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By Nell Edgington

This week I attended the����in New York City. It was an interesting gathering of funders, change makers��and intermediaries all grappling with how to reach��and sustain��scaled��social solutions.

“Scale” is such a challenging concept, and as I��, there are many entities��struggling with exactly what scale means. According to Heather McLeod Grant (author of��) whose keynote address kicked off the conference,��“scale” is no longer about growing individual organizations or addressing individual issues, but rather��about building movements and networks.

The idea of a networked approach to social change is not a new one (see the great��Stanford Social Innovation Review����by Jane Wei-Skillern and Sonia Marciano on this approach), but Heather��underlined the importance of a more integrated and aligned approach to creating social change. I would have liked to see this idea taken further, perhaps with some of the Transformative Scale discussion that is��,��included in this discussion.

There were some��real highlights of the conference��for me. First was the luncheon panel on the����and President Obama’s��. Tonya Allen of����was a hard hitting moderator of Shawn Dove, from the��, William Snipes from��, and Andrew Wolk from��.

The group had a fascinating conversation about the movement to address “a whole generation of young men being pushed to the side.” As Snipes so eloquently put it, “This is a problem about who we are as a society, whether or not we are going to survive. The road we are on��is not��sustainable. We cannot continue to incarcerate one third��of a community. This is an impractical way to run a society.”

The panel described and debated the complexity of addressing a huge systemic problem and how they have launched a movement to do just that. It was a candid��and thought-provoking exchange.