Technology and scaling up: Evidence from an NGO for adolescents with intellectual disabilities in China.

• Technology helps expand service areas and population range in remote learning. • Technology helps NGOs reduce scaling cost and enhance government and social trust. • The effectiveness of teaching practical skills online is limited. • Technology brings challenges of user retainment and digital literacy of users. • The model provides reference for a better use of technology for NGOs to scale impact. This paper takes the innovative practices of a Chinese NGO serving adolescents with intellectual disabilities (ID) as a case to analyze whether technology can effectively promote the impact scaling of NGOs providing services for intellectually disabled adolescents. It was found that the use of technology can have positive effects on expanding service areas and population range in terms of improving professional skills and knowledge, reducing scaling costs, increasing flexibility, and enhancing government and social trust. Challenges faced by the program included user retainment, digital literacy of target users, difficulty teaching practical skills virtually, and the loss of specificity through standardization. Based on the case study, this paper has summarized a "COATE influencing factor model," composed of a series of considerations that NGOs serving adolescents with ID should make prior to deciding which technological means to implement in their service model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]