WSUP: Getting Ready for Scale

As part of this Scaling Snapshot, see also WSUP’s Organizational Overview, Key Scaling Strategies, and Pearls of Scaling Wisdom. You can find the full snapshot PDF here.

Photo courtesy of WSUP

In 2005, seven organizations came together to form Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), with the mission to create sustainable systems for pro-poor urban water and sanitation service delivery. WSUP registered in the United Kingdom, with the UK’s international development arm, The Department of International Development (DFID), helping to guide the concept and provide initial funding. From the start, WSUP brought together private and public sector approaches by working with local governments, utilities, and SMEs to demonstrate how provision of WASH services to the urban poor could be more efficient, effective, and profitable and by enabling local partners to take on the work themselves.

Key success factors in positioning WSUP for scale included:

• CREATING A ROBUST MODEL: BEGINNING WITH FLEXIBLE CAPITAL. From inception, WSUP received a strong base of funding from DFID. This flexible funding supported WSUP’s entire business plan, not just a particular project, which allowed WSUP flexibility to test, learn, and iterate.3 In addition to financial flexibility, this early funder support provided important credibility and connections.
• PROVING DEMAND: EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS AND BECOMING A TRUSTED PARTNER. When WSUP began work in Madagascar, the national utility viewed it with some skepticism. However, WSUP worked to quickly demonstrate a business-centered approach — providing advice on business challenges and demonstrating models that improved costs and profitability — proving WSUP’s value to both institutional and private sector partners. Across all of its core countries, WSUP’s approach of hands- on demonstration was critical to positioning it as a trusted partner — which then led to ongoing commitments and increased demand for its services.
• LEAN START-UP: TESTING IMPACT. WSUP began its country work with an approach that required only a handful of employees (primarily locals) to be based in-country. These teams worked with existing utilities and local government entities to identify and implement areas of improvement and received support from WSUP’s UK headquarters staff.
• TESTING SCALABILITY: DIVERSE PILOT LOCATIONS. WSUP selected six countries in which to pilot new models and refine its theory of change: Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Zambia. WSUP selected these locations based on factors such as potential to gain traction within that infrastructure and sufficient differences between the countries to provide implementation insights in varied environments and cultures.

WSUP spent its first several years pursuing these strategies, ultimately preparing it to begin to scale significantly around the year 2012. Click here to read about the ways in which WSUP has scaled its impact, including the implications of these strategies for the organization.

Published March 2019. Find the full Scaling Snapshot PDF at https://rebrand.ly/wsupscaling.
Authored by Erin Worsham, Kimberly Langsam, and Ellen Martin.