The Case for using ShareCraft

ShareCraft is working to accelerate the spread of proven interventions by removing some of the traditional barriers to program scale. Some of these barriers are practical (how to find and compare programs that work), but others are based on assumptions managers make about service model design. To encourage your organisation to license service models from elsewhere or to spread its own service models, you may want to put together a simple business case to help 'make the leap' into sharing the craft.

For Organisations or Communities Seeking Proven Solutions (Licensees)

Dramatic Cost Savings

Developing effective social programs from scratch requires substantial investment. Organisations routinely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars—and sometimes millions—to design, implement, and rigorously evaluate new interventions. We've documented cases where social organisations invested $2 million in randomised controlled trials alone to establish program efficacy.

Licensing proven models offers a transformative alternative. Consider these economics:

• A $15,000 license fee versus $500,000 in development and evaluation costs
• Formal program evaluations typically cost $100,000 or more, before accounting for staff time and implementation expenses
• Even smaller-scale tools show compelling returns—a $300 financial planning template could save $10,000 in expert or senior manager development time

The cost savings flows from avoiding the social service curse of duplicated effort. You wouldn't think to develop your own email app; instead your organisation buys software licenses from a vendor that has invested in developing a good product. While this is not a perfect analogy, it does point to the need to be smarter about developing and using licensed service models to save scarce resources.

Risk Mitigation

Licensed models come with built-in advantages that reduce implementation risk. You're adopting interventions that have been field-tested, refined through real-world experience, and backed by evidence. The learning curve is shortened through access to experienced practitioners who understand the nuances of successful delivery.

Accelerated Innovation

Licensing doesn't mean rigid replication. Licensed models serve as proven foundations that can be adapted to your specific context, population, or geographic area. This approach connects you to ongoing learning communities and practice authors who remain invested in your success and continuous improvement.

For Organisations with Proven Models (Licensors / Practice Authors)

Revenue Recovery and Sustainability

Organisations that have invested years and significant resources developing and validating programs can use licensing to offset some of the development costs while extending the impact of a program. This improves the sustainability of service model design efforts by providing opportunities for successful programs to generate revenue to fund the next generation of innovations.

Strategic Expansion With Lower Capital Risk

Traditional program expansion requires substantial investment in new locations, staff, and infrastructure. Licensing offers a low-risk alternative that leverages other local organisations' knowledge, relationships, and operational capacity. You have the option to be involved in quality control and can claim a wider impact while avoiding the capital intensity of direct expansion.

Continuous Improvement Through Network Effects

ShareCraft encourages licenses to create mutual learning obligations and ongoing relationships between the service model authors and the licensees. Licensees can be asked to share implementation insights and details of their model adaptations back to practice authors, creating a cycle of continuous improvement. This collaborative approach means your original innovation benefits from diverse real-world applications and refinements.

Partnerships with Communities, Funders and Providers

The process of promoting your service model on the ShareCraft platform helps you find potential strategic partners who share your mission and demonstrate commitment through their investment in your model. This can include finding new locations as well as funders who are interested in addressing a social issue in their region. These relationships can evolve beyond simple licensing arrangements into deeper collaborations.

For Funders and Communities

Funders Amplifying Their Social Impact Investments

Funders often ask the organisations that they fund to collect data and gain evidence of the effectiveness of their programs. But these reports or learnings tend to disappear and not be visible to others. By requiring funded organisations to post their service models (with evidence) on a service model sharing platform like ShareCraft, it's easier for the learnings and impact to spread beyond the limits of one funded program, thus multiplying impact per dollar.

Applying Evidence-Based Programs to Local Need

ShareCraft's platform enables funders to identify successful programs that can be adapted to new contexts, populations, or geographic areas. International models can inspire domestic adaptations, while programs proven with specific demographics can be modified to different sub-cohorts or groups in next contexts. In other words, programs can be delivered with full fidelity to the original model, or they can be used to accelerate innovation in a local context.

Communities Taking Power to Address Local Issues

In many local communities (say in regional or remote areas) change can sometimes be triggered by a group of local people coming together around a pressing issue. For example, we know of communities in Australia where a social issue like high teenage pregnancy rates, or low early childhood education and school readiness, or local youth crime all triggered a place-based movement for change. A 'non-professional' group of local organisers might then want to find out what programs or interventions have worked well in other similar or different communities - ShareCraft is an easier way to put that power back into the hands of communities looking for answers to their problems.

The Broader Impact

This disciplined service model sharing and licensing approach represents more than operational efficiency—it's a shift toward treating proven social programs as valuable intellectual property that should be systematically shared and improved. By adding some economic incentives for knowledge transfer, we can accelerate the pace at which effective solutions reach the communities that need them most.

The result is a social sector that learns faster, wastes fewer resources on reinventing solutions, and ultimately serves more people more effectively. Over time, this impact can be measured in lives changed and communities strengthened.