Scaling Social Enterprises Internationally: Leverage Franchising to Address Key Challenges

Franchising offers an exceptionally promising model for scaling social enterprises to benefit underserved or under-resourced communities across the globe. When executed effectively the model has proven successful in helping to reduce poverty, create fair-wage jobs, increase the supply of quality affordable housing, improve health conditions, and help sustain local communities using local resources.

Used successfully in more than 200 industries, franchising is poised to help social enterprises realize their full impact on an international scale. When working with an experienced franchising partner, social enterprises can:

• Use existing local financial and human resources to grow rapidly with less outside investment
• Leverage financial incentives to drive standards and performance
• Enable efficient engagement of local capacity and market knowledge
• Reduce risk of depleting home country operations while scaling to global markets

Download this whitepaper to learn more about how franchising can help social enterprises overcome the challenges of scaling internationally, and read about a leading Mexico-based affordable housing enterprise ÉCHALE and its successful expansion to Africa. This paper shares key insights from our recent article in the Journal of Enterprise Development and Microfinance.