise of community leaders and existing movements that are aligned in creating positive change. I’m excited by the ambitious vision of our labs and their partners and believe SIL’s new offerings will elevate the unique strengths that exist both within and beyond the university.

On investing in organizational development needs:

Ana Tellez, Innovation & Partnerships Director says: The way that we organize ourselves at work — from how we onboard team members to whether we create space for shared leadership — in and of itself is social impact work. Every organizational development decision is an opportunity to deepen our practices in modeling a growth mindset and cultivating equitable partnerships. Our goal at SIL is to create opportunities for our funded teams to slow down and practice intentional hiring, team building, project management, and long-term planning so they can realize bigger and better social impact outcomes. 

Updated Support Offerings for Funded Teams

New for Stage 1 and Stage 2: Cohort Pathways to Social Impact Workshops 

The investments SIL makes are designed to spur teams to jointly frame social problems, generate and test hypotheses, and iterate on scalable solutions with their partners. 

To create space for research teams to explore a scaling mindset, equitable partnerships, and organizational development in this work together, we will host a full-day in-person workshop for our 2024 Stage 1 impact labs this fall, and a full-day in-person workshop for our 2024 Stage 2 impact labs in the coming year. We are intentionally designing space for research teams to gather based on our experience of when early-stage projects (Stage 1) and teams engaged in testing solutions (Stage 2) typically need deeper support. These cohort-wide workshops will offer opportunities for team members across our portfolio to connect and exchange insights. 

New Across All Stages and Cohorts: Opt-in Thematic Workshops  

To put greater control in the hands of our teams across cohorts and stages of funding, we will offer opt-in, thematic workshops. Depending on the topic, each workshop will present a mix of opportunities for PIs, lab Project Leads, and even partners to participate.  

These 90-minute sessions will be spaces for labs across stages and cohorts of funding to come together, creating more opportunities for peer support and deeper collaboration. 

We are currently developing a roster of workshops for labs across the following thematic areas: 

• Organizational Development & Adaptive Leadership
• Program & Project Management
• Managing Equitable Partnerships
• Strategic Growth & Scaling Impact
• Communications & Narrative Strategy

New Across All Stages: SIL convenings to showcase insights to potential funders and collaborators 

As cohorts of funded labs near the end of their award cycle, SIL will host annual convenings for teams to showcase the progress of their work to potential enabling partners, collaborators, and funders. Our vision is to work closely with teams well in advance of the event to help them invite the right folks “into the room” at these convenings, and hopefully catalyze new possibilities in the next phase of their impact work. 

Ongoing: Consulting services 

Each of our funded teams has access to SIL’s internal consulting services, which includes tailored support, desk research, and facilitation on topics including team development, partner engagement, scaling pathways, power and landscape mapping, narrative strategy, and more. 

This is the setting where we typically support teams in troubleshooting the operational side of establishing research-practice partnerships within the current university system. 

If a team faces a challenge or need that requires support beyond SIL’s capabilities, we can work with them to identify referrals to subject matter experts, and where possible, support their engagement with consultants through a small pool of professional assistance funding.

Ongoing: Kick-off support to each lab

At the start of each award cycle, SIL provides strategic communications support to announce our funded labs to the world, guidance on developing partnership agreements, technical assistance on what it takes to navigate effectively within Stanford’s many policies and divisions, and a library of resources and project management templates. As part of this kick-off support, funded teams work closely with our Communications & Outreach team to make sure their project and team are holistically represented on SIL’s website.

As our team moves into a fresh season of enhanced offerings, guided by a commitment to working in right-sized partnership with each and every one of our funded teams, we also look forward to learning from and alongside our labs.