Theory of Scale
The social sector has developed real sophistication about interrogating its own assumptions. Donor-centrism, overhead ratios, power dynamics in grantmaking: these have all been named, examined, and in some cases meaningfully challenged. But scale has escaped that scrutiny almost entirely. It arrives in pitch decks, funder briefs, and consultant proposals as an unexamined virtue, the assumed destination toward which all serious work is pointed.
This series of essays asks the sector to subject scale to the same rigor it has learned to apply to everything else. Drawing on ecology, economics, evolutionary biology, and the theory of change tradition the sector already knows, these essays work through what scale actually requires, where it breaks down, and what a genuine theory of scale might look like in practice.
This is not an argument against growth. It is an argument for honesty about what growth costs, what it requires, and where its limits lie. If you are an executive director, a fundraiser, or a sector leader who has sat across from that pitch and nodded along, this series is for you.
