THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR'S PLAYBOOK, EXPANDED EDITION Note also that we have had to turn our backs on many projects, often with enormous regret, but we have thereby also been able to avoid pouring resources into what would have ended up as unsuccessful efforts. Screen-In Criten'ar Conditions That Increase the Attractiveness of a Project Screen-in criteria are those that we believe enhance the attractiveness of projects. Unlike with the screenout criteria, where the presence of only one disqualies the project, the more screen- in criteria present. the more attractive the project becomes In other words. screenin criteria are cumulative builders of attractiveness. and if you score competing projects on these project- boosting criteria, you can use their total scores to choose among those projects. We have also found it useful to use the criteria as a creativity trigger. asking what we might be able to do to enhance a project along the criterion being considered. Our screen-in criteria include the following: The number of people who will be helped will be high (instead of dozens, perhaps hundreds, if not thousands, of beneciariesls The direness of the problem to be attacked is high (the reduction in suffering is high), The project has large long-term benets. Key stakeholders will be highly supportive of the project. Beneciaries are highly receptive to the solution. The degree of on-the-ground experience of the team is high. - Experience of the lead entrepreneur is extensive. Testing on a small scale (low cost. short time frame) is easy. Note: We emphasize the importance of low-cost testing by including it on both the screen-out (reject any project that cannot be tested at low cost) and screen-in (the easier it is to test, the more attractive it is) criteria. Vou can convert these criteria into a scoring table to compare competing projects in terms of attractiveness (if you have a number of potential projects in mind or different approaches to the same project). For example, Table 1.1 shows how the Zambia Feeds project fared on the screen-in criteria. Table 1.1: Screen-In Criteria for Zambia Feeds Page'lO ol214 011% THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR'S PLAYBOOK, EXPANDED EDITION Very low > Very high Number of people who will benefit 1 2 3 4 5 Suffering of beneficiary as a result of problem 1 2 3 4 5 Long-term social impact potential of project 1 2 3 4 5 Degree of key stakeholder support for project 1 2 3 4 5 Receptiveness of beneficiaries to solution 1 2 3 4 5 Degree of local knowledge and experience of 1 2 3 4 5 team and/or advisors Degree of entrepreneurial experience of 1 2 3 4 5 management Ease of testing on a small scale 1 2 3 4 5 (low cost, short time frame) Total Score 32 of a possible 40 Scoring allows you to see problems you may need to resolve before moving ahead. In this example, Ilona anticipated a fairly low receptiveness level on the part of the beneficiaries: people might feel inadequate to the task of raising small batches of chickens for sale or for their own consumption. If she felt she couldn't do anything to change this, she would not have launched the project. She decided, however, that through a series of informational seminars in villages and with the support of influential resident community members, she could get the buy- in from enough farmer recruits to start her company. The success of the first farmers would ramp up attendance at subsequent seminars, where she would respond to questions from newly minted farmers. In high-uncertainty environments, this set of preliminary filtering criteria is a key weapon for driving down the probability and incidence of failure. Our 12 years of experience on the ground have shown us that the presence in a project of any one of the disqualifying conditions we use will at best severely cripple if not kill a project. Ideas are limitless; time and resources are not. By identifying and killing disqualified projects from the get-go-and not later, after you have expended energy and wasted resources-you will have the resources to launch projects with Page 12 of 214 . 11%