This approach operates at the intersection of the government, grassroots nonprofits, and academic/research institutions. Together, their contribution helps in building consensus, identifying and addressing policy gaps, proving large-scale successes, forming necessary alliances, creating public resources, enhancing systems’ capabilities, shifting mindsets, and unlocking funding.

Yet, the systems change journey is neither straightforward nor simple. Practitioners often grapple with questions such as: What exactly is systems change? Which systems should I engage with? How can I navigate this complex process? What tools can I utilise? What internal skills do I need to develop? While there exists a wealth of global knowledge on systems change, there is a lack of contextually relevant Indian examples in this domain.

To bridge this gap, The Convergence Foundation (TCF) and India Impact Sherpas released a report titled Systemic Change Exemplars: Unique Approaches Towards Solving India’s Development Challenges. The report captures learnings from 20 organisations that have actively adopted a systems change lens in their work, and provides an in-depth analysis of the practices incorporated by these organisations as well as the internal development they had to undergo to drive systems change at scale.

This article draws from the report and identifies the combination of practices used by these organisations to create impact based on the context of their work. These practices are:

1. Involve communities in decision-making

Often when organisations design a programme, they focus on the ‘supply’ side—that is, they go in with a solution already in mind. But systems change means working with the communities first. The exemplars identified by TCF started their work on the ‘demand’ side by investing time in engaging deeply with the locals to understand their needs, challenges, and the problems they were keen to prioritise. They also sought these groups’ help with solution design and delivery.

Moreover, the power dynamic shifts subtly when people decide which problems and solutions to prioritise, instead of the organisation telling them what to do. This shift in power is an important characteristic of systems change.

SEARCH, a nonprofit whose stated mission is ‘Arogya Swaraj’ or placing people’s health in people’s hands, organised health fairs for people from 50–60 tribal villages to help them identify their health priorities. Some of the priorities—for example, malaria and infant mortality—were expected for the organisation, while others such as backache and vaginal discharge for women were unexpected. Further, its work involving community mobilisation in primary healthcare has resulted in innovations such as home-based newborn child care (HBNCC) and community health workers, which have since been adopted across India and multiple developing nations around the globe.

2. Use data, evidence, and research to develop solutions

Almost all organisations studied use data and evidence to develop the theory of change for their intervention. They conduct extensive research to identify the problem, understand the root causes, generate insights, and develop evidence-based solutions. All of this is necessary to establish credibility and build a robust case for the solutions. It also makes it easier for other stakeholders such as partner organisations to understand why a particular intervention has been developed, making them more willing to adopt it themselves. 

Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy is an independent think tank that carries out legal research to make better laws and improve governance for the public good. It uses evidence-based legal research to support the creation of new laws and the amendment of existing ones, and for generating favourable judgements in court or shaping public narratives—all of which holds for their work towards decriminalising drug consumption as well.

Vidhi studied the drug decriminalisation issue in Punjab for more than two years. Only then did it put out a point of view stating that it needs to be seen as less of a law issue and more of a public health one. The organisation collated a report based on district-wise data on people—primarily farmers smoking at the end of the day—being imprisoned for using poppy husk rather than ‘hard’ drugs. This meant that the solution to the problem was de-addiction centres and not jail.

3. Aim to influence policy

A key lever to bringing about systems change is focusing on policy advocacy and design. For instance, some organisations surveyed by TCF began by influencing policy and later moved towards ensuring that these policies could be effectively implemented. Others initially concentrated on delivering programmes. They then used the evidence and technical inputs they gathered to inform the drafting of better policies. Simultaneously, they also sought to create support for policy changes by raising awareness on relevant issues among government officials, the media, and civil society.

Central Square Foundation (CSF) began its work on foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) by first highlighting the importance of the issue. It engaged with government officials in NITI Aayog, the Finance Commission, and the New Education Policy (NEP) drafting committee. At the state level, it interacted with senior bureaucrats to explain why FLN was crucial. In 2020, CSF worked with the Ministry of Education to design the NIPUN Bharat mission and flesh out operational documents. The organisation built an FLN microsite and published articles and blogs to spread the word about FLN, why it matters in the NEP, and the NIPUN Bharat mission. It also supports 11 state governments in designing and implementing FLN.

4. Build scalable solutions

Most of the organisations in the report adopted a two-pronged approach. They used their programmes to test and improve their solutions and then applied these learnings to identify the bottlenecks that need to be addressed. Using programme-level evidence to design policies and public goods is key to scaling programmes and driving systemic change.

One such example is SaveLIFE Foundation (SLF), which was set up with the aim of improving road safety and emergency care in India. It collected and analysed data on road accidents and fatalities. This helped the organisation come up with the ‘zero fatality corridor’ model, which they tested on the Mumbai–Pune expressway. This model led to a 58 percent decrease in fatalities despite increased traffic on the expressway. Having proven the efficacy of its approach, SLF is now working with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to address the problem in the 100 most dangerous highways in the country.

5. Leverage technology for scale

A few of the exemplars focused on building platforms that are open source, modular, and can be customised to work in different contexts. Such platforms enable multiple partners working in the same ecosystem to draw from it while also adding solutions to the platform. This allows for innovation to emerge from different partners, which in turn can be accessed by everyone.

EkStep Foundation, for example, wanted to address the urgency of accessing learning content for 200 million children during the pandemic. It developed the Sunbird platform as a digital public good that comprises several modular blocks such as translation tools and data analysis models. Another block is the QR codes that EkStep added to textbooks to provide students with immediate access to digital learning content.

All the innovations offered by the platform can be used either individually or in combination depending on the requirements of the organisation working with education and children. Given its reusable and replicable nature, Sunbird was adopted by the Government of India to create and expand DIKSHA—a platform for school education.

6. Help strengthen institutional capacity in government

Almost all the organisations studied engaged closely with the government at various levels—central, state, and district—to ensure that the population-scale impact is sustainable over time. They used learnings from the communities, knowledge of solutions that work, the use of technology, and the evidence generated over the years to create an environment that encouraged adoption within the government.

To achieve its goal of driving systems transformation in education, Piramal Foundation for Education Leadership (PFEL) works directly with the government to understand the latter’s needs and co-create solutions. It hand-holds the stakeholders through the legal and policy finalisation process, identifies the processes involved in getting policy approved and implemented, and garners support by building a narrative that reflects the benefits of the ideas. Finally, the organisation works towards administrative feasibility to make sure that red tape doesn’t obstruct the process of policy formulation. All of this is done through capability building, engagement, and ownership within the government setup.

7. Partner with organisations to scale

It is important to identify every stakeholder who will be involved in the process of systems change. These are entities that can help remove constraints and obstacles, and make the system more efficient, effective, and equitable. The organisations in the report understood the roles played by each stakeholder as well as their capabilities and identified how the two were complementary. Using this knowledge, they created a coalition of sorts and incentivised the stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of the system they were devising.

Building such coalitions is not easy; it requires energy and tenacity to convince other organisations to get on board and requires letting go of control and ceding space. However, once established, these alliances can then be used to implement solutions at the population level.

CHILDLINE, which works in child protection, has built collaborative relationships with more than 1,100 partner nonprofits to work on a national level. It started with identifying, selecting, training, and monitoring organisations and policy. The core team also collaborated with government stakeholders such as the police and hospitals to make them part of the solution. They engaged them in initiatives and campaigns like ‘Childline Se Dosti’ and ‘Police Chacha’, to create a strong connection between the organisation and frontline workers in law enforcement and healthcare. At the same time, they co-developed strategy and operational plans with partner organisations. This collaborative approach, which is at the core of CHILDLINE’s management model, saw local partners take pride in the initiative and have a sense of ownership.

8. Create viable markets for the under-privileged

The conversation around systems change is incomplete without addressing the needs of vulnerable and excluded populations. Some of the organisations focused specifically on creating products and solutions that not only worked on a certain problem, such as energy or finance, but also created opportunities for social and economic mobility of marginalised groups. They redesigned how a particular commercial process works, thereby making the market more accessible for underserved communities. Their innovative and low-cost commercial business models attract more players into the space, which leads to the creation of a large and thriving market.

MHFC was set up with the intent to solve home loan requirements for lower-income families that are usually unable to get a home loan based on the market’s criteria. Many Indians are excluded from the housing finance market because traditional credit assessment methods lack the tools to measure the incomes of those employed in the unorganised sector. MHFC addressed this by developing a new approach to credit assessment. It involved personal interaction with potential customers to understand their income sources and expenses. Their ability to pay was assessed based on their motivations which were documented by field officers through a tool developed by MHFC.

The easy-to-use tool for creditworthiness assessment not only enabled several people to become eligible for a loan but also eliminated the need for time-consuming paperwork. The profitable and proven business model along with a willingness to share learnings with key stakeholders such as National Housing Bank, HDFC, and other housing finance companies including competitors has helped bridge the housing loan need gap for the economically weaker sections.

A combination of these eight practices can be used by organisations to make large-scale systemic impact based on the aspirations and context of their work. Different regions in India have their own unique challenges that should be taken into account when thinking of system-level solutions.

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Know more

• Read more about what systems change looks like in practice.
• Learn more about navigating systems change through five approaches for impact.
• Listen to this podcast that answers key questions about systems change.

Despite countries adopting an array of policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change—such as investing in clean energy and energy-efficient technologies and installing early warning systems—it is evident that these efforts alone will not suffice to prevent all climate-related disasters. Even if global warming is miraculously limited to the 1.5°C threshold, the intensity, frequency, and unpredictability of extreme weather phenomena will continue to cause unavoidable and irreversible loss and damage for years to come. This holds true for both rapid-onset events (such as cyclones, floods, and landslides) and slow-onset developments (such as desertification, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and rising temperatures and sea levels).

As for developing economies, strained resources are further taxed by the additional costs of climate damage. They bear the brunt of climate change more heavily than developed nations. According to the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the average mortality from floods, storms, and droughts in particularly vulnerable countries , is 15 times higher compared to countries with very low vulnerability. In India, the potential income loss from the reduction of labour capacity due to extreme heat was estimated to be USD 159 billion, or 5.4 percent of the country’s GDP, in 2021. The L&D fund has primarily been established to support vulnerable countries with the resources they need to recover from climate impacts,both economic and non-economic. Loss of livelihood, crops, property, and ultimately the national GDP count as economic losses because they can be assigned a monetary value. On the other hand, injury to and loss of life, health, rights, biodiversity, ecosystem services, indigenous knowledge, and cultural heritage are categorised as non-economic losses. Loss of income from working days forfeited to heatwaves is an example of an economic loss, while the displacement of communities from coastal villages due to beach erosion would count as a non-economic loss.

Is it the same as adaptation finance?

The L&D fund has emerged as the third pillar of climate finance alongside adaptation finance and mitigation finance; it is meant to help communities restore and rebuild what is lost and damaged. The fund can be utilised, for example, to rebuild infrastructure destroyed by extreme weather events, establish resettlement colonies, set up alternative livelihood programmes, offer counselling services, and initiate projects to commemorate the loss of life and cultural heritage. Some reparative actions—for example, a resettlement housing colony for people displaced by rising sea levels—could be categorised either as adaptation or as loss and damage. However, the commonly understood threshold separating one from the other is that loss and damage includes impacts that are beyond the limits of adaptation. Put simply, it’s when loss and damage occurs even after adaptation measures have been deployed, either because the measures are ineffective or due to the unanticipated severity of the climate impact. The more effective and timelier the adaptation strategies, the lower the risk of loss and damage.  

How did the fund originate?

The L&D fund was operationalised at the 28^th Conference of the Parties (COP 28) held in Dubai in November 2023. However, it has been more than thirty years in the making. The proposal for climate-related financial assistance was mooted as early as 1991, when the UNFCCC was being drafted. At the time, Vanuatu, the Pacific Island nation representing the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), rallied for a globally contributed insurance scheme to assist countries impacted by rising sea levels. The proposal was ignored.

It was in 2007, at the COP 13 in Bali, that the term ‘loss and damage’ first appeared in a UNFCCC decision. Inked into the Bali Action Plan, it outlined three thematic areas of work: assessing the risk of loss and damage, exploring a range of approaches to address it, and defining the Convention’s role in implementing the approaches. In 2013, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was formed to enhance knowledge of risk management approaches to address loss and damage, strengthen dialogue and coordination between stakeholders, and mobilise financial, technological, and capacity-building support for it.

However, the crucial ground plan for funding remained sketchy. The economics of reparative action was once again left out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which loss and damage was covered in Article 8. It spelled out the importance of averting, minimising, and addressing loss and damage, and formulated potential scenarios of loss and damage that nations, particularly vulnerable ones, were likely to encounter in the future.

It was finally in 2022, at COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, that money was (notionally) placed on the table, when Parties agreed to operationalise a dedicated fund to address loss and damage. A transitional committee—comprising representatives of 24 developing and developed countries—was appointed to discuss its governance and institutional framework, funding arrangements, and implementation. Over the course of a year, the committee held five meetings, two workshops, two ministerial meetings, and a dialogue. After protracted negotiations, it submitted its report to the Conference of the Parties. And thus, the Loss and Damage Fund was operationalised on November 30, 2023, at COP 28 in Dubai. This also marked a first in the history of the summit: the adoption of a monumental decision on day one. An independent secretariat and governing board were appointed. The World Bank was appointed interim trustee and tasked with hosting the fund for four years. It would oversee the coordination, collection, and allocation of resources in consultation with the Warsaw Mechanism, the International Monetary Fund, and the Santiago Network.

Why are critics sceptical?

More talk, less action:

Since November 2023, the L&D fund has received USD 661.39 million in pledges from several countries, with others expected to contribute later: Italy and France pledged USD 108 million each, Germany and the UAE USD 100 million each, the UK USD 50.6 million, Japan USD 10 million, while the US—the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter after China—pledged only USD 17.5 million. Experts say the money that all of these countries have pledged in sum is inadequate and covers less than 0.2 percent of what developing countries need, which is a minimum of $400 billion a year as per The Loss and Damage Finance Landscape report. Developing country members of the Transitional Committee proposed that the fund programme a minimum of USD 100 billion a year by 2030.  

The gulf between what developing countries need and what they receive has not only severely compromised their ability to adapt to climate change, but has also heightened the risk of greater loss and damage in the future—risks already amplified by the delay in mobilising accessible climate finance. A report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) estimates that India itself may require USD 1 trillion between 2015 and 2030 for adaptive actions. The Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) pegs the country’s investment needs for adaptation-based development at USD 14–67 billion annually, for the same 15-year period.

Concerns around climate justice:

Climate justice is anchored in a principle of international law called ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR), which acknowledges that even as all countries are called to take mitigative steps to reduce climate impacts, some have a higher responsibility—and capability—to address climate challenges than others.

By this measure, developed nations, which have had a long head start in building and benefiting from their fossil fuel-based economies and are the primary drivers of climate change—ought to pay a proportionate price towards climate finance, one that helps developing countries deal with it effectively. Who pays, and how much they ought to pay, are vital questions that need to be addressed. The Adaptation Gap Report 2023 emphasises that “a justice lens underscores that loss and damage is not the product of climate hazards alone but is influenced by differential vulnerabilities to climate change, which are often driven by a range of socio-political processes, including racism and histories of colonialism and exploitation.” Critics point out that the fund falls short on delivering on climate justice by failing to set clear, fair, and time-bound expectations on payment, and by doing so, undermines the principles of equity, historic responsibility, and polluter pays, which are codified into the Paris Agreement.

Lack of clarity on operationalisation:

The hard-won voluntarism written into the body text of the COP 28 decision text absolves developed countries of all liability. By inviting them to contribute instead of requiring them to compensate for their relative contributions to global warming, the treaty shields them from potential litigation claims by developing countries. Moreover, there is no floor set for the quantum of the fund. Had developed countries been held to account, they would have had to pay far more than they pledged. By one calculation, the US’s fair share of loss and damage finance in 2022 alone was USD 20 billion, rising to USD 117 billion annually by 2030. The lack of legally binding commitments also has advocacy groups concerned about the long-term stability of the fund. Timing is another concern. With developed countries having delayed nominating members to the Loss and Damage Board, one worry is that efforts to operationalise the fund in time will be hampered.

One way to address the technical shortcomings of the mechanism is to include it in the global stocktake (GST), the 5-yearly review initiated to monitor progress on the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals. The GST, however, does not address loss and damage as a separate pillar, as it does adaptation and mitigation. This, experts say, may result in L&D being subsumed into the adaptation assessment.

Articulating what constitutes loss and damage can advance research on the subject.

Critics have also drawn attention to the need for a clear definition of loss and damage and of what constitutes non-economic losses and damages, which the UNFCCC is yet to frame. The lack of distinct parameters increases ambiguity around which kind of impacts and which countries should be prioritised for the money. Interpretations of the term range from the effects of anthropogenic climate change to only those that occur after the adaptation ceiling has been breached. Articulating what constitutes loss and damage can advance research on the subject and help formulate concrete actions to address it. But actions are reliant on data and there is scant data on these twin themes (loss in particular), not least because of the lack of clearly defined processes and tools to record, measure, and report them. 

It’s therefore vital to establish standardised assessment methodologies at the national, subnational, and local levels of what constitutes loss and damage.

Sources of finance:

The fund is expected to be built with contributions from a spectrum of sources, including public and private finance, and innovative funding instruments such as taxes, levies, and debt swaps—primarily from developed countries. However, the process for capitalisation (beyond initial commitments), has not been spelled out.   

In addition to public finance such as government-issued sovereign green bonds, alternative inflows to the fund could come from multilateral development banks, climate funds, philanthropies, carbon markets, and from carbon taxes and levies imposed on historic, large-scale polluters like the fossil fuel industry and the aviation and maritime sectors. Some states in the US are in the process of legislating for a ‘climate superfund’, which would make fossil fuel producers and refiners liable to pay for local adaptation measures and loss and damage expenses.

Private finance, in the meanwhile, can be raised through bonds and loans, although these run the risk of being conditional and extractive, privileging institutional profit over public interest. The Loss and Damage Finance Landscape report warns that “funding mobilised through financial instruments which seek to profit from the climate crisis, create greater debt burdens or shift responsibility for finance onto vulnerable countries, should not be considered as contributing toward the floor of US$400 billion per year.”  

A paper by CEEW recommends that the L&D Fund sit alongside, but distinct from funding mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility, and that it be deployed exclusively for loss and damage. Grants and unconditional transfers are preferable financing instruments. The money, it emphasises, should be new, additional, predictable, adequate, fair, debt-free, and accessible to all developing countries.

The role of the World Bank: 

Another point of contention is the appointment of the World Bank as interim trustee and host of the fund’s secretariat for the first four years. Developed countries, such as the US and EU member states, rooted for the World Bank on the grounds that it would speed up operationalisation of the fund. However, 68 organisations have expressed disapproval over the bank’s trusteeship, sceptical of its ability to administer the fund fairly, concerned about the influence that the US, which appoints the bank’s president, may have on its decisions, and wary of the unjustly high interest rates it has charged developing countries in the past. In addition, the bank charges exorbitant administrative fees, which can vault up to 20 percent of a fund’s flows. 

Concerns have been allayed by reassurances that the bank will, over this interim period, be closely scrutinised for accountability, transparency, and fair play. In the meanwhile, the World Bank is yet to accept all the conditions to trusteeship laid down in the decision text. Disputation over any condition can stall the implementation of the fund even further. 

Is India eligible for this money?

Advanced economies like the US, as well as Small Island Nations, have insisted that India and China also contribute towards reparative climate finance. India is the world’s fifth largest economy, with a GDP of USD 4.11 trillion (one spot ahead of the UK), but it still counts itself as a developing country. India is the third largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter after China and the US, with 3,380 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (MtCO₂e) released in 2019. However, in per capita terms, the country ranks 10th in global emissions with 2.5 tCO2e per person. The global average is 6.5 tons; the US leads with 17.6 tons per person.

As an emerging economy with the world’s largest population, and having started down the road to industrialisation two centuries after Europe and the US, India has argued that it cannot be held to the same funding benchmarks as historical emitters. Moreover, like other developing countries, it too has suffered catastrophic climate impacts: in 2019, it lost nearly USD 69 billion to climate-related events. The Reserve Bank of India, citing secondary research, projects that climate change could cost the country 2.8 percent of its GDP and depress the living standards of nearly half its population by 2050. A recent district-level assessment of climate impacts claims that 80 percent of India’s population lives in districts that are highly prone to extreme weather events. 

Yet it’s unlikely, observes a TERI report, that India stands to benefit from the Loss and Damage Fund anytime soon, given the size and scope of the money pledged. But it can leverage its position as a political and economic heavyweight to shape the narrative around how and where the money will flow.  

Joeanna Rebello Fernandes and Shreya Adhikari contributed to this article with inputs and insights from Pranav Garimella, Programme Manager – Climate Program, WRI India.

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Know more

• Learn about rural mitigation measures for water scarcity in this photo essay.
• Watch this video to learn more about loss and damage.

Tapasya was started in 2018 by Tapas Sutradhar and Mrinal Rao to support families from socio-economically vulnerable backgrounds in accessing government social welfare schemes. At its inception, the organisation began as a policy implementation agency. It had a small team of two founders, one project coordinator, and three helpline callers, along with a limited budget of INR 15 lakh per year for the first two years.

Since then, the organisation has burgeoned to a team of 30 and its budget has grown more than sixfold, totalling INR 1 crore as of FY 2023–24. One of the core reasons behind Tapasya’s growth was that the founders were motivated to put in place a strong M&E system right from the organisation’s inception. Having worked in the social sector prior to establishing their own nonprofit, they realised that an effective M&E system was necessary for two main reasons: assessing impact effectively and enabling the professional growth of the organisation’s employees. According to Mrinal and Tapas, “Even though we lacked the resources to build a strong system in Tapasya’s initial phase, the need for and importance of developing our M&E strategy was always clear in our minds.” This clarity pushed them to adopt key processes and systems that gave them leeway to expand their scope.

The importance of intermediaries

Since the co-founders realised that they had a lot to learn, they approached incubators at various stages in order to build key capacities and forge networks. Tapasya was soon successively incubated by Atma, UnLtd India, and the The/Nudge Institute, which accelerated its organisational development.

Mrinal and Tapas emphasised the impact of the knowledge and support that these incubators offered. “Atma hand-held us through the nascent stages and helped build key areas of the organisation as well as our theory of change. Eventually, we became confident enough to make growth decisions independently. UnLtd India (UnLtd) supported us in identifying our niche and helped us deepen and validate our programme design and M&E, and The/Nudge Institute helped us look at the problem and solution differently. We discovered how a programme addressing a local problem can be scaled through various strategies to address a national issue.”

When the organisation was being incubated by UnLtd, it received mentorship in developing M&E strategies to measure both qualitative and quantitative impact. While Tapasya had previously focused heavily on data-driven measurements, UnLtd emphasised the importance of understanding the broader impact on the lives of the families that it works with. This insight highlighted the importance of empowering families and building community resilience by fostering behavioural change. It also resulted in the organisation monitoring and evaluating its interventions more comprehensively.

Growing organisations need strong M&E

The scale of the organisation’s impact has grown significantly over the years as it gradually built capacity on various fronts. For instance, during its first three years, Tapasya focused solely on enabling access to the benefits of Section 12(1)(c) of the Right to Education Act, supporting 22,000 children over this period. Subsequently, it progressed to enabling access to the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana—a maternity benefit scheme for women—and supported 6,000 women as part of this initiative. The leadership realised that many schemes were underutilised, prompting them to shift their model towards implementing multiple schemes across low-income communities in areas ranging from urban slums to remote Adivasi villages. To expand effectively, however, they needed to have a well-oiled M&E system.

The M&E framework enables the nonprofit to set targets for field workers. 

Tapasya made sure its work was highly measurable. In order to do this, there were several stages involved: first, identifying families in need, then onboarding them into the system, followed by determining their eligibility criteria and verifying their documents. Next, the organisation tracks the number of applications it has completed and which schemes the households have successfully accessed.

An added benefit is that the M&E framework enables the nonprofit to set targets for field workers. Mrinal elaborated on why they set higher targets than required from the beginning. She states, “In cases where families migrate or withdraw from the process, we may not be able to assist them throughout the entire procedure of receiving their social entitlements. Therefore, we always set higher targets to ensure that we have sufficient margins to be able to help the expected number of families. For example, if we wish to support 300 families, we reach out to 500 eligible families.” This approach ensures that M&E efforts align with the organisation’s overall strategy, allowing for effective tracking and evaluation of their impact.

Adopting a tech-driven M&E strategy

Tapasya’s programmes and outcomes have been measured by recording data through tech-driven strategies—each individual’s data plays a crucial role in monitoring the progress and delivery of welfare schemes. Technology serves as a cornerstone in this process, facilitating the mapping of individuals with eligible schemes and monitoring their progress until they benefit from them. Also, the daily work of each field worker can be tracked, building more accountability, and thereby enhancing the efficiency and credibility of the work.

The adoption of technology has made data collection much less complicated.

But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. There was a time when Tapasya’s impact was faltering as it struggled to implement a robust M&E system. The organisation was unable to accurately track the work done by team members. The community mobilisers used to visit families in the community, but there wasn’t an effective way of tracking information such as how much time they spent in each household, or how many visits they needed before a family received their entitlements. Even the leadership team were not able to prioritise the stage-wise progress of the work that they had to do.

In Tapas’ view, the adoption of technology has made data collection much less complicated. “Imagine if one field worker is working with 300–500 families—it is not possible to remember all the families’ information. A family ID number is generated every time a new family is entered into our database. The next time, they [the field worker] just have to type in the ID number, and all the previously entered data about the family will pop up.” Through the family ID database, the organisation is able to log visits to each household and thereby track the aforementioned parameters that had previously remained unmonitored.  

The automation of most of its data collection tools made Tapasya’s tracking system watertight. Witnessing a larger number of families receive their entitlements year on year (via the data they collected) helped generate greater accountability and better performance, as the team members felt a greater sense of ownership over their work. 

Both tangible and intangible impact

All partners seek concrete evidence of impact, whether through quantitative data, case studies, or success stories. With relevant data readily available for all projects, the organisation’s partners were able to view the real-time progress of its programmes, which was vital to ensuring trust and transparency. Systematic data collection enables the nonprofit to conduct research studies, validating its work and informing stakeholders within the ecosystem. This data can be shared with government departments to inform intervention strategies, caters to emerging partner needs, and can be used to design projects that directly support communities on the ground.

Tapas indicated that sometimes impact may take forms that cannot necessarily be quantified. Such forms of impact cannot be accounted for as easily as data-driven measures in an M&E framework but are just as meaningful for evaluating impact.

For Tapasya, one such outcome has been the changes in the lives of the sakhis (field workers). These women belong to the communities that they work in and were previously not engaged in any formal employment due to family responsibilities or a lack of opportunities. Once they were provided with the opportunity to work within their community and trained, they witnessed a remarkable transformation. The sakhis reported feeling more aware and informed, noting that they feel valued by their community as integral resources. Even after the organisation moved on to working in other geographies, sakhis have continued to serve as agents of change within their communities. Therefore, the organisation’s impact has stretched beyond just the families captured in their database.

Drawing on their sectoral experience and learnings over their six-year journey at Tapasya, Tapas and Mrinal offered the following advice for other grassroots nonprofits and funders.

Advice for nonprofits

1. Engage in continuous experimentation

According to Mrinal, it’s vital to engage in ongoing experimentation and embrace failure as a means of gaining insights. This allows for informed decisions regarding which strategies to retain and which to discard. At Tapasya, through comprehensive M&E processes and programme design, a wealth of data points has been collected to inform decision-making. This has helped external stakeholders gain confidence in the organisation, as evidenced by its being incubated for six successive years and a sevenfold increase in funding since inception.

2. Never stop learning

The process of learning never stops because the challenges faced by an organisation change as it grows. Stagnation in knowledge indicates a halt in progress.

For instance, when Tapasya conducted a survey of the penetration of 12 welfare schemes in Janta Vasahat, Maharashtra’s second biggest slum, they discovered that the locals were largely only accessing rations under the Public Distribution System, and approximately 80 percent of these schemes were not being availed of by eligible families. They realised that the poor coverage of welfare schemes resulted from a variety of factors, including the government system being overburdened, the lack of support systems, and challenges with service delivery. When Tapasya extended their work to other communities, it found similar patterns, validating the need for the organisation’s interventions.

As the organisation expands, both M&E practices and programme designs must adapt accordingly. Mrinal states, “When Tapasya grew from implementing one scheme to multiple schemes, our entire strategy and M&E had to change with this decision. The funnel to work around one scheme versus multiple schemes is completely different. When working towards implementing a single scheme, the eligibility criteria, necessary documents, and application process were straightforward. However, when you start working on multiple schemes, the complexities increase.”

3. Stand by your ethos

Amid suggestions to transition to a for-profit model, the idea of monetising services arose, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when funding was scarce. Tapasya conducted a small-scale experiment with 100 families, offering a subscription-based service at a nominal fee of INR 100. Within three months, it became clear that while half of the families were willing to pay and appreciated the service, the other half faced financial constraints and hesitated to enrol. The organisation introspected its core purpose, and it became evident to the team that prioritising profit over their mission of empowering communities would undermine the organisation’s fundamental principles.

Advice to funders

1. Build in the freedom to experiment  

Mrinal highlights that funders must recognise the potential for impact when nonprofit partners are granted the freedom to experiment and evolve. In her opinion, “Donors should not fear failure and should support new ideas or issues emerging in the new [nonprofit] ecosystem. For example, our financial partner Indus Action gave us this freedom right from when they started funding us. They have always encouraged us to experiment, be it around working to implement new schemes, redesigning the project, making M&E changes, building tech, or other aspects of the programme. When your partners trust you, you don’t fear failure.”

2. Engage closely and equitably with nonprofit personnel

Donors should deepen their engagement with their partner nonprofits to better understand one another and build a co-learning system for all. This fosters a collaborative learning environment, benefiting everyone involved. Given the positive influence of the sustained and meaningful engagement with funding partners such as Azim Premji Foundation and SVP India, Tapas believes that, “When the donor does not limit themselves to only seeing through the utilisation of the funds but instead engages with the nonprofits in designing the processes and programmes, it always turns out to be valuable.”

According to Tapas and Mrinal, nonprofits also benefit greatly when funders view them as equal partners. They emphasise that engaging as equal partners contributes to the emergence of better ideas, support, and collaboration, and creates a healthy relationship between funders and their nonprofit partners. This approach enables organisations to grow while expanding funders’ portfolios, thereby enhancing the understanding of how to secure and utilise funds effectively.

Blended models are the future

Tapasya’s M&E is among the key anchors that facilitated its growth. And as a result of this growth, Tapasya has already supported 35,000 eligible families in accessing the benefits of various social welfare schemes. They aspire to support 1 million eligible families across India to access government benefits by 2030.

Tapas spoke with confidence about the organisation’s sustainability. He says, “We have a blended model where we work simultaneously with both the government and the community. When the government is supportive, particularly in specific departments and schemes, we can assist a vast number of households. Apart from government collaboration, we also directly engage with communities to provide support, albeit to a lesser extent. However, our operations never halt. These adjustments have evolved over time and are now part of our strategy. Our team continually learns, unlearns, and relearns, maintaining an ongoing cycle. We’re still evolving, and future discussions will likely bring further changes based on our experiences.” By centering M&E throughout its programme design, providing the flexibility to experiment, fail, and innovate, Tapasya is in a strong position to scale and create further impact at the grassroots and national level.

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About Tapas and Mrinal

Tapas Sutradhar, co-founder and CEO of Tapasya, has 13 years of work experience in the development sector. He manages partnerships, compliance, and technology at Tapasya. Tapas has a master’s degree in social work.

Mrinal Rao, co-founder and COO of Tapasya, has 13 years of work experience in the development sector. She oversees operations, people management, and research at Tapasya. Mrinal has a master’s degree in social work.

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Know more

• Read this article to to learn whether M&E should be entrusted to an external or internal team.
• Read this article to learn how to build expertise in the M&E field.

In all these years of working closely with young people in the region, I have learned that they are articulate and aspirational, but also lonely as they lack support from the family and community in pursuing unconventional professions such as working in the social sector or becoming an entrepreneur. They have dreams of changing the society for good, but are often held back by a dearth of know-how, funds, and proper mentoring. The communities also suffer from the social sector’s poor understanding of their cultures, geographies, and sociopolitical conditions.

Here are some learnings that I would like to share with the ecosystem of funders, nonprofits, and aspiring nonprofit leaders on working in the Northeast. I believe these lessons can be a starting point for anyone wanting to meaningfully engage with these states.

1. The Northeast is not homogenous

The social sector has grown rapidly in the Northeast in the past few decades, but this growth has not always been beneficial for community members. While big funders and nonprofits started working in the area, they did so without really understanding the complexity of the geography, politics, and culture of the eight states that form the region. This led to them replicating their pan-India programmes in the Northeast without customising it to the context of the place.

For example, many assume that Nagaland has a singular Naga identity, not realising that there are multiple communities and clans within it. They have their own distinct languages/dialects and cultures and, thus, their challenges differ even from one another. A homogenous solution won’t serve them all. Communities in the Northeast are divided by geographies—people live in the plains, hills, and riverine areas, and have their unique resources and problems. Can a nonprofit that doesn’t understand this diversity ever actually help the communities?

There’s a tendency in the social sector to chase numbers because the funders demand it. Nonprofits start working in a village with a select group of people (such as in the self-help group model), run their programme, measure impact, and move on to the next village. However, evidence shows that these groups often exclude people from marginalised sections. The secret to a more inclusive social development model might lie in thinking at a smaller scale. Instead of covering 30 villages in a state within a short time span, nonprofits could work with one village or a cluster of villages with all the community members in that area, until the community is empowered to self-sustain the change.

In fact, in Sonapur area in Assam’s Kamrup Metropolitan district, Bosco Institute has partnered with Spread NE, a nonprofit that works on farming and farm-based entrepreneurship. Every household—young people, women, and children—is part of this project on natural farming. Depending on which aspect of agricultural enterprise they are interested in, the community members are involved in production, marketing, and networking. People work at their own pace without the stress of meeting targets within a limited time frame. Since they have adopted the project as their own, they have come up with additional business ideas such as creating a tourism trail so that tourists can stay at the farms, earning them an extra income.

2. Funders should invest in ideas and allow failures

These states have gone through years of political unrest, which has had an impact on the people’s mental health and social well-being. There is a scarcity of resources that prevents them from taking up professions such as entrepreneurship and social work, which are considered risky. They are encouraged to pursue government jobs or become doctors or engineers, because these are thought of as stable career options.

When young people choose to work in the social sector, they do so by going against the tide. Many of them start an initiative, but are forced to give it up due to family and social pressure and financial stress. Further, the region is disaster-prone with annual floods being a common feature that adds additional challenges to nonprofit work. Funders investing in new nonprofits in the northeastern states must consider the possibility of failures unique to the region, and not pressure the organisations to meet deadlines that aren’t suitable to their current conditions. They should also make long-term commitments instead of time-bound, project-based funding.

If young nonprofit leaders fail, they shouldn’t have to carry the stigma of an assumed incompetence. If businessmen can start over, second chances should be provided to social sector leaders too and philanthropists and funders in the Northeast should come together to build a system that encourages this.

3. Funders should re-evaluate their expectations

At our incubation programme, we focus on social entrepreneurship because we believe it is extremely important for new nonprofits to be able to sustain themselves for a few years before applying for external funding. Getting funding at an early stage is challenging for small nonprofits in the region, and we don’t want young people to stop pursuing their endeavours due to a lack of money.

Even if a new nonprofit manages to attract funding, the funders often start dictating the work that the organisation should be doing. Young leaders lack negotiating power. Due to pressure from funders, many of them digress from the primary idea for which their initiative was launched.

Funders don’t invest in prior research about the region, and often make demands that are out of context with the place. Recently, I was speaking with a young nonprofit leader who is working with one such funder. They are planning to run online campaigns with women and adolescent kids in rural areas, but many villages in the Northeast don’t have a stable internet connection.

4. The sector must learn to listen to the communities

The shortcoming of the social sector in the Northeast is its inability to listen to the communities and the tendency to impose ideas on them. Funders and nonprofits from other states that start working in the region often complain about the lack of entrepreneurial spirit and productivity among the locals. But the people here had a self-sufficient lifestyle before the modern idea of development was thrust on them. They grew their own food, weaved their own clothes, and lived a slow life. You can still see reflections of this in the small towns and villages of these states. I always say that when I came from Kerala to Shillong in Meghalaya in 1975, we used to walk because it was pleasant and there were no vehicles; now the people in Shillong have to walk because the streets are clogged with too many vehicles and there are traffic jams everywhere. What kind of development is this? If people don’t want to work according to industrial time, if they prioritise their festivals and communal engagements over manufacturing for production units, it is an indicator of their refusal to be co-opted by market forces. Shouldn’t the social sector, which prides itself on serving the people, adapt to the ways of the community rather than force them to do something that goes against their concept of happiness?

Many communities in the Northeast are now struggling to preserve their culture, language, songs, and customs. Young community members have taken up the task of cultural conservation, but are struggling for funds. There are individuals and groups that promote slow food, slow fashion, compassionate farming, and indigenous music, art, and folklores. The sector can play a critical role in supporting these enterprises that matter to the people. This will take them one step closer to engaging with the communities on their terms. 

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Know more

• Read this article to understand why the social sector needs to invest in the Northeast.
• Read this report to learn about the development challenges that the northeastern states face.
• Read this article to understand how infrastructural development is affecting the youth in the Northeast.

When your manager—who hasn’t spoken to you all year—opens the conversation by asking you how you are doing.

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When they kick off the conversation asking about what you’ve accomplished since your last review. (But you’ve forgotten everything that happened before yesterday).

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When they ask you to talk about your weaknesses and indicate that they have (critical) feedback for you.

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When they ask you about your stretch goal and you are hearing those words for the first time in life.

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When they finally get to praising you for being a valuable asset to the organisation.

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When they say they really want to know how the organisation can support your growth.

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But then they tell you that they don’t quite agree with your suggestion that a pay raise is the best form of support.

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And now is the time for your manager’s yearly confession that while they appreciate you, they don’t have the funds to actually pay you better.

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However, however, they see you in a leadership role in the future…and then there will be money.

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Most commentary on that awkward reality has come, perhaps inevitably, from the generators and purveyors of evidence. More attention needs to be given now to what others say about this conundrum, especially the intended main recipients of the evidence—the decision-makers and managers in the world of action, including government officials and managers.  What is their take on the problem of weak policy uptake of evidence? If both sides of the market for evidence—the suppliers and the users—understood each other’s perspectives better, both could benefit, getting more of what they want with less waste of effort.

Getting that to happen will not be easy. The suppliers are mostly researchers. They have views on what users think and want but rarely know firsthand what it is really like to be in the hotseat of policymaking and program delivery day after day. The users, similarly, often have only hazy notions of the finer points of the evidence available—how it was derived, how reliable it is, and what its limitations are. The two camps speak different languages, reside in different universes.

One impediment to bridging that gap is that there is no simple way to pin down users’ perspectives.  Doing surveys or using other scientific tools to try to lock down a precise parsing of what policymakers and program implementers think about evidence and why, when, and how they use it or not will never be sufficient. The only dependable way to assess evidence users’ thinking and behavior in relation to evidence uptake is to spend considerable time being a policymaker or program implementer or working closely with them, experiencing the rough and tumble of advising, or supporting or negotiating with them. Not everyone has the time, opportunity, or inclination to do that. But a lot can be learned from talking with—and listening carefully to—people who have.

As someone who has worked as a policymaker and worked at 3ie—a supplier of evidence and an advocate for its use in decision-making—I care deeply about and understand all the complex aspects of these challenges. In my current role, as a 3ie senior fellow, I am focusing on how to improve the evidence-supplier to evidence-user interface at all levels, and working closely with the organization’s Evidence for Policy and Learning Team.

Presuming that practical policymaking and implementational realities are “someone else’s business” that evidence producers can stay apart from is a sure ticket to irrelevance.

Drawing from my own experience and networks, I had the privilege to complete an in-depth examination of five examples of particularly interesting policymakers (see Reformers in International Development:  Five Remarkable Lives, published by Routledge).

Conversations with these individuals have helped highlight some fundamental principles important for facilitating and enhancing evidence uptake in policymaking.  Seemingly obvious at first look, these principles reveal, on closer inspection, challenging complexities, along with practical steps that can help.

First, if the creators, providers, and advocates of evidence truly want to promote more and better uptake of it that results in improved policy and programs, they need to approach that task by putting themselves more in the shoes of the people who decide policy and oversee programs. Data people need to learn to think the way doer people do. This means learning their language and meeting them on their turf—not just figuratively but also literally—by spending time with doer people whenever, and as much as, possible. Evidence producers need to own the fact that the constraints that policymakers face, the barriers they must overcome, and the gauntlet they have to traverse in order to get anything adopted are fully a part of what a good researcher must take into account. Presuming that those practical policymaking and implementational realities are ‘someone else’s business’ that evidence producers can stay apart from is a sure ticket to irrelevance. As examples of doers, the five decisionmakers in my Reformers book were hungry for evidence that settled key pragmatic questions, not distant general propositions. Ela Bhatt, when helping millions of impoverished working women in India to build better lives for themselves, needed to know what would work for them and what not. When the women needed to create their own bank, she needed to know how it should be designed to be sustainably viable. When another of the five— Dzingai Mutumbuka (now a 3ie Board Member)—was a cabinet minister charged with creating a new education system in a newly independent African country where 97 percent of its population had never had the chance to go to school before, he needed to know what his initial top priority should be. When donors pursued him with what they thought he should do—but failed to provide convincing evidentiary support for them—he had to work hard to find better answers on his own, tailored better to the context he had to deal with.

Second, researchers need to recognize that an essential aspect of putting oneself in the shoes of policymakers is helping them explain evidence compellingly to their many and diverse stakeholders. If decisionmakers are going to stick their neck out to act upon some crucial piece of evidence, they will need to present and defend it well—across the whole trajectory of the decisionmaking journey, from floating a new policy initially among close colleagues, to sharing it widely with parliamentarians and voters, to coping with attacks from critics, to commenting on how it has turned out when implemented.  To be good at all that, decisionmakers need to understand the evidence thoroughly themselves and be comfortable walking others through it. Researchers need to help with that.

If politics is the art of compromise, policymaking is the science of choosing better when best is out of reach.

Everything about a piece of evidence—where it came from, how it was developed, what it means, and how reliable it is—must be totally transparent in the sense of being understandable by those who might want to know. When Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala—another of the five main characters in Reformers—was the Nigerian cabinet minister responsible for bringing government spending back from the chaos left by the military regime that preceded the democratically elected government she came in with, she needed evidence that was incontrovertible. Shrewdly disarming critics, she had all the details of her proposed new budget published publicly—in a book that immediately became a bestseller across the country. When Adolfo Figueroa, still another of the five, was working out his proposals for tackling the extreme poverty among the large indigenous populations in the Andean high areas of his native Peru, he insisted on finding arguments that could be understood even by any ordinary “shoeshine boy.”

Third, putting oneself in the shoes of policymakers may require researchers to add tasks in their research that go beyond what would be necessary from a research perspective alone. For example, in the real world, first-best solutions are often not feasible, whether because of political impasses, administrative limitations, or other reasons. So, policymakers need evidence showing not only the best course of action but also second- and third-best alternatives that may be more attainable in their specific context. If politics is the art of compromise, policymaking is the science of choosing better when best is out of reach. Evidence generators and disseminators can do themselves—and policymakers—a favor by providing guidance on what to do, in various circumstances, when optimal solutions cannot be achieved.  In addition, evidence producers should have a sensitive ear for the exact nature—including degree of precision—of the information that decision-makers require. Sometimes policymakers need most to know if a certain value is at least above a certain threshold—for instance, that the rate of return for some program will be at least greater than, say, 10 percent. In that case, trying to determine a good point estimate—say that the rate of return is 16 percent with a confidence interval of +/- 4 percentage points is of secondary interest for the policymaker. Simply knowing that the answer is almost assuredly more than a critical threshold (10% in this example) is enough. When Domingo Cavallo, the fifth of the five in Reformers, was deciding how best to ratchet down the hyperinflation that was ravaging his country, Argentina, in the early 1990s, he could not wait for finely calibrated point estimates of the reforms he was considering; he just needed to know whether their impact would, grosso modo (roughly speaking), be large or small.

Drawing lessons from the evidence on how to make evidence most useful will continue to be a key factor in driving the change.

This article was originally published on 3ie.

Rekha Koita is the director and co-founder of Koita Foundation, an organisation that works on digitally transforming nonprofit operations to optimise processes and use data and analytics to drive performance and growth.

She was previously a management consultant at Accenture where she conducted corporate training for several Indian and multinational organisations and nonprofits. Since starting her philanthropic journey in 2016, Rekha has been focused on leveraging technology for positive change within the nonprofit sector.

In this interview, Rekha Koita reflects on the potential of the current philanthropic landscape in India and her role in it as a donor. She also talks about visionary founders, many of whom are young and driven, spearheading initiatives that promise to reshape communities for the better.

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Know More

• Read this article about how Indian philanthropies need to fill the funding gap.
• Read this article about Prashanth Prakash’s philanthropic journey.

Amit Chandra is the co-founder of ATE Chandra Foundation, one of India’s largest philanthropic foundations that focuses on social sector capacity building and sustainable rural development.

He has been a trustee of the Tata Trusts, a founder/board member of Ashoka University, a board member of Give India and The Akanksha Foundation. He also is the chairperson and founder of Bain Capital, India, and has served as a board member at Tata Sons, Genpact, L&T Finance, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Piramal Enterprises, and Tata Investment Corporation.

In this wide-ranging conversation with India Development Review, Amit talks about the philanthropic values that matter to him, the challenges that donors face, the need for a community-centric approach to giving, and the lessons that failures teach.

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Know more

• Read this interview to learn more about the rise in strategic philanthropy.
• Read this article to find out more about philanthropy with an LGBTQIA+ lens.
• Read this article to understand why philanthropy must focus on systemic causes of exclusion.

Scale is often viewed as an obvious aim for any nonprofit. However, when the focus is on growing an organisation—its budget, employees, programmes—and thus its impact, the conditions required to effectively enable scale are often overlooked. What happens if an organisation’s leadership is resistant to scale? Moreover, does scale look the same at every organisation? If not, what does it look like for grassroots organisations? This case study looks at the example of Quality Education Support Trust (QUEST) to explore these questions further.    

QUEST was set up in Maharashtra in 2007 by a group of individuals concerned about the quality of education in the state, especially in terms of teaching and learning practices. With the aim of improving the existing education system, they began to work on early childhood education, elementary education, and the professional development of teachers in the state.

By 2016, the organisation had developed several programmes and the demand for their offerings was growing. At that juncture, QUEST had an annual budget of INR 2.63 crore and a team of 55 individuals, 13 of whom were reporting to the director, Nilesh Nimkar. Impressed by QUEST’s impact on the ground, Y M Deosthalee—former chairman and managing director of L&T Finance—recommended that they scale their programmes beyond the three or four districts they were working in at the time.

Initially, Nilesh was against the idea for two reasons. First, acquiring the funding to scale up sustainably was a concern. “Our organisation was not established by a high networth individual (HNI) or business house, so fundraising was always a challenge for us,” he says. Second, Nilesh feared that scaling would result in the loss of his cherished connection to the field. “I never had the ambition to lead an organisation that had a multi-crore budget and worked across states. What I started with was a genuine interest in problem-solving, knowledge building, and making an impact. So I worried that if we grew the organisation, we might lose a good educator and gain a bad CEO.”

This compelled QUEST to revisit the problem it was looking to solve. Nilesh recalls, “We thought about what the real challenge [with respect to education] is in India. Is it quality alone, or is it quality at scale?” Thinking through this question consolidated their commitment to scale, as limiting their work to just a few districts wouldn’t meaningfully contribute to achieving their intended goals. 

Although the senior team at QUEST had significant field experience, their management experience was limited. In order to scale their impact, they would need to actively engage in capacity building. This would entail investing in multiple capabilities, including strategic clarity, organisational restructuring, financial planning, fundraising, and people development. The process began with Nilesh attending the Dasra Social Impact Leadership Program, which offered beneficial insights into leadership and management. However, he couldn’t envision what scale would look like in his own organisation based on the case studies presented in the programme. Given that QUEST was much smaller and operated in a completely different context, he felt that he would require tailored guidance to be convinced of the organisation’s scalability. It was the personalised coaching offered by J Rajagopal under Dasra’s ‘Coach4Good’ programme that really helped Nilesh. Through conversations with Rajagopal, Nilesh realised that QUEST needed to formulate a management team to serve as a second line of leadership. Additionally, the coaching enabled Nilesh to devise a systematic plan for the delegation of responsibilities within the organisation. Nilesh also attributes the organisation’s ability to reflect on and unpack the benefits of their capacity building journey to the thinking exercise that they engaged in as part of Rajagopal’s case study that documents QUEST’s growth.

Understanding the complexity of the situation and the lack of internal expertise, QUEST approached a capacity building funder to support this journey. With the funder’s help, they engaged Dasra to handhold them through the initial stages. Driven by their faith in the importance of a clear organisational vision and internal communication, QUEST began to re-articulate their vision, mission, and strategic priorities. The newly devised organisational strategy was documented and disseminated to the team to solicit their buy-in. The organisation also made a concerted effort to ensure that their programmes and strategic priorities were in alignment with each other.

Restructuring and its challenges

QUEST’s flat structure was a clear pain point, as it left Nilesh with the responsibility of directly managing many team members. Thus, an organisational restructuring was in order. This included decentralising decision-making and developing a second line of leadership to manage the needs of a growing organisation.

However, this was not without its challenges. First, akin to Nilesh, many senior members of the team were reluctant to take on managerial responsibilities. Having joined QUEST with a zeal for working on education, they felt that managerial work was a distraction. The incompatibility between their individual priorities and the needs of running an organisation, and the fear that the pursuit of scale would dilute QUEST’s impact, resulted in a few employees departing at this stage.

QUEST also deliberated on whether to hire laterally for these managerial positions or fill them by promoting talent from within the organisation. They tried both strategies, and quickly found that lateral hires were less likely to fit the organisation’s culture. According to Nilesh, while this recruitment was an aspect of a larger effort to formalise QUEST’s culture and enable its growth, the new recruits perhaps expected more things to be in place. “They came in with ready-made solutions that didn’t quite suit an organisation like ours that was still in the middle of a transition”, says Nilesh. This was met with resistance from the rest of the team, and as a grassroots nonprofit that works extensively in the field, they needed the relationship between the field team and senior management to be strong. Therefore, they committed to encouraging people within the organisation to step up and supported the development of their managerial capacities.

This support was facilitated by identifying key responsibility areas for the senior team and the functional responsibilities of each of its members. Aided by their newly devised internal communication plan, they helped key personnel understand their new roles. More importantly, they identified mentors for senior staff members to nurture their capabilities.  

As QUEST grew, so did its budget. The organisation thus set up a dedicated fundraising wing led by a senior resource. They initially recruited part-time personnel to support the fundraising director, but they felt that the time and investment taken to onboard and integrate part-time hires wasn’t commensurate to their eventual output. As they search for full-time fundraising personnel, the rest of the team is supporting the senior resource by devoting a portion of their time to fundraising activities. As a result of their improved focus on raising money, the organisation was able to meet its budget of INR 7.53 crore in 2022–23.

What is it like now?

QUEST’s capacity-building efforts provided them with a clear vision and direction. Contrary to Nilesh’s initial concerns, these efforts expanded the bandwidth of the leadership and allowed them to redirect their energies towards critical organisational needs that had previously been overlooked. He notes, “Building the organisation substantially freed up my schedule. Now, I can invest a lot more time into the core business than I was able to in 2016.” The establishment of a managerial cadre promoted their professional development as well. While the organisation did not have a second line of leadership before the intervention, it now has a six-member team that has been trained to assume leadership responsibilities.

The capacity building endeavour also helped the organisation become resilient enough to withstand the pandemic and its resultant setbacks. Before the intervention, the organisation had no system in place to collect, analyse, and report financial data. Moreover, their financial reserves amounted to approximately INR 30 lakh prior to hiring fundraising personnel in 2019. By creating a system to track the organisation’s finances across multiple programmes and locations in a single consolidated sheet, QUEST’s leadership were able to manoeuvre through the pandemic. Nilesh notes that he couldn’t envision the leadership team accomplishing this feat prior to their professional development through the capacity building effort. Additionally, their financial reserves expanded to INR 1.05 crore in 2023.

Back then, the organisation set ambitious goals of reaching approximately 7,000 teachers and 2.7 lakh children by 2022. Owing to the organisational development and budget growth they’ve witnessed since then, they’ve exceeded these targets and reached approximately 2.97 lakh children and 12,677 teachers as of early 2023. Importantly, QUEST has established its credibility in the field of education, which can often go unnoticed in the case of smaller organisations.   

Advice for nonprofits

1. Invest in capacity building to scale sustainably

As nonprofits grow, they need to build organisational capabilities along multiple dimensions to handle complexities and ensure impact at scale. QUEST was poised to scale quicker and more efficiently due to its emphasis on capacity building and the strategic clarity that emerged as a result.

2. Prioritise design before scale

Besides building capacities, nonprofits must also ensure their programmes are designed well. “We were able to maintain the quality of our programmes despite scaling considerably because we had set up and tested our programmes at a smaller scale in a very robust manner,” Nilesh says. Given that scaling impact underpins the need to scale an organisation, nonprofits should ensure that their mission is articulated well and their programmes are tested extensively. “Create a model that works, and then go for scale.”

3. Programme over-reliance can be dangerous

According to Nilesh, it is better for nonprofits with multiple programmes in place to scale them parallelly rather than disproportionately focus on one programme. In 2016, QUEST had six programmes in place. One of them was the Palvee programme, which focused on early childhood education in anganwadis. It was a programme that they found difficult to procure funding for, and which could have been abandoned to focus on their more ‘successful’ programmes. However, they fought hard to keep it alive as they scaled. Owing to the increased focus on early childhood education in the National Education Policy, Palvee now accounts for 50 percent of their budget. Emphasising the importance of avoiding an overreliance on a single programme, Nilesh notes, “Keep multiple programmes on, so you don’t find yourself thinking ‘What do I do if this programme fails?’ after you scale.”

Advice for funders

1. Grassroots organisations need long-term support        

Funders must adopt a long-term view, especially when supporting grassroots organisations. Nilesh echoes the sentiment that sustainable impact cannot be achieved immediately. “Support any organisation for at least three to five years because impact takes time,” he says. 

QUEST was able to get capacity building funds to focus on gaining strategic clarity. However, a lack of subsequent funding can lead to plateauing of impact if the organisation is unable to continue building the capabilities required for sustaining its scale-up. Hence, funders must increase capacity-building investments and commit to extended periods of financial assistance.

2. Bring experts on board and provide adaptable funding

In a survey of Indian nonprofits by Bridgespan, only 18 percent reported that they were able to adequately invest in organisational development. This was largely due to the dearth of funding for non-programme costs. Grassroots nonprofits may lack the expertise to build capacities independently and are unlikely to be able to afford the services of experts. However, funders can enable them to seek out and utilise such services.

Nilesh stresses that employing the services of a capacity-building agency to handhold them through the initial stages was transformational for QUEST, and this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the committed funding they received for this purpose.

Adaptability is also a key feature of holistic funding. By virtue of having adaptable funders on board, QUEST was able to repackage its programmes during the pandemic to deliver them online. As a result, they were able to continue working with the communities they were already associated with, maintain their contact with the field throughout the lockdown, and quickly gear up their programmes post Covid.

3. Fund organisational development, not just programmes

According to Nilesh, the underfunding of non-programme costs remains a problem. He emphasises that capacity building is a critical prerequisite to effectively delivering a programme at scale. He thus recommends that a portion of the funds be earmarked specifically for capacity building efforts. Nilesh says, “There should be a larger discussion about how critical it (capacity building) is, and why it should not be addressed through separate grants alone.”

What lies ahead?

By designing detailed implementation plans and developing the capabilities of key personnel, QUEST has achieved the targets defined at outset of its capacity-building endeavour and is on track to further growth. However, capacity building never ends. As the organisation evolves, there’s always more that needs to be done. QUEST is looking to continue strengthening its communications vertical to match its current scale and increasing visibility among stakeholders. Additionally, Nilesh hopes to carry on building the second line of leadership at QUEST to further decentralise decision-making within the organisation. “With growing operations, it is necessary for the second line of leadership to take charge of more aspects,” he notes. Nilesh hopes to eventually appoint a successor who can dedicatedly lead the organisation as it grows even larger.

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About Nilesh

Nilesh Nimkar is a founder trustee and director of Quality Education Support Trust (QUEST). At QUEST, he has designed and implemented programmes on early childhood education, elementary education, and teacher professional development. Many of his research studies within QUEST programmes have been published in reputed journals. For his work in education, Nilesh has received the Maharashtra Foundation Award (2011) and the Extraordinary Early Childhood Education Leadership Award (2017).

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Know more

• Read this case study on how nonprofits can scale impact with the help of an external consultant.
• Read this article to learn whether your organisation is ready to scale.

Codification is not new. If we look at social sector organisations that have done this successfully in India, we can find great examples in the education and health sectors. For instance, Pratham Education Foundation codified the teaching module used to bridge learning gaps in students. It can be accessed by full-time, part-time, or remedial teachers to help students who are lagging behind. This method is now being used in other countries as well.

In the case of childbirth and prenatal and postnatal care, the health sector now has checklists and protocols that have led to drastic improvements in infant and maternal mortality rates. What these sectors have done is to codify the requirements for delivering results.

Codification can result in much-needed advantages for water conservation as well. For instance, frontline cadres are critical in driving behaviour change when it comes to better water use and agricultural practices. These cadres need not just technical know-how but also soft skills in leading by example. Similarly, when working with flagship government programmes to enhance water supply, nonprofits need to understand the state’s system, with its cycle of planning, approval, and budget allocation, as well as whom to engage with and when.

Typically, each new partner develops this knowledge for themselves. However, if they could refer to a ‘playbook’ based on the experiences and learnings of another organisation, the time for trial and error is reduced and they can become effective faster.

Funders should make the first move

As it turns out, nonprofits are busy doing what they need to do—executing programmes on the ground, working with communities, and driving social change. Their plates are full, and they often have limited resources to share their learnings with stakeholders beyond the programme.

As donors, we collaborate with diverse organisations implementing various programmes and can identify commonalities across them. We may be better positioned to see the ‘principles’ driving success and the challenges programmes and partners face. Over time, we amass substantial learnings on what works and what doesn’t in different contexts. For instance, at HUF, approximately 1,200 frontline workers drive behaviour change on water use across programmes. Thus, for us, codifying the most effective principles and orchestrating cross-learning between partners makes limited resources go a long way.

Communication design is crucial

It is not that the sector lacks knowledge or best practices. Almost all organisations we work with profile learnings in manuals, guidebooks, and programme documentation. However, accessing and using this wealth of information can be daunting. The material lacks navigability and often sits in documents or simply in the minds of people across the organisation.

Nonprofits do not always have the time, resources, or specialised communications expertise to compile and disseminate this knowledge effectively. This is why the development sector needs codification, led by expert communications partners who can design guides and do-it-yourself playbooks with specific building blocks in mind:

1. Multimedia and modular

For a codification playbook to be of real utility, it must be easy for end users to access, navigate, and understand. The format should be succinct, engaging, and user-friendly. A playbook can be made available online and can use a combination of multimedia tools—video, audio, text, and printable copies where required. Users should also be able to choose whether they want the entire module or just some parts. It should be possible for them to skip steps and dive into more material when needed. The material should be available as snippets as well as in detail. Similarly, these guides should be modular and offer opportunistic learning. People at different learning stages can use them to get updated on a specific theme or skill they need to know more about.

2. A strategic how-to guide

An impactful programme would typically have many moving parts. To ensure the replication of success, these parts would have to be unbundled so the core or essential component that accounts for most of the impact can be isolated. It could be a process, a routine, a principle, or a cultural mindset. Breaking it down into bite-sized sections or steps others can learn from becomes critical.

3. Descriptive, not prescriptive

A prototype being scaled to different contexts cannot resort to standardisation. Codification is not meant to tell our partners that there is only one way to achieve an objective. Instead, it is intended to be a directional guide. The idea is to take the learnings of an organisation that has done something well and share it with others who may need this learning. While the playbook acts as a guide, each person or team using it should also be able to customise and localise it after taking their cultural and regional nuances into account. It should allow different organisations to tweak it to serve their needs.

4. Iterative

All processes, toolkits, and playbooks risk becoming static and losing relevance over time. A good playbook should allow for the incorporation of new learnings from organisations or funders who test and use it. If something doesn’t work for them or if they’ve tried a different approach that does work, they should be able to add that learning into the playbook. The idea that there can be different ways of achieving similar impact is fundamental to scalability. A willingness to learn from success and failure is also vital for effective scaling.

We work in a dynamic ecosystem, and what works today may not work tomorrow. Therefore, codification cannot be a one-time effort and should keep getting updated collaboratively.

HUF’s vision is to use these codified playbooks as a platform where more and more partners add their own experiences or resources. The playbook should encourage transparency and openness and act as a document for the public good, ensuring funders and civil society organisations aggregate resources and combine capabilities while keeping solutions relevant to local contexts. These diverse layers, levels, and perspectives can help the development sector scale impact successfully.

Know more

• Dip into this playbook to learn how to build an effective frontline cadre.
• Read about what the social sector needs to do to scale scaling up.
• Read about whether an organisation’s size is the right metric to measure impact