Five modules. One outcome.
The curriculum is built around frameworks that work — the Mulago Scale Screen, Doer & Payer at Scale, the Iterative Organization, and Clear-Language Communications.
Design for impact
at scale.
The foundational building blocks. Every cohort’s models are reconstructed from these elements first.
Most social enterprises know what they do. Far fewer can answer, in one sentence, what specific behaviour change drives the outcome they care about — and which model elements actually produce that behaviour.
This module is the most precise of the week. By lunchtime, every fellow has rewritten their mission to eight words and their Big Idea to six. By the end of day, the Behaviour Map and the model’s core elements are on paper.
- 1.1
Mission · 8 words, outcome-focused
Strip every word until what's left names a specific outcome for a specific population. No nouns about activities. No “empowering” or “transforming”. The mission either causes the outcome or it doesn't.
- 1.2
Big Idea · ≤ 6 words
The compact, replicable mechanism. The thing that, if copy-pasted onto someone else's organisation, would still produce the outcome.
- 1.3
Theory · idea → behaviour → outcome
The causal chain. What behaviour change does your idea produce, in whom, that produces the outcome? If any link is fuzzy, the model isn't ready.
- 1.4
The Model · 4–6 core elements
The minimum set of activities the model must do to produce the behaviour change. Strip anything else.
- 1.5
Behaviour map + drivers
What gets in the way of the behaviour change? What removes the barriers? Map drivers explicitly — most failed scale-ups failed at exactly one of them.
By the end of Day 1, every fellow has a one-pager: Mission, Big Idea, Theory, Model, Behaviours, Doer, and Payer.
Scale strategy
+ the Scale Screen.
The four-question filter every Mulago-backed model has to earn a yes on.
The Scale Screen is the framework at the heart of Mulago’s investment thesis. It is not a maturity model — it is a yes/no filter. By the end of this module, fellows can defensibly answer all four questions about their own model.
- 2.1
Good enough?
Does the solution work? Show me the evidence chain — and where it has gaps.
- 2.2
Big enough?
Will solving the problem move a population-level outcome? Or are we describing a slice that doesn't matter at the national level?
- 2.3
Simple enough?
Can a stranger, with the manual, replicate this without you? The founder dependency is the single biggest scale killer.
- 2.4
Cheap enough?
Can the ultimate payer afford to reach everyone? Pilot-scale unit economics do not translate. Scale-scale unit economics must.
- 2.5
Doer & Payer at scale
The two questions Mulago will ask before anything else. Who, specifically, is the entity that implements your model at scale? Who pays them, sustainably, to do it?
Impact evidence.
Designing an evidence plan that’s defensible to a skeptical funder — not just to a friendly evaluator.
Most organisations measure too much, and the wrong things. We design from the outcome backwards: what is the smallest set of metrics that, taken together, force a funder to believe the model is causing the outcome?
- 3.1
Levels of evidence
The ladder from anecdote to RCT. Where on the ladder are you? Where do you actually need to be?
- 3.2
Metrics hierarchy
Outputs, outcomes, impact. Most organisations confuse these — and pay for it during funder due diligence.
- 3.3
Designing your evidence plan
A 12-month, costed plan that closes your most expensive evidence gap. Built in workshop format, with critique.
The iterative
organisation.
Theory, methods, data flows, and culture. How organisations actually improve at the speed scale requires.
A model designed for scale is necessary but not sufficient. Scale-ready organisations also improve at scale — they learn from data, kill what isn’t working, and double down on what is, on a quarterly rhythm not an annual one.
- 4.1
Why iteration matters
Theory of why this is the difference between organisations that scale and organisations that grow.
- 4.2
Iteration methods
From A/B testing programme design to operational quarterly rhythms. Concrete patterns from organisations who do it well.
- 4.3
Data flows
What data flows up, down, and across the organisation — and on what cadence — for iteration to be possible.
- 4.4
People & culture
The hardest part. What does it look like inside the org to be one that genuinely runs on iteration, not on heroics?
Comms & pitching.
“The pitch is dead. Long live the conversation.” Building a narrative that holds up across a 90-second pitch and a 90-minute meeting.
By Day 5, every fellow has a defensible model. This module is about being able to communicate it — first to themselves, then to peers, then to a funder who hears 200 pitches a year.
- 5.1
Clear language
The discipline of plain language. What jargon you can keep, what you must drop, and why most decks fail on slide three.
- 5.2
Narrative structure
The four-beat structure every memorable funder pitch follows. Designed, not improvised.
- 5.3
The 10-minute pitch
Built live, in workshop. Every fellow drafts theirs on Day 5 and delivers it on Day 6.
The banned words list · examples
By Day 6, the pitch has been rehearsed, critiqued, rebuilt, and delivered. The skill the cohort actually walks away with is not the pitch itself — it’s the ability to rebuild it for any audience, in any room, for the next ten years.