Fundació Bofill is an independent think tank based in Barcelona, Spain, with a focus on Catalunya.
It has evolved its approach to achieving impact at scale, moving beyond a traditional research to policy model to a more nuanced and multifaceted strategy. While they historically focused on providing policy advice, evidence-informed research, and communicating ideas in a traditional top-down approach, they recognised that this model, while still effective for some issues, often didn’t work sufficiently well for complex once or when seeking deeper, sustainable change. This led them to explore and adopt new approaches, including demonstration projects and ecosystem support, alongside their continued policy influence work.
A three-pronged dynamic approach to deliver impact at scale
Three levers of change
Their current approach involves addressing key challenges through three main “levers of change” or project structures:
1. Demonstration projects: These projects focus on generating new practical knowledge (Fundació Bofill describes them as R&D) and developing scalable models that can be implemented by others, such as municipalities, entities, or libraries, often via “social franchises”.
They design how a project should be delivered, create the brand, logo (often not linked to or associated to the Foundation), and materials, and provide them to others who implement the model. This involves identifying problems, mapping existing solutions, designing models (often through iterative testing and adaptation), and running pilot tests before scaling. Bofill provides basic manuals, materials, and preparation, and may accompany implementers in the long term.
Examples include the Mentora Project, which aims to reduce school dropout by providing voluntary professional and life accompaniment to young people, and Code Clubs, which offer extracurricular programming and digital literacy activities to vulnerable children. Another example is the ‘Passaport edunauta‘, which helps municipalities map and develop their extracurricular offerings and connect them with schools and families.
These projects are often released under a “Creative Commons” license to facilitate adoption by others. This approach is particularly effective where there is limited evidence on what works, such as in digital equity.
2. Innovation ecosystems: This involves building networks or alliances among various actors, including municipalities, service providers, schools, NGOs, universities, businesses, activists, and citizens. The goal is to build and align open ecosystems for system change and nurture and empower engaged communities of change or leadership.
Communities of practice are often linked to demonstration projects.
This approach involves (often) setting up communities of practice and then providing knowledge (e.g., ‘capsules’, videos, seminars, training), creating and facilitating meeting points, sharing evidence on specific challenges, connecting people and carrying the debate, accompanying actors on key issues, nudging them to engage with each other and their own communities, etc. Examples include the Education 360 alliance, which involves 400 organisations and 180 municipalities, focused on integrating extracurricular activities into children’s education, and platforms like the Zero Dropout platform, which serves as an ecosystem and focuses on advocacy.
This method allows for a bottom-up strategy, especially when working with city councils. However, building communities can require significant investment, may not be as cost-effective as traditional methods, and communities may prioritise their own needs, making it challenging to embed equity incentives.
3. Policy advice, influence, and advocacy: This is their historical strength. Fundació Bofill emphasises the importance of utilising existing research and content strategically. By repurposing and disseminating research findings through various channels such as workshops, seminars, and publications, they aim to inform and persuade stakeholders about the necessity of policy changes. They primarily draw on existing data, sometimes performing meta-analyses, and focus heavily on how evidence can be used to achieve influence – not the other way around.
This work is often directed at policymakers, decision-makers, experts, and traditional media. Examples include generating evidence and advocating on regarding school segregation, publishing reports naming municipalities based on their performance, and engaging in constant meetings with local governments.
While effective for agenda setting, they have found this lever of change less effective for policy deployment and achieving deep, sustainable change at the community level. It also requires knowing how to use existing content for advocacy and seeking opportunities to influence. The foundation acknowledges that influencing policy requires not only robust evidence but also strategic engagement with policymakers, educators, and communities to ensure that proposed solutions are adopted and effectively executed.
Deploying their levers for change
Fundació Bofill often uses a mixed strategy for each challenge, combining elements from these three levers.
For example, addressing digital equity involves demonstration projects like Code Clubs alongside some advocacy and ecosystem building, though there are fewer actors in this area currently. School segregation is addressed through policy advice (reports, naming and shaming) and a demonstration project (Magnet Schools) that involves building relationships between schools and prestigious institutions and requires commitment from schools, institutions, and municipalities. Out-of-school education is tackled through ecosystems like Education 360 and demonstration projects like Passaport Edunauta – inspired by the learning passports (Children’s University in the UK).
Central to their approach is a strong emphasis on developing and evolving their theories of change which are crucial for clarifying their role, understanding what to measure, and defining impact. Their theory of change has evolved significantly over time, shifting from introducing new ideas during a dictatorship to inspiring educational reform, empowering systemic transformation, and, most recently, focusing on high-impact solutions for equity.
This forces Bofill to create a shared vision and realistic milestones for their intended objectives within a timeframe (e.g., three years) instead of being led by wherever research takes them. The focus on equity is a key driver for selecting challenges, but they recognise the difficulty in embedding equity within the incentives of the communities they work with.
Overall, Fundació Bofill’s approach to impact is a dynamic mix of traditional policy influence, building collaborative ecosystems, and developing scalable demonstration projects, all underpinned by a clear focus on their evolving theory of change and a commitment to achieving high impact for equity, despite the inherent risks and challenges of this more complex path.
They see themselves as brokers who connect actors and facilitate change, rather than solely being experts who provide top-down advice.
Importantly, Bofill enjoys a strong reputation and legitimacy among municipalities, organisations, and government bodies in Catalunya. This credibility often leads to immediate expressions of interest from municipalities when a new project is announced, even before all the details are made public. This ability to mobilise local leadership through established trust is a critical factor in achieving both impact and scalability.
Scaling through social franchising
Central to their approach is the model of “social franchising”. Fundació Bofill plays a central role in designing and developing comprehensive project designs and delivery models grounded in evidence, with the intention of broad-scale adoption. The process of developing each project typically spans 12 to 18 months, involving several key phases:
- Research and mapping: Identifying the educational challenge or opportunity through data collection, stakeholder consultation, and review of existing models.
- Model development: Designing the core components of the intervention, including its pedagogical approach, target audience, and implementation strategy.
- Pilot testing: Trialling the model in a limited setting to assess its feasibility, relevance, and impact.
- Adaptation and scaling: Refining the model based on pilot insights and preparing it for broader rollout, including potential replication in new contexts.
Each project is shared as a complete implementation package, which typically includes detailed manuals and training materials tailored to the specific intervention, training and support for facilitators, including capacity-building sessions and ongoing advisory assistance, relationship and stakeholder management, ensuring strong collaboration with municipalities, schools, and other partner organisations.
Fundació Bofill’s focus on impact, however, demand that they limit their own scope and reach. Instead of seeking to ever expand their projects by securing more funding they demand that implementation costs are met by their implementing partners and limit the size of the community they will support. This allows and encourages adaptation, replication and scaling by other institutions or in other regions though open-access licensing (Creative Commons 4.0) – or social franchising.
Bofill’s approach emphasises not only quality and consistency but also scalability and flexibility. Their projects are designed to be replicated and adapted across diverse contexts, with successful examples including:
- Lecxit (Reading for Success): A reading promotion initiative currently active in over 180 municipalities across Spain. The project was successfully replicated by the Editorial Planeta Foundation under the name Leer Más, demonstrating the model’s transferability and appeal beyond its original framework.
- Code Clubs for vulnerable children: A project aimed at improving digital literacy among marginalised groups, focusing on programming skills, online safety, and misinformation awareness. In this model, municipalities fund the facilitator, schools provide the infrastructure, and Bofill contributes content, manuals, and ongoing advisory support.
These examples highlight how Bofill’s delivery models foster local ownership while maintaining high-quality standards through structured support and accessible resources.