There are several such shared moments when people gather for something they consider larger than themselves. These shared moments are a great time to run fundraising campaigns and build a community around your cause. However, this isn’t necessarily a new concept for nonprofits. GivingTuesday, a global generosity movement celebrated on November 28 this year, is popular across the world, and the social sector in India often uses Diwali and Daan Utsav as opportunities to raise money. In fact, the How India Gives report, 2021–22, by the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy shows that religious festivals are a major motivation for donors in India. But planning a campaign during an event can still be challenging, and so here’s a stepwise fundraising guide that nonprofits can follow.

Start by setting SMART goals and sub-goals

If a nonprofit wants to run a resource mobilisation campaign in the next two to three months, they need to start planning now. The GivingTuesday Data Commons’ research shows that campaigns with a goal and plan of action have a higher likelihood of success than those without.

The first step in the process is to set SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable yet aspirational, relevant, and time-bound.

Here’s how these goals work in the context of fundraising:

• Specific means that a campaign can’t just be about raising more money. It also needs a defined objective such as how much money and for what reason.
• Measurable means attaching numbers or any other indicators to the goal against which its success or failure can be evaluated. This also helps in planning the next campaign better.
• Achievable means that the campaign needs to be realistic for the individual and the organisation planning it. However, at the same time, it should be exciting enough to sustain the engagement of the team members and the giving community.
• Relevant means that the campaign’s pitch should be relatable for the project and the community. 
• Time-bound means that a campaign must always have a deadline. This helps create a sense of urgency and pushes people to take action.

Let’s use the example of an organisation whose goal is to raise INR 5,00,000. Now let’s convert this into a SMART goal.

To make this goal more specific, let’s say that INR 5,00,000 is to be used to purchase 200 chairs for a classroom. This makes the goal measurable. If the organisation can raise the money and buy 200 chairs, then the campaign is a success. The question of aspiration is something that will differ from organisation to organisation. However, this goal can be made time-bound so that it is more effective: Raise INR 5,00,000 to purchase 200 chairs for the classroom on GivingTuesday (November 28, 2023).

Once the SMART goals are ready, it is time to focus on sub-goals so that the primary aim of the campaign can be broken down. For example, your sub-goals could be:

• Raise INR 1,00,000 from diaspora donors.
• Raise INR 1,00,000 through the board members’ network.
• Raise INR 1,00,000 by converting past donors who gave INR 1,000 to now give INR 2,000.
• Raise INR 50,000 from first-time donors through social media.
• Raise INR 1,50,000 from three volunteer fundraisers who could bring in INR 50,000 each.

Breaking your larger goal into smaller and more actionable steps like these will help you plan better.

Get the narrative straight

According to GlobalGiving, a crowdfunding platform for grassroots nonprofits, a potential donor spends no longer than 4.2 seconds on a fundraising campaign page. So it is very important that the message is clear, engaging, and precise in its communication. Here are some things to consider for efficient storytelling.

1. Choose a platform

The fundraising campaign can be hosted on the nonprofit’s website and word about it can be spread using social media and e-mail, or it can be hosted on a fundraising platform with additional features that the organisation would otherwise have to create on its own.  

2. Pick the right title

The project title is the first thing donors see and it determines if they will keep reading and stay on to donate, so it’s important to have a title that reflects the organisation’s work. The title should be clear, short, and descriptive. It is also what gets pulled up on Google and other search engines when donors search using keywords. That one phrase you choose should answer the following questions:

• Where is the project based?
• Whom is it helping?
• How many people are benefitting?
• How is it benefitting them?

For example, the title could be: Help 40 children in a village in Bodh Gaya by providing them education.

3. Select a powerful image   

Images grab the attention of potential donors and help them understand the organisation, programme participants, and the community that is being served. Positive and empowering imagery works best. Further, images focused on one individual or a small group tend to get more clicks than images that have too much going on.

4. Write an effective project summary

The project summary is the next thing the donor sees. It usually appears at the top of the project page under the image. It should convey:

• Whom is the organisation helping?
• What are they doing, how, and why?

Here’s an example of Seva Mandir, a Rajasthan-based grassroots nonprofit, and their project to provide support and rehabilitation, counselling services, legal aid, medical, and psychological care to women suffering from violence and harassment in rural India, specifically in Udaipur. Their summary answers all the above questions and gives the donor a clear sense of the project without having to read lengthy paragraphs.

Beyond these points, it’s about the fundraiser putting themselves in the shoes of a donor who doesn’t know anything about the nonprofit and doesn’t share the same passion for the cause. It is necessary for the nonprofit to ask themselves whether the campaign will appeal to such a donor.

Map and leverage networks

A common misconception about crowdfunding is that it’s meant to find a new community to draw resources from. But it’s actually about reaching out to anyone who is already a part of the network available to an individual or an organisation and to engage this network to expand outwards.

1. Map one’s network

Network mapping can be invaluable to crowdfunding because it helps an organisation and its individual team members ascertain the size of the network they already have and then plan to grow it. Mapping in this context means visualising a network and categorising it into different groups. For example, a person’s network could be as following.

• First tier: Groups of people they could personally reach out to today without thinking too much. The preferred mode for these groups could include WhatsApp, Facebook, SMS, and calls.
• Second tier: People they could reach out to but it may need to be more formal or require an introduction/reintroduction. The ideal mode of communication for this group would be an e-mail. 
• Third tier: People they should or could know but it might take an introduction or a networking event (fundraiser or community event) to build a connection that could lead to a donation. The mode of communication could be newsletters, radio, and mass e-mail.

Additionally, here’s a helpful tool on GlobalGiving’s website for network mapping.

2. Recognise the dynamic potential of people

While mapping a network, it is essential to remember that not everyone needs to be a donor. The comprehensive list of individuals is necessary so that a fundraiser can analyse what each member is capable of giving, because everyone has something they can offer to the campaign. If a person can’t give in terms of money, they can still provide their time, talent and expertise, and testimony that lends credibility to the campaign. It’s easier to remember them as the 4 Ts of giving: time, talent, treasure, and testimony. They could also be people with a lot of contacts or with the ability to influence others—the CEO of a company, a local government body representative, and a social media influencer are some examples. So, technically speaking, everyone in a network is giving in some way or the other.

They can also be people who are advocates for the project, and can be termed fundraising advocates, fundraising champions, or volunteer fundraisers. This group of people is extremely useful in peer-to-peer fundraising. Data shows that, even today, peer-to-peer fundraising is one of the best strategies to access new donors. According to the How India Gives report, 2020–21, critical sources of information for giving to “non-religious organisations” remain “in-person outreach by volunteers or agents” (37 percent) and “word from family and friends” (20 percent).

A common trait of these fundraising champions is that they know the story behind the project and share its passion, which gradually makes them a part of the core campaign team. However, a fundraising champion needs advance notice, pre-prepared materials that they can share with donors, goals (such as reaching out to five donors), and regular communication with the nonprofit’s fundraising team/lead.

Build a system for outreach and accountability

Once the campaign is ready, multiple e-mails should be sent in the days leading to the campaign/giving moment. On the day of the event, multiple e-mails should go out to people. This group of people can be segregated into the board, donors, and somebody who already gave, and can be managed using customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

The nonprofit must also add the event to the supporters’ calendars so that they receive a notification that it is time to give or time to support the organisation in any way they can. A tool like AddEvent can make this possible while protecting the e-mails of the recipients.

Finally, once the fundraising starts, the nonprofit’s job is to set up an accountability system with the entire fundraising team; this can be done through daily calls or by using an e-mail thread. The accountability system helps to keep the excitement alive and ensures that you are able to measure and celebrate every milestone.

The How India Gives report, 2021–22, shows that the total quantum of giving by households in India went up to INR 27 thousand crore from INR 23.7 crore in the previous year. However, the report also mentions that the main reason people don’t give is because they are not being asked. This can be a positive lesson for the nonprofit sector as it works towards raising money for social good. What we need to learn is how to engage with a giver depending on where they are in their journey with the cause, and how to collectively create and leverage giving moments like GivingTuesday to galvanise the generosity of our communities and direct it towards the systemic change we are all seeking to create.

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Know more

• Listen to this podcast to learn how to harness the power of giving for a cause.
• Read this article to understand how nonprofits can tap into the potential of individual giving.

Do more

• Build your fundraising campaign by using this toolkit prepared by GivingTuesday India.

Philanthropy in India is not keeping pace with the need for funds among nonprofits. CSR funding is being directed towards causes and organisations considered ‘safe’, and an increasing number of FCRA licenses are being cancelled. The result is twofold—there is less money allocated to causes that are not urban-centric, or that engage with ‘intangible’ issues such as justice, equity, and well-being. And the supply-side market for philanthropy is reducing.

The cancellation of licenses for foreign funding would not have made much of a difference if enough wealthy Indians had stepped in to plug that gap. However, since that is not the case, it is now up to nonprofits to become better fundraisers at a time when there aren’t enough funders in the first place.

The onus of expanding the philanthropy market should be on funders

There are several examples of this. Stanley Levinson, a businessman and lawyer, was an ardent supporter of the civil rights movement in the US. He used his influence to build the fundraising strategy for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King’s organisation that helmed the civil rights protests. Closer home, business leaders like G D Birla, Jamnalal Bajaj, and Purshuttamdas Thakurdas were instrumental in supporting the Independence movement and seeding the roots of several Gandhian institutions. And in the more recent past, the late Dutch businessman Ferd Van Koolwijk created Partnership Foundation in the Netherlands to raise money from Dutch businesses to support the work of Rainbow Homes in India. We’ve also seen how Azim Premji has single-handedly bolstered domestic funding through his contributions.  

What can funders do?

Philanthropists have the power of privilege—something that gives them the wherewithal to negotiate the most intractable issues. The current social and political environment must therefore be seen by domestic funders as an opportunity to leverage this power and fill in important gaps.

Listed below are some pointers on what philanthropists can do to help and support civil society organisations (CSOs) in these testing times.  

1. Expand the common ground for funding 

The number of millionaires in India has been on the rise for the last decade and is expected to almost double by 2026. While many of them share their wealth via community platforms (temples, schools, hospitals, and clinics), hardly ever does this money translate into long-term funding for civil society.

Philanthropists can build common ground and negotiate for greater social participation from those who have benefitted from the economies of scale.

Existing philanthropists and business persons have the capacity to engage with those who have newly acquired wealth and help them expand their horizons. This engagement needs to increase given the fast pace at which wealth creation is happening with new-generation founders. One lesson we universally learned during COVID-19 is that one person’s problem is everybody’s problem. In a post-COVID world, there is scope for greater sensitivity to recognising that if we let something fester, it will inevitably land on our doors.

With power, connections, and influence, philanthropists can build this common ground and negotiate for greater social participation from those who have benefitted from the economies of scale. It needs unique approaches and methods, including one-on-one engagement, building intermediary structures, and highlighting the value that civil society provides to their businesses and the country at large.  

2. Build social protection mechanisms

In a survey by GuideStar India, 64 percent of nonprofits revealed that their employees are the primary breadwinners in their families. Funders can collaborate to create safety nets, such as pooled insurance and emergency support, to help social workers navigate times of distress. With funding and advocacy for the sector shrinking, it faces a significant loss of talent, accumulated wisdom, and invaluable years of experience.

Large funding organisations have an opportunity to appoint experienced social workers as CSR or philanthropy coordinators, thereby recognising their expertise in the field. This would be far better than frontline teams having to work as mechanics, labourers, or marketing agents, in the absence of jobs that use their accumulated knowledge and networks in the community.  

3. Leverage their government access to speak for the sector 

Many philanthropists have access to government officials and ministers by virtue of the businesses they run. This access is leveraged for collaborating on public–private partnerships, introducing easier regulations, or making it easier to do business. However, this privilege is not available to nonprofits, particularly since there is no collective or industry body for the sector. While nonprofit leaders may be able to form connections with state leaders for their programmes, they struggle to be part of conversations with, say, a union minister or national-level bureaucrats.   

Philanthropists who have this access can act as spokespeople for the sector. Given their experience working with nonprofits and seeing the benefits to communities first-hand, they can sensitise government officials to the challenges faced by CSOs and which norms need to change to create a more enabling environment for them to do their work.  

4. Create new streams of funding  

If donors would like their nonprofit partners to become financially sustainable, they must also start considering how new and innovative funding streams can be created. The Social Stock Exchange is one potential experiment—there is a need to reduce barriers so that it becomes widely accessible to nonprofits. There have been some experiments with instruments such as development impact bonds and mutual funds focused on charity causes as well. It is a good time to learn from these approaches and find better ways to channelise funding.

We need to come up with solutions that will enable trust, promote market participation, and make it easier for people to give. For all of this to happen, these experiments will have to be backed by companies that already have strong, trust-based relationships with people.   

5. Build greater sensitivity and engaging in field visits  

When founders start a company, they usually conduct market research to understand customers’ needs, constraints, and aspirations. Similarly, one needs to speak to communities and fieldworkers to understand the problems and pain points that a nonprofit is working on. In many cases, funders are at least five degrees removed from the on-ground realities they seek to change, which impacts the quality of any CSR and philanthropy decisions that they take.

For example, Zerodha has a programme where it allocates funding to any employee who is willing to work towards solving a local issue related to climate change and livelihoods. Rainmatter Foundation, Zerodha’s philanthropic arm, lends technical and advisory support to such initiatives. This brings employees closer to the problems in their neighbourhood and helps them understand the complexities of social change directly. Additionally, it acts as a feedback loop for the foundation and helps them remain in touch with ground realities.   

6. Use social networks to drive long-term philanthropic capital

The challenge with funding through business is that much of the giving process is measured on a quarterly, or sometimes even monthly, basis. However, social change is not a monthly, quarterly, or annually measurable process. In addition, reporting on fixed metrics trivialises the hard work of CSOs. Furthermore, social funding is sometimes equated with social marketing. Unless some of these attitudes change and philanthropists see themselves as part of the changemaking process, it is likely that problems around funding will persist.  

Funders need to commit to at least five to 10 years of funds to the organisations they support. If this seems hard to do individually, they can partner with fellow philanthropists and take turns to fund an entity. This means that one needs to be able to share credit with many other philanthropists. Initiatives such as LivingMyPromise and Social Venture Partners—both of which are networks of philanthropists who interact with and learn from each other—can be leveraged to identify ways to provide nonprofits with long-term funding. 

7. Collaborate to build knowledge and learning commons

Shared insights from programmes and organisations are invaluable in guiding philanthropists away from potential risks and pitfalls. This hinges on two key factors: firstly, a culture of openness among philanthropists and their teams so that they can candidly share both successful and challenging experiences; secondly, the establishment of a trustworthy, inclusive ecosystem that transcends varying ideologies and approaches, and where learnings can be shared and documented.  

To continue and build on years of good work, philanthropy must fully show up for civil society.

At the very least, a database that categorises philanthropic endeavours by donor profiles, geographic focus, target communities, and thematic areas would prove invaluable. Such a resource holds potential for fostering collaborations, preventing redundancy, and facilitating supplementary work. 

Moreover, this database could serve as a forum for evaluating the merits of diverse strategies, co-creating standards, and analysing the risks inherent in different philanthropic models. A platform developed with the help of experts working across social development domains could offer informed, evidence-based guidance. It would also help counter potential echo chambers within philanthropic teams. 

India has propelled itself to becoming the world’s fifth largest economy, but this progress has only touched a few pockets in the country. Those who need development are the last ones to have access to it. And while the social sector has seen a significant annual increase in expenditure, a lot more needs to be done moving forward. CSOs play a critical role in driving innovation, highlighting success stories, and engaging with very difficult problems that sometimes even governments are not able to address. To continue and build on years of good work, philanthropy—especially from domestic sources—must fully show up for civil society. Otherwise, we are all culpable in reversing the tide of development.  

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Know more

• Read this report to learn more about the philanthropy landscape in India.
• Read this article to learn about the impact of nonprofits losing their FCRA licenses.  

These resources can come from a diverse set of funders—CSR, domestic philanthropic foundations, high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), and, in many cases, international donors as well.

Intelehealth, the organisation I lead, has been fundraising since 2016. Through the years, we’ve cultivated a few practices that have optimised our fundraising process and ensured a degree of success in this function.

1. Pick the right mix of fundraising sources

Nonprofits have a varied mix of funding sources available to them. Besides foundations, potential sources of funding include competitions, crowdfunding, HNIs, incubators/accelerators, corporates, and multilateral aid. Less conventional methods of fundraising include income earned through the sales of products and services, income earned through investments, and endowments.

Not all of these sources are ideal for every organisation. For example, incubators and accelerators offer relatively smaller donations, so they are more suited to early-stage organisations. The upside is that it takes less time to secure these funds. On the other hand, corporate and philanthropic foundations and multilateral agencies offer bigger cheques at a slower pace and are thus better suited to more mature organisations.

Picking two or three fundraising sources that are best suited to your organisation is vital. Aiming for too many can result in a loss of focus. However, you also don’t want to risk putting all your eggs in one basket by relying on a single source, so choose your channels carefully.

 2. Be structured and organised in your lead generation

Although this might seem obvious, it’s important to know how much money your organisation needs, both in the short and long term. When you attempt to fundraise from a foundation or corporate entity, one of the first questions you will be asked is, “How much money do you need, and what do you need it for?”

In order to answer this question effectively, you should always know your annual organisational budget, for the current year and the next three years. The current year’s budget estimate should be more granular and tactical, but the three-year estimate can be simpler. Smaller organisations that might struggle to build out their budget can utilise fractional CFO services such as those offered by Subhashis Ray & Associates or Aria CFO Services. You can employ them on a part-time basis to help construct your organisational budget, and they will also help you refresh it periodically. Having budgets prepared ensures that your conversation with the funder progresses past the initial approach.

Once you know how much money you require, you need to identify where it can come from. To help select targets, you should first define your selection criteria as this will help you narrow down the leads to be followed. For example, do you want to approach funders who work on technology, or those who fund civil rights?

Candid and NGOBox are subscription services with a comprehensive list of funders. These list the issues and organisations they fund, which you can utilise to identify leads. Another efficient way to identify leads is visiting the websites of peer organisations that are further along in their journey. You can read their impact reports on the website and identify their donors.

Once identified, prioritise these leads. In our organisation, we do this based on the ABC (access, belief, capacity) framework. Here, ‘access’ refers to whether you know someone (or know someone who knows someone) within the target organisation. Naturally, you should pursue funding sources that you have better access to. ‘Belief’ stands for the alignment between your cause and those that your target organisation funds. For instance, an organisation that funds health is likely to be a high priority for our organisation, provided they fund health in India. Lastly, ‘capacity’ stands for the quantum of their funding. Funders that offer very large cheques are not likely to fund your organisation if their contributions exceed your estimated budget by a significant amount; on the other hand, funders who contribute negligible amounts in relation to your budget may not be worth chasing.

3. Keep your marketing materials ready

Now that you know your budget and have identified funders to approach, it is time to prepare your fundraising materials; these are critical to any fundraising discussion.

• Introductory blurb: While Indian CSR prefers longer introductory e-mails, we have found that global foundations respond better to shorter ones. Tailor your outreach approach to the donor’s profile.
• One pager: This one-page description should contain a tagline that simplifies what your organisation does. The tagline we use is, “We deliver healthcare where there is no doctor.”  Your one pager should also briefly touch upon your reach, the geographies in which you operate, the problem you’re trying to solve (and how you’re doing it), as well as your impact. You can conclude with your estimated budget and contact details.
• Pitch deck: This is essentially a longer version of your one pager, but should be no more than 10–15 slides. We’ve noted that the design quality of your deck matters, so we recommend getting it professionally designed (in line with your brand) and ensuring it isn’t text heavy.
• Template grant application: Having this document ready will help you quickly fill out the application forms that a funder may send to you after you’ve made the initial approach. It should contain answers to the various questions that are typically found in a grant application: What’s the problem you’re solving? What’s your solution to this problem? Who are your competitors in this space? What makes your organisation unique? What’s your theory of change? And so on.
• Funder FAQs document: This document should contain some of the common questions you get asked by funders and the responses to them. These are likely to be unique and based on the nature of your organisation.

An important part of preparation is reaching out to your network to see who they know at your target funder organisations. LinkedIn Premium is an excellent tool for achieving this with respect to international foundations. Network with other founders and CEOs, and ask them for an introduction to donors they may know. Most of our money at Intelehealth today comes from referrals by an existing donor or a peer CEO.

4. Find champions for your work

Having a respected and well-connected board of directors is critical to effective fundraising. If you aim to focus on CSR or foundations in India, the US, the UK, or Europe, bring on relevant board members from those regions. Their names will cultivate trust and credibility, even if they may not necessarily have the networks to introduce you to different funding agencies. Include your board members in calls and meetings with decision makers, as their presence and advocacy can help achieve a favourable outcome.

When approaching a funder, try and find an internal champion—a person within the target organisation who will advocate for you. This individual should be selected based on their accessibility and influence within the organisation. They, in turn, will help you access the funder’s decision makers and investment committees.

If there’s one thing that resonates most with funders, it’s when they feel that what you’re saying comes from a place of honesty. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that the conversations you engage in with them display your authenticity and integrity.

5. Communicate with your donors regularly

Your relationships with your funders have to be nurtured if they are to last. The first step to ensuring this is maintaining your donor database. Intelehealth uses this Excel template to actively track and manage leads and conversions. You can also use a CRM such as HubSpot or Salesforce. Subsequently, regularly engage with your donors through monthly or quarterly newsletters, calls, or other channels. Sharing an annual impact report with your donor also helps. I recommend reading Unicorns Unite; it’s a great book that taught me a lot about building long-lasting partnerships between funders and nonprofits.

6. Perfect the process

Finally, success depends a great deal on setting up and following processes around your fundraising strategy. Here are some steps that will help maintain the rigour and regularity required to improve your chances of success.

• Budgeting exercise: Re-budget before the start of every financial year. It helps you keep track of your organisation’s financial needs.
• Target setting: Budgeting should immediately be followed by setting targets for your fundraising, as it determines who you approach and the quantum of money you ask for. 
• Fundraising material development: Refresh your fundraising materials at the start of each year as it ensures that they remain relevant and accurately depict your organisational needs and competencies.
• Prospecting and donor research: Add new leads and enhance existing leads through research every month to make sure that you have a strong pipeline of potential funders.
• Pipeline review: Conduct a weekly review of your fundraising pipeline to keep track of the status of various leads and conversions.
• Follow-ups:  Follow up fortnightly or monthly (if needed) with potential funders to prevent stagnation and drop-offs.
• Budget review: Review your budget every quarter so that you can adjust your fundraising targets as needed. The same should be done for your fundraising materials.
• Donor engagement: Keep your funders informed of how their money is being put to use through monthly/quarterly newsletters and annual touchpoints such as impact reports.

It may seem overwhelming to do so much, especially if you are from a small organisation where you are the only fundraiser or have just one other person with you. Being disciplined and setting aside time to fundraise helps. For example, block off two hours every Monday at the same time to review your pipeline, schedule your follow-ups for the week, and send out any communication materials for engagement. Once a quarter, you can spend a day meeting with your CFO to adjust your budget. You can also block off one day every six months to refresh your communication materials. If you don’t set aside the sandboxed time, it won’t happen. Staying disciplined is an integral part of the fundraising process.

It’s important to remember that fundraising is a lengthy exercise. Months (or even a year) can elapse between the initial approach and the final approval. Being disciplined about managing your funder pipeline is an effective way of staying on track. While door opening constitutes 20 percent of the fundraising work you will do, the rest is following through.

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Know more

• Learn about the basics of building a fundraising model.
• Read this nine-step fundraising guide for nonprofits.

Compare this to the more than 100 nonprofits that have lost their FCRA in a seven-month period.¹ Approximately 4,000 people at CARE, one of the larger global nonprofits operating in India, were reportedly rendered unemployed versus the 2,500 people at Byju’s.

And yet, there is no conversation on what this means for the economy—nonprofits contribute to 2 percent of the country’s GDP; on the viability of the nonprofits themselves; on the debilitating impact on their staff, most of whom are employed in the smaller towns and villages; and, above all, on the millions of vulnerable families that are now deprived of the critical services these organisations provide them.

The invisible sector

According to a 2012 report by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), civil society organisations (CSOs) account for 27 lakh jobs and 34 lakh full-time volunteers, generating employment figures higher than that of the public sector. In a survey of 515 nonprofits conducted by CSO Coalition@75 and anchored by GuideStar India, 47 percent reported that they are the biggest source of formal employment in more than half of the local geographies that they work in.

Moreover, nonprofits are the connectors between the state and the people. More than 50 percent of the organisations work locally, in rural areas and in aspirational districts. They work on education, health and nutrition, livelihoods, water and sanitation, climate change, agriculture, women and child rights, disability, and citizen engagement—covering every aspect of a citizen’s life. They create local livelihoods, develop skills, promote social mobility, and engage local businesses. Half of the nonprofits that were surveyed work with government bodies (schools, panchayats, municipalities, anganwadis, and primary health centres) and self-help groups. Strengthening them, in fact, accelerates local area development. 

Nonprofit jobs are not like those in the business and government sectors. As a leader of a nonprofit said, a nonprofit worker’s role is to bring about social change; it’s not just a job. “When jobs are lost, so are the opportunities to improve the lives of the marginalised and vulnerable populations,” he adds.

The impact on communities is immediate and substantial

Different kinds of work have come to a halt due to the FCRA cancellations. Efforts around child protection, immunisation, prevention of neonatal deaths, provision of health and nutrition facilities in schools and anganwadis, creating material for teacher training for early childhood learning, engaging with parents on their children’s schooling, providing skilling and livelihood opportunities for the young, enabling access to government entitlements—all of these have stopped in the regions where these nonprofits were operating. An estimated 4,000 to 8 lakh people per organisation no longer have access to the services provided by these nonprofits whose FCRA licences have been cancelled.²      

The belief in nonprofits as enablers is shaken.

Beyond the cessation of services, the system of trust—which the frontline staff at the nonprofits have spent years developing with the community—breaks down; the belief in nonprofits as enablers is shaken. 

According to the CEO at a large nonprofit, “It’s not about just one organisation’s work coming to a standstill; people feel let down by us. Why would they believe us the next time when we say that we will fulfill a certain commitment over a certain period of time?” he asks. This loss of trust is hard to reverse, he adds.

The invisible workforce

While the communities are left at a loose end, the frontline workers—the people who are employees of these nonprofits—and their families are severely impacted as well.

Many of the frontline staff who have lost their jobs are typically graduates or, in some cases, people with post graduate degrees. They are anchored in their community, and most of them have chosen to stay in that village or town. Their livelihood and strength is in and around the local ecosystem. According to the nonprofit CEO, these individuals are the first-mile connectors and integrators there; they are deeply rooted in and valuable to the community. “This also means that these field staff need nonprofits to keep them there, and we nonprofits need them for the work we do with communities,” he says.

He adds that there are limited employment opportunities in the areas where most of the rural community mobilisers live. “If the fruits of development such as industry and other livelihood opportunities had reached these areas, these individuals would have had multiple employment options. What we’ve seen over the years is that development work is one of the last choices for most people—they would prefer a government job or some private enterprise because there is better compensation, continuity, and certainty of income.” This FCRA cancellation and sudden loss of jobs has reinforced the precarity of working for a nonprofit.

No jobs in the market

Seema Muskan is a 35-year-old, Patna-based researcher who used to work with a nonprofit.  She has more than 15 years of experience in the fields of health, education, and nutrition. When the nonprofit she worked with lost its FCRA licence in March 2023, she lost her job, and with that her sense of identity and financial independence.

According to Seema, it’s not easy to find another job. “Everyone’s FCRA is at risk. The belief among all the other nonprofits is that they are next in line to lose their FCRA licences. The fear is so entrenched that they aren’t hiring either.”       

Seema says there are probably some options with other large nonprofits in states such as Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. But she needs to be in Patna because of her family; her husband, children, and in-laws are there. “I have two young kids, aged five and eight years. I can’t leave them behind to go work in another town or city.”      

64 percent of the nonprofits surveyed said that their employees are the sole breadwinners in their respective families.

“When you have a job, you have an identity, a sense of self in society, you have independence, your own money, and you contribute to your kids’ education,” she says. Seema contributed to the repayment of their fairly large home loan, as well as their children’s education. Now she fears what this lack of income means for her family’s financial stability. “You can reduce your expenses significantly, you can cut down on many things, but the one thing you can’t do is stop your children’s education. And now that seems like a looming possibility,” she says.

Seema does however believe that her male colleagues have it worse. “Even if I don’t have a job, at least there is some money coming in because of my husband’s business. For many of my colleagues, it’s far worse because they are the primary breadwinners; their families depend on them.”

According to the GuideStar India survey, 64 percent of the nonprofits surveyed said that their employees are the sole breadwinners in their respective families.

Dinesh Kumar’s entire career has been in the social sector. With 18 years of experience, he has worked in education, on child protection and nutrition, and with Panchayati Raj institutions. At his previous nonprofit, his work entailed helping vulnerable populations access any of the 40–50 government schemes that they and their families were eligible for. 

Dinesh says that few other organisations do the work that his nonprofit does, and there are limited opportunities for someone with his skills and knowledge. “My professional career has been in the social sector. I have worked for 18 years and built considerable skills working with communities, helping with data collection, managing large research surveys, and conducting training and facilitation. But if other nonprofits also stop hiring, where will we go, how will we survive?” he asks. 

Too many people, too few jobs

For many of the frontline staff, applying for and getting a new job comes with its share of challenges. Dinesh says that even as he circulates his resume, he knows that the chances are low. Unemployment is already high across the country. In most cases, his resume doesn’t get shortlisted because of his specialised skills. Other nonprofits that might leverage his skills aren’t hiring, or if they are they have far too many applicants.

Moreover, for many, the process of application itself is hard. Mukesh Kumar was a district academic fellow with CARE before he lost his job in June 2023. Starting off at a low-paid position in a large education nonprofit almost 12 years ago, he has risen to be a district-level coordinator.

Mukesh has been speaking to his networks in the sector, scouring DevNet and LinkedIn for any open positions, and even googling jobs in his district. The problem is compounded by the lack of access to computers or laptops. “While technology might have advanced and is easily accessible now, I have no means to buy a computer. This means that when I get the test assignments that organisations give as part of their recruitment process, I have to either type the answers on my mobile phone (which is extremely hard to do) or write them down by hand, scan the document, and then e-mail it to them,” says Mukesh. 

Dinesh adds that he would like to keep working in the social sector, but might not really have a choice. “Unlike the government and private sector, our salaries don’t allow for savings. I have enjoyed working in the social sector, building relationships with the community, and helping people get their entitlements and what is due to them. I want to continue working in this space and contribute to society, but now I have nothing,” he says.

Mukesh reiterates the deep trust and relationships he has built with the community. “We work closely with families to make sure they know what’s happening in the schools, and whether their children have access to quality education. We understand the gaps in the education system, and so we provide training for government staff as needed, facilitate parent–teacher interactions, help parents understand how their kids should be treated, and so on. People trust us because they know we are doing it for their benefit.”

Where can they go now?

Except for the big corporate foundations that implement programmes themselves, have large teams, and are well funded, most of the nonprofits cannot help because a) they are short of resources themselves and have no funds to spare, and b) they are afraid of losing their FCRA licences and what that will mean for their own employees and communities.

Dinesh adds that people have been advising him to start a business. “But businesses take five to 10 years to take off. I’m already 40 years old. I will be 50 by the time I get somewhere in business. And how will I manage in the meantime, with my kids growing up and the increasing expenses?” he says.

There is a high chance that people will look for work outside the sector.

For Mukesh, the situation is so dire that he has been working as a mechanic for the last couple of weeks. Like Seema and Dinesh, he has extensive skills in education, training and facilitation, relationship building, and communications, most of which feel redundant to him right now.

“My friends laugh at me,” he says. “But what option do I have? I’m 35 years old; I have a wife, three kids, and old parents to support. I used to get INR 21,500 in hand monthly. Given that I have had no job for a few months now and I’m the sole provider for the family, I have no money left at all. The future looks very dark.”      

The executive director of a leading nonprofit, which works extensively with rural communities, says that with so many FCRA licences being cancelled and the resultant loss of jobs, there is a high chance that people will look for work outside the sector.

“I’m afraid companies are going to take undue advantage of these frontline workers’ financial distress and offer them roles like recovery agents for gold and other loans. The close relationships they have built with the communities are likely to be misused by these financial companies to recover money—a sharp contrast to the spirit of service that most of these frontline staff have worked with within their communities till date,” he says. 

Setting the country back

Dinesh says that organisations like the one he worked for raised a voice for the aam aadmi. “We made sure they could access their rights and entitlements, whether it was a scholarship or a widow’s pension or a child’s birth certificate. Who will speak for them now, who will take their voices to the powers that be?” he asks. “By shutting us down, they are shutting down the voice of the common people,” he adds. 

Mukesh says that the people had faith in them. “They knew we were working for them. They could count on us to help them get their rightful entitlements from the state, to look after the interest of their children when it came to education and healthcare, and to be a bridge between them and the government.”      

According to the nonprofit CEO, if you lose these people who are the connectors to the communities, you remove visibility to the people on the margins. “It is these nonprofits and their field staff who push for and enable the idea of participatory democracy in our country—by offering vulnerable populations access to the state, platforms, and means to address their issues, while also strengthening the government’s services to them. Without them, there is no active citizenship and we will regress to the past where these communities had no power or say in our democracy. So, instead of looking at 2047, as an idea of a developed country, we’ll be looking at a setback of another 25 years,” he says.

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Footnotes

1. Data available as of March 23, 2023.
2. A frontline worker of a nonprofit connects with an average of at least 40–50 families consisting of four people each. On an average, the smallest of nonprofits work with 15–20 community mobilisers at any given time, bigger nonprofits like STC could work with 600–800 frontline workers, while the really large ones like CARE have a frontline staff of approximately 4,000 people.

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Know more

• Read this article to learn about the number of licences cancelled by the government over the past five years.
• Read this article or watch this Instagram Live to learn more about FCRA amendments and their implications.
• Read this article to learn about the Home Ministry’s response to inquiries about the cancellation of FCRA licences.

To address this issue, the 2011 e-waste rules introduced the concept of extended producer responsibility, which mandated that producers must ensure that the e-waste generated by their products is collected and recycled formally. However, the informal sector continues to be the most cost-effective in collecting e-waste from non-bulk generators such as households, shops, and small businesses, which look to maximise their earnings by selling e-waste. A 2020 report indicated that only 5 percent of e-waste has been recycled formally by authorised recyclers.

A large percentage of electronic goods are consumed by non-bulk generators—approximately 82 percent of the estimated e-waste generated in the country is in the form of personal gadgets such as smartphones and laptops. And while there are regulations in place, it is impossible to monitor the behaviour of millions of these small generators.

One way to improve compliance by non-bulk generators is to build awareness on the ill-effects of informal recycling, and how selling e-waste makes it unviable to be processed formally. Communication campaigns to spread awareness about the issue can play a key role in ensuring that people understand why responsible disposal of e-waste is important and how they can contribute to it. Campaigns geared towards tackling this issue must also capture the attention of a wide audience for a longer duration. This is where traditional modes of mass media such as print, television, and radio come into play.

As a nonprofit working on waste management, Saahas adopted radio campaigns and other modes of community engagement to cultivate greater awareness about the responsible disposal of e-waste. This article outlines the insights we gained through our experience of conducting two radio campaigns from December 2021 to May 2022.

Why radio?

Radio has been used by many government and private entities as a medium for delivering social campaigns and messages. For instance, the Government of India runs its ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ campaigns on radio to reach citizens across the nation. A Lancet study evaluated the use of radio in rural Burkina Faso and found that it can be a powerful tool for behaviour change when deployed effectively. In addition to this, as a broadcast medium, radio held certain advantages for our campaigns:

• It was cheaper compared to print and television.
• The campaign was geographically focused with a specific call to action for the national capital region (NCR), and city-based radio channels work well in targeting a specific geography.
• Radio has a captive audience—radio jockeys (RJs) have a dedicated following and people don’t tend to switch channels often.
• Unlike print and television, radio cuts across all social strata.

Two campaigns, one message

Our team selected Radio City due to its wide listener base in the target region and the popularity of some of its RJs. The first campaign consisted of 25-second testimonials by volunteers, schoolchildren, teachers, and members of resident welfare associations (RWAs) on why they gave their e-waste to Saahas. All messages ended with a clear call to action where the listeners were informed of a helpline number that they could contact to donate their e-waste. The second campaign was more creative, depicting conversations between anthropomorphised electronics and their owners.

The key difference between the two campaigns was that the content of the latter was designed to appeal to the listener’s emotions and be more relatable.

We chose spots such as RJ mentions, where the RJ would speak about the issue based on talking points supplied by us.

We also chose contextually relevant days such as Health Day, Earth Day, and Environment Day to run the second campaign. Most importantly, we reduced the length and increased the number of total radio spots or ads. Although the overall airtime of the second campaign was shorter, each individual slot was longer and more weekend slots were scheduled.

In addition to this, we chose some special types of spots, including RJ mentions, where the RJ would speak about the issue based on talking points supplied by us. The table below presents a comparison of the features of the two campaigns.

The first campaign resulted in approximately 21 calls on the number that was shared. The callers verified that they had heard about us on the radio. The first call came the day after the first promo went on air. The calls were enquiries about e-waste collection and organising awareness sessions.

We received 34 calls as a result of the second campaign. We began getting these calls two days after the campaign was launched. The quantity and quality of e-waste collected changed significantly between the two campaigns. Approximately 266 kg of e-waste was collected during the first campaign, whereas 1,370 kg of e-waste was collected in the second campaign. 

Although the waste collected as part of the first campaign consisted mainly of low-value e-waste such as wires, the waste gathered as a result of the second campaign comprised mostly of information, technology, and communication (ITEW) items in addition to some low-value e-waste. Considering that consumers associate greater monetary value with ITEW items and generally do not give these away for free, this was a big shift in behaviour change. It is important to note, however, that while the second campaign was more effective in terms of eliciting the desired response, it is quite possible that the first campaign helped build momentum for the second campaign’s improved collection.

What we learned

1. Getting the messaging right

We believed that radio can be an impactful medium for a campaign that is focused on a particular geography and where the messaging is uniform regardless of demographics. We tested this hypothesis by designing our campaigns for NCR and ensuring that the call to action was identical for all listeners regardless of age or gender. The first campaign concentrated more on getting schools and RWAs to sign up for e-waste disposal, whereas the second presented users with a strong nudge to view e-waste disposal as an individual responsibility. The significantly improved response that the second campaign received confirmed our initial hypothesis while simultaneously indicating that a call to action that instils a sense of individual responsibility is better suited for radio messaging. It is also important to note that when campaigning for a social or an environmental cause, the issue must not seem overwhelming as this is likely to make people think that any action they take would be futile. This was demonstrated by the fact that we observed a poorer response to testimonials as compared to light-hearted promos.

2. Picking a format that suits the objective of your campaign

While both long- and short-duration spots can be deployed on radio, long-form messaging works better for topics where depth is more important than attracting a wider audience. This is because a long spot cannot be run as frequently and is therefore more likely to reach a small audience. While we included one interview in the first campaign, we chose to avoid long spots altogether for the second one in a bid to reach as many listeners as possible.

RJs have a dedicated fan following that they can influence positively through personalised messaging.

We also commissioned different types of spots. For instance, we utilised RJ mentions where the RJ weaves a discussion about the issue into their on-air conversation. Since people are likely to tune out when a promo is running, RJ mentions serve as a way to discuss an issue before a more attentive audience. RJs also have a dedicated fan following that they can influence positively through personalised messaging. We also commissioned short promos that ran through the day, which were useful due to their recall value and potential to reach a larger audience.

3. Conveying gravity with levity and creativity

Our aim for the first campaign was to create awareness about the dangers of informal recycling. To achieve this, we played testimonials from a diverse set of stakeholders, including schoolteachers, members of RWAs, and recyclers, to inspire people to handle e-waste responsibly. Through the response to the first campaign, we understood that we can only effectively educate and build awareness among listeners if we adopt a more creative approach that can grab their attention.

We therefore introduced more levity to the campaign to avoid sounding preachy. We achieved this by designing the second campaign with quirkier messaging, such as using promos in which electronic devices were depicted as living beings with emotions and feelings.

Making the message topical also helped. For example, our Valentine’s Day promo—that highlighted the ‘lovelessness’ with which electronic devices are discarded—received more traction. Similar topical promos were also carried on Environment Day and Health Day.

Based on our experience, radio proved to be a more cost-effective medium than print or television for social messaging that needs to reach a bigger audience. However, while our aim was to reach as many people as possible with a uniform message, your campaign needs could be different. Therefore, while zeroing in on the right platform and medium for your social cause campaign, you should first define the campaign’s objective in relation to its expected impact. This will help you choose the right medium and platform, and create messaging that is engaging and relatable to your audience.

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Know more

• Learn more about the need for India to ramp up its e-waste collection efforts.
• Read this article on the lessons from COVID-19 on designing awareness programmes.

This doesn’t mean we ignore the problem. We aren’t pretending that a child’s difficulties can be sorted out with a positive attitude and a sunny smile. The world disables many people, and it takes all the creativity and skill of our team to help families find ways to thrive. But we begin with the strengths, not with the gaps or challenges.

So why then do we resort to leading with the worst possible scenario when we pitch our work to funders or the general public? How often have you come across or even written a line like this: “Imagine growing up in a world where opportunities are scarce and denied to you, not because you’re not good enough, but because you were born a girl!”

We see such sentences all the time and have been guilty of writing a few ourselves. Indeed, shock, outrage, and a sense of moral superiority are hallmarks of development communication.

As a sector, we are conditioned to lead with the problem statement. Our donors train us to cultivate this approach in the formats they provide for proposals and pitches; fundraising experts do the same. Their advice: Tell your audience what’s wrong in the most dramatic way possible, then tell them why you’re the one to fix it.

And they’re not mistaken. Problem statements are effective. Their laser focus on the core issue ensures that the problem is what we will remember. But while it may work in the short run, ultimately it doesn’t serve our causes well. By framing our stories in stark, black-and-white terms, we ignore the courage and resourcefulness of the people we work with and deny how much positive change has already occurred.

The alternative

Trabian Shorters, a US-based social entrepreneur, refuses to introduce people based on their limitations and problems. Focusing on people’s aspirations and contributions rather than on their challenges, he calls his approach ‘asset framing’. “The fact of the matter is we all want the same things. And deficit narratives and stigmatisation are preventing us from seeing each other as assets. Philanthropy has a responsibility not to reinforce that. In fact,” he says, “we must reinforce a narrative that says that we all actually have shared interests.”

Consider how in 2016 Viklangjan Sashaktikaran Vibhag (Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities) was officially renamed to Divyangjan Sashaktikaran Vibhag, replacing the term viklang (disabled) with divyang (divine). A plea in the Madras High Court (which was quashed) was entered against the use of the term divyang, because disabled people were not asked to participate in discussions surrounding it, and they do not want to be considered ‘divine entities’.

But why label them ‘divine’ to begin with? Doing so puts disabled people on a pedestal, while simultaneously excluding them from the rights and privileges that able-bodied or neurotypical people consider their due. The ‘shared interests’ Shorters refers to include education, healthcare, jobs, and access to public spaces—all currently out of reach for most disabled people.

Rather than label them ‘divine’, let’s analyse how the environment perpetuates their exclusion and address these barriers. This shift in focus gives us new insights and changes how we plan, fund, and build confidence in our cause.

Why do we lead with the problem?

While considering how to break our habit of focusing on problems, we must also try to understand why so many of us prefer deficit thinking.

1. Perceptions over facts: It’s easy to focus on the negative to raise funds and create awareness—because we’re trained to do so. But when we do that, we fail to look at what’s working. Take, for example, the fact that life expectancy and child mortality have improved in India.

2. There is only so much pie: Whatever our cause is, we believe we’re in competition with other nonprofits for money and attention. Painting a really bleak picture seems more likely to make us stand out with donors, policymakers, and the public.

3. Urgency: We learned this from the advertising industry—make your customers feel that if they don’t buy it now, it won’t be here tomorrow. The more desperate the messaging, the higher the chances that our audience will respond.

Changing the story

Can we unlearn our problem-focused approach? Shorters has a simple three-point plan to shift from deficit thinking to asset framing:

1. It’s not what you say, it’s how you think

Are you imagining people the way you might a niece or a nephew, considering their potential, their aspirations, and their dreams? It is important to visualise what the world will be like once the problem is solved and to think of solutions that will make this happen. When a disabled child joins Nanhe, our early intervention centre, we picture them from day one with friends, with a school bag, with happy parents. We’re not looking for an unrealistic ‘cure’, but for a child who is participating joyfully in their world, and then we work to make it a reality.

2. Don’t start with the problem

It’s crucial to describe the need to remove the barriers in people’s way, but we don’t begin there. While fundraising for a bus, for example, we started by saying how many disabled children are left out of school in India largely due to lack of transport. After asset-framing it, we wrote this: “Disabled children love school! Like other kids, they want to make friends, learn to read, and play sports. But many of them can’t attend school regularly because transportation is such a challenge.”

3. But don’t ignore the problem either

If we don’t think carefully about what is getting in the way of people’s dreams, we legitimise the genuine systemic challenges they face. Disabled children routinely fail in mainstream schools not because they are stupid, but because teachers aren’t trained to teach them in a manner that helps them learn. That’s not existential, it’s systemic. Once we recognise these systemic challenges, we can work towards reducing them.

From a close-up to a wide-angle lens

So instead of saying, “Imagine growing up in a world where opportunities are scarce and denied to you, not because you’re not good enough, but because you were born a girl!” why not try this instead:

“In low-income countries, 89 percent of girls are enrolled in primary school, and educating girls is said to be ‘one of the world’s best-ever ideas’. But boys still outnumber girls in completing primary school and enrolment in high school and college, and women in boardrooms remain the minority. With your support they can complete their education and take their rightful place in this world.”

By using such language, we’re accurately defining the problem in a way that acknowledges our collective progress while still presenting practical solutions for the problems that remain.

Although asset framing is about changing the way we think and not just how we speak and write, words still matter. At Latika, we’re meticulously going through our brochures, proposals, training material, and website looking for deficit thinking. It’s embarrassing to admit how much we’ve found.

Here’s one example: “Difficulty in communicating their wants and needs, sensitivity to sensory stimuli, and a need for predictability can cause autistic children to feel overwhelmed in situations and result in meltdowns, which they find very hard to control.”

After a lot of discussion, we realised we were missing crucial truths. Our responses to autistic children are conditioned by our own views on acceptable behaviour, yet in many ways, autistic kids—being less worried about ‘acceptability’—have much to teach us. Asset framing has humbled us enough to see how much we have to learn.

Today I write the same statement this way: “Autistic children communicate in unique and creative ways, including sharply negative responses to the chaos and sensory overload that neurotypicals have desensitised themselves to. In many ways, they are the canaries in the mineshaft.”

Like good detectives, let’s track down the deficit thinking on our websites, proposals, training materials, and documents, but most of all in our own minds. Let’s use what we learn in the process to question our own assumptions and conclusions, and stop making our causes seem so dire that the public loses hope and refuses to act at all.

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Know more

• Read this article to understand how to get your nonprofit communications right.

• Read this research paper to learn more about the nonprofit approach to asset-based language.

FFE provides scholarships for college degrees to bright students with financial constraints. The selected scholars are generally those who show great promise in engineering, medical, pharmacy or law programmes (some of the most expensive higher education programmes in India). In addition to scholarship funds, the scholars are provided with skills training for employability and regular mentorship by professionals in their field. Once the scholars graduate, they become FFE’s alumni.

In 2010–11, FFE received donations amounting to INR 21 lakh from 195 alumni. Since then, the share of alumni donations has increased significantly, amounting to INR 4.2 crore (including alumni-driven matching donations and CSR funds) from 1,538 alumni in 2021–22.

But what inspired FFE to adopt the alumni engagement approach? And how have they optimised it?

Where was FFE in its organisational life stage before deciding to engage alumni?

Ever since FFE was established in 1994, the students selected for scholarships would pledge to pay it forward whenever they were able to by supporting the education of at least two other students. However, in the organisation’s early years, the executive director and board were based in the US. The India team largely comprised volunteers, and they were focused on identifying students who would qualify for the scholarships offered. As a result, following up with the scholars once they graduated was not a priority. Additionally, the organisation’s alumni database was skeletal at best. Their only way of hearing from alumni was through physical letters that some of them wrote to the organisation.

Once the FFE India Trust was established in 2003, it paved the way for alumni to make donations in India. They were initially made aware of the trust through FFE’s volunteer base—by virtue of working closely with the community to publicise the scholarship and identify students who would qualify for it, these volunteers developed a relationship with alumni that they then leveraged to encourage donations.

FFE’s managing trustee, Sudha Kidao, said that they slowly started building out an alumni database around 2011. “Before that, we operated under the belief that we should not be approaching alumni to donate, as they would do so themselves whenever they are able to. But after I started interacting with alumni, I just felt like there’s nothing wrong in reaching out to them and encouraging them to donate. After all, they may have a lot of competing priorities and FFE may not be on their radar.”

Engaging alumni: The challenges

Having recognised that their alumni base is an untapped resource that could lead to more donations, FFE decided to engage with them actively and dedicated more resources to this task. FFE’s founder, Dr Prabhu Goel, was a firm believer in this approach because of which he provided funds for them to hire an alumni engagement team. His unrestricted grant played an integral role in making their alumni programme work.

The early years were challenging; the alumni information in FFE’s database was often incomplete, outdated, or incorrect. So, during 2010–11, the FFE team reached out to volunteers and alumni families to gather information about them. Over time, alumni began to respond and donate in small numbers and in small amounts. Simultaneously, FFE requested alumni to participate in other ways, such as creating awareness about the organisation’s programmes in local communities, helping identify other students who could benefit from their scholarships, and asking for assistance with technology needs and fundraising. The idea here was to increase their engagement with alumni and not focus solely on soliciting donations. As such, the FFE team began to slowly build out a comprehensive alumni database.

“I communicated a lot with the alumni offices, but what I found out was that they were not really successful.”

In addition, since several of FFE’s board members belonged to premier academic institutions, they were able to look into how the alumni networks of these institutions functioned. This closer look presented them with a challenge. Sudha says, “I communicated a lot with the alumni offices, but what I found out was that they were not really successful. It was rather a few individuals from different batches who remained engaged and encouraged their fellow batchmates to do something for the institute. But these students had a common history—they belonged to that campus and were often classmates. Our students did not. They all went to 200+ colleges and had either never interacted or had limited interaction with each other. The only commonality was their FFE scholarship.” The institutional model, which primarily relied on alumni encouraging their fellow batchmates to give back, would thus not work for FFE.

As a result, FFE set out to create a web portal for its alumni, thinking that it would enable them to interact with each other and engender a sense of community. Through a generous unrestricted grant, FFE launched a student association web portal, but it did not result in the increased traction or engagement that was expected. By then, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms had started becoming popular and an additional portal to access FFE and alumni information was not an effective or attractive lever. As such, FFE began to seek out alternate models of alumni engagement.

Finding success gradually

1. Learning from international institutions

Prabhu subsequently introduced Sudha to the alumni office at Stanford University. They emphasised the importance of regular calls to alumni to facilitate a more personal interaction with them. Importantly, during her conversations with the Stanford team, Sudha learned that some alumni may not be inclined to donate as they think that their donations—although significant to them—may be dwarfed by those given by much wealthier alumni. This insight helped FFE understand that they should highlight the significance of a donation (regardless of its monetary value) when engaging with alumni.

FFE consequently adopted the model where they would make regular calls to their alumni. While this was resource-intensive and required significant follow-up through the year, it was the most effective strategy FFE had found. Initially, the organisation started with a team of 1.5 people whose focus was to stay engaged with alumni through telephone calls, WhatsApp messages, donation campaigns, etc. Today that team has five full-time people.

The strategy was simple but also required staying up to date with where the alumni were in their professional journey. FFE would reach out to them, congratulate them on their success, and remind them of the pledge they once took. However, this method had its challenges as well. While some alumni would ignore their calls entirely, others even responded with anger or indicated that they didn’t feel ready to donate. Fortunately, a growing number of alumni were happy to hear from FFE and willing to donate.

2. Implementing matching grants

Sudha also mentions matching grants as an important source of funding for FFE. “I spoke to Amit (Chandra), who was very fascinated with our alumni programme, and he wanted to know how he could make his grant go even further.” As a result, FFE began to encourage funders such as Amit and Prabhu to match alumni donations. The alumni found these matching grants to be especially appealing and were willing to donate higher amounts knowing that their donations were effectively being multiplied.

The success of the grant-matching endeavour inspired them to approach Cognizant, who pledged to match up to INR 50 lakh in donations each year. The initial iteration of the FFE–Cognizant partnership funded a batch of 250 students (where 50 percent of the scholarship amount came from FFE alumni and 50 percent from Cognizant), and more batches have been funded through matching grants since then.

In 2016–17, FFE had begun conversations with their alumni to check if the companies that they worked at also engaged in grant matching. While the number of companies doing this were small, as more students graduated and gained employment in diverse companies covering different sectors, FFE’s recent inquiries (from FY 2020–21) revealed that several multinational companies were willing to match the donations provided by their employees.

3. Making the most of social media

FFE leverages social media to reach out to alumni, celebrate their contributions, publicise events, connect alumni to peers and scholars, and run campaigns. LinkedIn in particular has helped the organisation to reach out to alumni they may have lost contact with and keep track of their professional journeys. In the event that alumni do not respond to FFE’s calls or e-mails, they are now able to use their database to identify other alumni who attended the same university at around the same time to check if they can reach out to FFE’s alumni on the organisation’s behalf.

FFE has also leveraged social media to enable interactions with companies to conduct training, webinars, and more for FFE’s scholars; post job openings for students and alumni; and enlist alumni to volunteer as mentors and facilitators (facilitators are alumni who help FFE complete the verification process for scholarship applicants).

4. Using technology as a lever

Around 2016, the organisation recognised that they needed to improve how they utilised technology as part of their daily operations. Sudha says, “It was very clear that the management information system we were using was not robust, and a lot of our data was duplicated or inaccurate. We realised that if we wanted to scale, we needed to make an investment in technology immediately. Our COO at the time evaluated our systems and subsequently recommended an investment in Salesforce (a CRM software), and our board fortunately agreed. Today, all of our systems have been integrated into Salesforce.”

Investing in technology has been extremely beneficial for the organisation, especially in terms of enabling scale.

FFE’s entire scholarship programme and mentorship/training programme have been integrated into Salesforce. Additionally, it is used for keeping track of scholars transitioning to alumni and generating alumni reports. Investing in technology has thus been extremely beneficial for the organisation, especially in terms of enabling scale. Sudha says, “If we were to receive a significant grant that would require us to give scholarships to 25,000 students, I know we can do it. We may have to put in some money to enhance our current features on Salesforce, but I can say with confidence that the system will work and we will deliver.”

Although FFE itself was fortunate enough to have on board a few engineers who were proficient in operating Salesforce, they needed more engineering partners and expertise to fully utilise the capabilities of the software. This is where Cognizant stepped in. Cognizant offered FFE pro-bono time from their senior team—which would have otherwise cost them INR 50 lakh—to help them optimise their use of Salesforce. (It helped significantly that more than 75 FFE alumni were employed at Cognizant.)

Remembering that everyone can be a fundraiser

Unlike most other nonprofits, FFE does not have a dedicated fundraising team. But their lack of dedicated staff has not impacted the quantity and size of donations they receive.

Sudha mentions that the organisation has made a concerted effort to engender the philosophy that all employees are fundraisers. “I often get asked how many people are in FFE’s fundraising team. We have no such team. I always say that our team produces such good work that it speaks for itself.” The organisation thus places confidence in the team’s ability to deliver, and their continued success in running their programmes has positively impacted their fundraising efforts without having to rely on a separate fundraising team.

FFE’s board members in India and the US—along with their management team, the donor relations team, and the alumni team—have helped in fundraising; the concerted and collaborative approach to fundraising has yielded results.

When organisations approach FFE to congratulate or thank them on the impact they’ve had, the organisation uses it as an opportunity to encourage them to tell others about the work they are doing. This also opens up additional opportunities for funding or collaboration.

On the other hand, when FFE approaches its alumni for help, they suggest five or more ways in which they can contribute. In addition to direct donations, they inquire if the alumni can ask their employers to donate through CSR funds/matching grants, if their friends or professional networks can donate, if they can help identify students for the scholarship programme, if they can participate in the background verification process as facilitators, or if they can mentor the students who are currently in the scholarship programme. Sudha notes that this approach offers alumni the opportunity to help in a manner that suits them best at that particular stage in their life. “How can you say no to everything?” she says.

Advice for nonprofits

1. Think of your programme recipients as potential donors

The FFE team operates with the knowledge that a bright student they aid today could become donors to the organisation tomorrow. By viewing the recipients of their scholarships as changemakers and donors, the organisation accords them the respect that is often missing when nonprofits view communities as only recipients. The organisation thus also seeks to inculcate a culture of giving among its scholars. Sudha emphasised how critical it is to make students understand the importance of giving. “I always tell them (the students) that somebody who didn’t know you believed in you and was willing to invest in you. Can you do that for somebody else?” she says.

The view that those who receive help could be potential donors would only be feasible for nonprofits working on specific types of programmes and with groups that would have the capacity to give in the future. Nevertheless, it is salient advice for the large number of nonprofits that work in the livelihoods and education space.

“A lot of organisations say that they have skilled 25,000 people, but do they know where those people are today? How are they doing?” Sudha says. In the past five years, FFE has engaged with students all year round (through skills training, leadership and technical training, seminars/webinars, and mentoring). This has resulted in building a stronger relationship with students as compared to previous years. The bond with alumni has unlocked a sustainable source of funding for them and enhances the support they are able to provide to their current scholars.

In addition, some alumni have been inducted into FFE’s board as special invitees. By positioning those who have been through their programmes into leadership roles, the organisation ensures that the community we serve are represented at the decision-making level.

2. Do not be afraid to ask for help

Since FFE already does the work of engendering a culture of giving among students, they are able to effectively tap into the students’ desire to give back once they become alumni. But individuals may not always be proactive about giving back despite harbouring a desire to help. This is one of the many reasons why the act of asking is an integral component of FFE’s model.

Sudha says, “The alumni programme did not work effectively in the early years because we never asked (for their help).” Sudha also notes that rejection is obviously a distinct possibility, stating, “I constantly face rejection (with regard to donations), but I am not one to give up easily. Earlier, I would take rejection quite personally, but now I remind myself that this is not for me, it’s for the organisation. So I’m not hesitant in seeking help.”

Outlining multiple ways in which individuals/organisations can help is important.

Outlining multiple ways in which individuals/organisations can help is also important. As mentioned earlier, FFE is able to receive different types of support because they do not simply seek donations when approaching alumni or organisations for help. When alumni or organisations assist with mentorship or training, it helps FFE save on cost-intensive endeavours while simultaneously offering the party that provides support with the opportunity to positively impact the lives of FFE’s scholars. 

Advice for donors

1. Understand that impact takes time

Donors must adopt a long-term view when it comes to getting a return on their investment. Given that many organisations are working on improving the conditions of their communities over the long term, it is impractical for donors to expect immediate results. Sudha says, “If you believe in the organisation and the cause, you should trust them to do what they think can best work for them.”

2. Invest in people, processes, and technology

Donors typically want to fund programme costs, but organisations need funds to hire and train talent as well. Sudha says, “No organisation can do this job without the right people. And if you’re doing important work, why do you have to take a pay cut?” Besides having the right talent on board, organisations also need to optimise their processes, which may involve investments in suitable technology. The alumni engagement model that FFE adopted required them to build out a comprehensive alumni database and make regular calls to them. The alumni engagement programme itself was then integrated into Salesforce to further enhance operations. Without grants to support the alumni team, the alumni engagement model would not have worked. It takes people, processes, technology, and time to see results.

3. Award unrestricted grants and trust the organisation to use it effectively

Unrestricted grants are essential for an organisation’s growth and building resilience and human capital, and allows the flexibility to experiment, as seen in FFE’s alumni programme. Strictly programmatic funds would have hampered FFE’s chances of developing these processes and adopting the right strategy and technology. This is where unrestricted grants helped them tremendously. Visionary donors have the capacity to provide unrestricted funds to nonprofits, and this could help scale impact in meaningful ways. Other nonprofits may similarly benefit from the flexibility afforded by unrestricted grants, as it will offer them the security to devise a long-term strategy that can help their organisation develop into a sustainable force for good.

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About Sudha

Sudha Kidao is the honorary managing trustee of the Foundation For Excellence (FFE) India Trust since February 2011. She is also a board member of FFE-USA, and has been involved with the organisation since 2005 when she began to volunteer her time for FFE’s fundraising efforts in California. Sudha has a PhD in Biology (specialisation in immunology) from the University of Texas at Austin and BSc and MSc degrees in Zoology from the University of Madras.

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Know more

• Read this guide on how nonprofits can leverage technology better.
• Read this case study on how nonprofits can build their fundraising muscle.

OBF instruments tie the disbursement of funding for development projects to the achievement of results. These results are linked to the stated development objective—outcomes—as opposed to actions, inputs, activities, and outputs. Some types of OBF instruments include development impact bonds (DIB), impact guarantees, result-based financing contracts, and social success notes (SSNs).

Since the launch of the first DIB by Educate Girls in 2015, India has seen four more DIBs in education, health, and skills development—Quality Education India DIB, Haryana Early Literacy DIB, Utkrisht DIB, and Skill Impact Bond. Two SSNs—one for affordable private schools by Varthana and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and one by IPE Global for healthcare enterprises—are also in the works. These OBF projects collectively mobilise at least USD 30 million of funding and impact approximately 6,00,000 people. Many more OBF projects are also in the offing.

While there is a definite growth in OBF instruments and projects, such opportunities are not available to all, with only a small pool of nonprofits being able to participate as partners on these projects. There are multiple reasons for this:  

• Lack of access to networks and information that enable nonprofits to tap into such opportunities due to the nascent stage of the OBF sector and limited players. 
• Lack of awareness and know-how about how these projects work and what funders expect from nonprofits.
• Limited internal capability to participate in such projects.

This article focuses on sharing the experiences of the British Asian Trust (BAT) and our learnings on navigating these barriers. BAT has undertaken multiple OBF projects in the past five years and is working on building the capacities of nonprofits through the Outcomes Readiness Programme, a collaborative initiative with Atma.

What do OBF projects mean for nonprofits?

There is a common misunderstanding that OBF projects entail nonprofits getting paid only after the achievement of outcomes and not receiving adequate support for upfront working capital. On the contrary, the theory and practice of OBF essentially focuses on de-risking nonprofits by bringing in a class of risk investors who provide upfront working capital to nonprofits. These investors are the ones who get paid only if pre-agreed outcomes are met, thereby moving the risk away from the nonprofits.

By facilitating upfront funding, most OBF instruments and projects remove shorter funding cycles and uncertainty, allowing nonprofits to focus their energies on implementing, innovating, adapting, and strengthening their interventions rather than on completing quarterly activities to get the next tranche of funding or finding the next donor.

At the heart of the OBF theory lies the fundamental belief that nonprofits are generally experts in their domain and know their solutions and implementation. As such, OBF instruments try to shift the power dynamics inherent in a grantor–grantee relationship towards a more equity-based partner relationship where funders contribute financial resources but do not micromanage or tell nonprofits what to do. Instead, they trust the nonprofits to bring non-financial resources such as their expertise and understanding of the community and ground realities to the project.

Having said that, most OBF tools do require specific mindsets, competencies, and capabilities from nonprofits, which are highlighted in the next section.

What do nonprofits need to participate in OBF projects?

1. Adoption of an ‘outcomes-first’ approach

There are two different levels at which the outcomes-first approach reflects in a nonprofit.

Organisational level: The nonprofit needs to gradually start aligning its overall strategy to the outcomes it wants to achieve over the medium and long run. This strategy plays a key role in guiding the priorities of different departments such as fundraising, programme management, monitoring and evaluation, and communications.

OBF structures require high engagement and buy-in from the nonprofit’s leadership.

For instance, Sesame Workshop India, one of the nonprofits under our Outcomes Readiness initiative, refined its strategy to align with its impact objectives. Sonali Khan, managing director of Sesame Workshop India, shared, “The exercise allowed us to develop a cohesive long-term strategy and plan that spoke to the needs of our internal as well as external ecosystems. It helped articulate our definition of impact, streamline our programmatic focus areas, prioritise important fundraising channels and influence strategy across our global offices.” 

Project level: OBF structures require high engagement and buy-in from the nonprofit’s leadership to design a clear project road map that aligns with the mission of the organisation. This road map provides clarity to the project and field team members, thereby allowing them to build work plans that are geared towards achieving the set outcomes within a specific timeline.

For instance, one of our partners on the Quality Education India DIB, Kaivalya Education Foundation, highlighted that the outcomes focus of the DIB meant that each Gandhi Fellow knew what was expected and what had to be achieved. This led to a sense of purpose, clarity, and uniformity of goals throughout the organisation. The chairman of the organisation himself became very involved in having a target-based learning outlook, which then percolated down to all levels of the organisation.

2. Ability to identify and manage risks that arise during implementation

Under OBF structures, outcome payments to investors are linked to the performance of the nonprofits and programme results. As such, any risks (internal or external) that affect programme implementation and outcomes need to be clearly identified, monitored, and managed effectively. This in turn means that nonprofits must be well versed in applying risk management tools such as root cause analysis, creating and using risk registers, and undertaking scenario planning in their projects. Good risk management also requires nimble and agile decision-making, and high engagement between programme and field teams to identify risks, develop and implement mitigation strategies, and quickly revise strategies if needed.

For instance, under our Bharat EdTech Initiative, funded by a performance-linked grant, our community partners identified the low activation and poor engagement with EdTech apps as a key risk to achieving the learning outcomes envisaged. They had to quickly design and pilot many targeted micro-strategies to increase the time spent on apps.

3. Openness and willingness to subject one’s intervention to third-party evaluation

Third-party assessments are often perceived as report cards that label interventions as successes or failures and are therefore met with resistance at times. However, third-party evaluations are the cornerstone of the OBF structure—they trigger payments for investors, assess an intervention’s performance, and generate valuable insights that can help in improving performance.

A mindset shift is needed to transform the fear of third-party evaluations into a learning experience. Participating in such rigorous impact evaluations necessitates a strong theory of change, sharply defined outcomes, and a corresponding monitoring and evaluation framework to measure these. Sometimes, it also means that a nonprofit should possess adequate confidence, domain knowledge, and experience to understand the technicalities of an evaluation framework, and challenge the framework if it is not suitable.

4. Strong data-driven performance management culture in a high-stakes environment

Nonprofits need to have robust systems and processes to gather, analyse, and use performance-related data to guide their interventions. They should be prepared for and comfortable with collecting and synthesising fit-for-purpose data and using it to make necessary pivots in their interventions to meet their on-ground needs. For instance, Gyan Shala said that the DIB structure enabled them to improve processes such as collecting regular feedback from field teams to pass on to the curriculum design team.

Under OBF instruments achieving outcomes is central to payments, so performance monitoring is a must and not merely nice to have.

Similarly, under the Bharat EdTech Initiative, we had to provide our community partners with a tech-based solution to capture data on the various types of nudges that encourage the use of EdTech accurately and regularly. The performance manager for this project provided training and handholding to people at all levels of the organisation, especially the field staff, to ensure that they understood the importance of this data and how it was used, and did not see it as an administrative burden.

Sonali Saini, founder and CEO of Sol’s ARC, another participant under Outcomes Readiness, highlighted, “Identifying a specific set of key success indicators from a long list, setting up dashboards that consolidated data in line with these indicators, and using this data for quick decision-making were some of the most valuable capabilities that we built under this initiative.” Under OBF instruments achieving outcomes is central to payments, so performance monitoring is a must and not merely nice to have. This can involve working under high pressure.

Participating in OBF instruments and projects requires a convergence of mission, mindset shift, and capabilities. While this may sound ambitious—and it certainly requires sustained buy-in and commitment at all levels of an organisation—nonprofits do not have to walk the path alone. Sneha Arora, CEO of Atma, believes that building outcome readiness is about enabling nonprofits to develop the confidence, systems, and processes they need to raise and use results-based funding.

While donors are shifting towards outcomes, it does not always translate into OBF projects or tools. Therefore, there are limited opportunities for nonprofits to raise funds or apply their learnings. There is a need and opportunity for traditional grants—which is the primary source of funding for nonprofits—to take on a more pronounced outcome orientation. Within such programmes, donors can provide specific capacity-building support to nonprofits and invest in performance managers who can hand-hold the nonprofits. Similarly, to plug the information asymmetry, intermediaries can share their learnings, resources, and templates with the wider nonprofit sector and create platforms (such as India Blended Finance Collective or Convergence) to showcase relevant opportunities. 

This article was updated on April 13, 2023. An earlier version incorrectly stated that two SSNs–one by Varthana and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and one by IPE Global for healthcare enterprises–collectively mobilised USD 30 million of funding and impacted approximately 6,00,000 people.

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Know more

• Read this interview to learn what it would take to build the social finance ecosystem in India.
• Read this article to learn about the role implementing organisations can play in improving nonprofits’ outcome readiness.
• Read this report on the state of blended finance in 2022.

Most organisations undermine the value of research while fundraising, which results in them spending a lot of time on reaching out to a laundry list of potential donors that they have a very small chance of converting. Identifying the optimal potential donor and understanding what they stand for is crucial when planning your fundraising strategy.

Platforms like Candid, which have a database of more than 100 foundations, can help you identify donors most aligned with your cause and geography. Similarly, Tamuku is a subscription-based platform that identifies, curates, and provides high-quality and relevant information, opportunities, tools, and resources for fundraising. To identify relevant high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), you can look up the annual Hurun India Philanthropy List.

Learn more about the decision makers in funding organisations, their motivation to give, alignment with your cause, theory of change, and the way they engage with other nonprofits. The best way is to listen to them in forums, follow them on social media, read their thought articles, and speak to peer nonprofits that have been supported by them. Then, create a sharp, targeted donor list and aim for at least a 50 percent conversion rate from e-mails to a meeting.

2. Reach out to your targeted donors

The most effective way to reach out to your target donor base is by finding a shared contact within your network, especially advisory and/or governing board members who can introduce you to them. If a common contact doesn’t exist, look for common interests that can help you initiate a conversation with them. You can find senior corporate leaders and young philanthropists on multiple online platforms, where you can enter into a meaningful dialogue with them on social issues.

Fundraising is also ‘friend-raising’, so invite potential funders to roundtables, webinars, conferences, or any other knowledge-sharing events that you plan for your stakeholders. Create opportunities for those who are interested in contributing with their time as well.

3. Diversify across multiple donor types (HNIs, CSR and non-CSR foundations, retail)

Although there is no perfect recipe or ideal composition, a single donor should ideally not contribute more than 25 percent of your total expenditure. Different donor types fulfil different funding needs; therefore, one needs to be strategic in acquiring a diverse array of donors as early as possible.

CSR donors can be easy to acquire if your organisation’s cause is aligned with their focus area.

Philanthropic foundations provide mid- to long-term grants (three to eight years) but offer high credibility and the flexibility to support organisation building. On the other hand, HNIs offer short- to medium-term funding and greater flexibility, and their support can increase year on year. However, HNIs are quite difficult to bring on board as donors because organisations often lack access to such individuals. CSR donors can be easy to acquire if your organisation’s cause is aligned with their focus area, but they typically provide short-term (one to three years) grants. Additionally, their funds are typically reserved for programmes and only a limited portion can be used for capacity building.

Flexible funds are significantly more valuable than programmatic funds, so it is critical to onboard, retain, and engage retail funders as well. Retail funding comprises donations obtained from individual donors through online and offline campaigns and events, and such funds offer immense flexibility and improve brand visibility. Retail fundraising can prove to be resource-intensive, but these unrestricted funds can be used for corpus building, capacity building, and other experimental ventures that restricted grants do not fund.

4. Engage donors meaningfully

Creating opportunities for your donors to experience and contribute towards the impact of your programmes can help deepen your partnership and lead to long-term support to the cause. Every organisation should aim to have 70–80 percent donor retention rate; this also builds credibility for new donors. But this requires going beyond merely sending quarterly and annual reports.

Start with identifying donor strengths and expertise and inquire about their area of interest and availability. For example, Arpan utilises the DRK Foundation’s in-house expertise to update their theory of change, mission-critical indicators, and impact assessment framework. This offers Arpan’s team a fresh perspective to review their program impact and elevates the donor’s trust and confidence in seeing their work. Similarly, the DRK Foundation works closely with Arpan to enhance their fundraising and communications functions, which helps Arpan position its work suitably for international audiences, especially international funders. Antarang Foundation, on the other hand, invites corporate leaders from their donor pool to engage with their alumni student community as mentors and career coaches. This gives the donors an opportunity to directly interact with the students and learn more about their career aspirations, and understand the value of the career guidance and counselling support offered by Antarang.

Additionally, it is equally important to identify and acknowledge your anchor donors—the ones who stood by you during your highs and lows and always advocated your work in their networks to influence others to join the cause and contribute. They are the ones who rooted for your organisation’s success and invested in long-term impact. Involve them in building your organisation’s strategy and growth plans.

5. Educate donors on institution building

One of the most common challenges for nonprofits is raising funds for building their core functions, including human resource management, monitoring and evaluation, fundraising, and communications. They fail to sufficiently account for these costs, and this affects the long-term sustainability of the organisation and its programmes.

Avoid asking for short-term quick fixes.

While the Pay What It Takes collaborative is working to educate and influence donors, you too can contribute to this. Share reports and case studies with your donors and initiate a dialogue about similar needs for your organisation. Avoid asking for short-term quick fixes; instead, develop a strategy and operational plan for a three- to five-year capacity-building endeavour, and pitch this with clear success metrics. The best way to start is by conducting a need assessment of all your non-programmatic functions and understanding the organisation’s strengths and challenges.

It is also beneficial to indicate that your organisation will be ready to absorb the cost and sustain the capacity-building investments post donor exit.  

6. Build reserves and a corpus

The key to building a financially resilient organisation is to have reserves (six months) and a corpus (12 months) that will enable you to survive any adverse situation.

An operating reserve is an unrestricted ‘rainy day’ fund that can protect the organisation against unexpected financial shocks. A corpus is a separate emergency fund that can be raised from either surplus (15 percent of the total organisational income or surplus can be allocated to the corpus) over time or through a donation with a donor’s written consent. It takes years to build this kind of financial resilience, but it needs to be worked on as soon as possible. Your anchor donors and HNIs are your best bet to help you fundraise for this cause.

7. Engage your leaders strategically and build your fundraising team

Fundraising in smaller organisations is founder-driven. It takes up a lot of their time as they are building out their donor base and nurturing relationships. However, as an organisation matures and stabilises, it is advisable for the founders to spend no more than 25 percent of their time on fundraising. Instead, they can invest time in developing the organisation’s growth strategy, second line of leadership, and culture. Therefore, it is essential to build a fundraising team that can lead donor research, outreach, and engagement.

It is necessary to bring in talent or expertise that will complement your existing team skill set and solve for missing gaps.

Before deciding to hire a senior resource, you must clearly understand your organisation’s current skill set, competency, and bandwidth gaps, especially if its a small to midsize nonprofit. You must recognise where your organisation’s challenges lie. Do you need help with churning out proposals? Do you need doors opened? It is necessary to bring in talent or expertise that will complement your existing team skill set and solve for missing gaps. 

In addition, building home-grown teams instead of working with fundraising agencies is more sustainable in the long term. Courses such as the ILSS Fundraising Program can benefit team members who are new to the fundraising domain or have crossed over from the corporate sector. It is critical to provide them with the right toolkit and mentorship and set them up for success. In a recent analysis of ATE Chandra Foundation’s portfolio organisations with a median budget of approximately INR 10 crore, we saw that fundraising accounts for approximately 3 percent of an organisation’s total expenditure and it starts paying for itself within two to three years of investment. This cost may increase if you invest in building a retail presence.

8. Engage your board meaningfully

Board members are often the most underutilised resource in most organisations. Therefore, conduct a board governance evaluation to understand the effectiveness of your current board. Create a role and accountability system to engage your board meaningfully and develop a culture of rotation to ensure that there are new ideas and connections that the organisation can leverage. This can be achieved by bringing on a board member with a fixed tenure (less than five years).

Identify board members who can become your fundraising champions and can play a catalytic role in your fundraising journey. There should be clear targets in place that require actively involving them and not limiting their role to solely providing advice. You can engage organisations such as Atma to help you review your current structure or join the board governance programme offered by ILSS or ISDM to bring in new board members.

9. Build internal success indicators 

Once you start putting some of the above practices in action, how do you measure success? It is advisable to look at some critical indicators to ensure everyone involved in the fundraising endeavour remains accountable. Start with simple metrics such as donor conversion rate, engagement rate, retention rate, funding diversity (percentage of funding from CSR, HNIs, etc.), reserves and corpus as a percentage of total annual expenditure, and the percentage of time spent by founders on fundraising. Having these in place will help you track your efficiency and effectiveness.

Fundraising is a particularly challenging yet rewarding function and has the capability to secure the highest return on investment. The team hired to fundraise should be excited about research, communications, networking, and relationship building to ensure the long-term sustainability of an organisation. However, every organisation will be at a different stage of maturity. Therefore, you need to decide what is best for you based on your strengths and challenges. A good way to start is by assessing your funding models using the methodology provided by Bridgespan. You can then create a fundraising plan for the next year in a manner that leverages your resources effectively. 

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Know more

• Read about the basics of building a retail fundraising model.
• Read this article to learn how nonprofits can tap into the potential of individual giving.

In this interview with IDR, Rob talks about the changing nature of philanthropy since the COVID-19 pandemic, learnings from different regions and cultures of giving, and the importance of talking about failure.

How are you seeing foundations and philanthropists across the world think and act as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic?

A crisis can really show what’s possible, and during the pandemic, we saw some meaningful responses, both at an institutional and individual level. Citizens moved quickly to act—focussing on things such as testing kits, finding ICU beds, organising oxygen concentrators, and food.

On the organisational front, we saw several examples of collectives forming to drive money and attention to those affected. For example, GiveIndia launched the India COVID Response Fund in March 2020 to mobilise capital from philanthropists, foundations, and individuals. In addition, a collective of venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs came together in April 2020 to launch Action COVID Taskforce (ACT) grants. Rapid Rural Community Response (RCRC) To COVID-19 In India, a coalition of more than 50 non-profits was also formed to enable a rapid rural community response to the pandemic. It made us realise that philanthropy in partnership with governments, communities, and nonprofits can be responsive and engage swiftly.

During COVID, people broke barriers and figured out how to collaborate more.

Secondly, we often talk about the value of collaboration in philanthropy, but historically it has not been as common as we’d like to see. During COVID, people broke barriers and figured out how to collaborate more. Many philanthropists were willing to trust that we may not have all the answers individually, but collectively, we could attempt to address the enormity of the problem.

The pandemic also brought the issue of inequity to the forefront. There was a split between people who had the resources to adjust to the new normal and those who didn’t. And the pandemic taught us how inequity shows up in visceral ways and how to work towards fixing that.

Are you seeing some of the learnings continue?  

I’m optimistic that some of them will continue as we navigate the post-pandemic world. An important factor in this is that the pandemic wasn’t a short-term crisis. In disaster relief, for example, the urgency fades away after a couple of months. But this is a long-term crisis that needs long-term solutions. We are certainly seeing a sustained increase in philanthropic collaboration, particularly through more formal donor collaboratives such as The GROW Fund, Tribal Health Collaborative, India Climate Collaborative, Dasra Adolescents Collaborative, and Co-Impact. I suppose we will have to revisit this conversation in a couple of years and see how everything unfolds.

Over the past few years, we’re seeing newer philanthropists emerge across Asia. Are they doing anything differently? Do you think there are things that Western philanthropists can learn from their counterparts in India?

Everyone can and should learn from each other. Anything that gets a broader perspective is helpful. For instance, when in 2013, non-US givers like Mr Azim Premji joined the Giving Pledge, the collective wisdom of the group increased dramatically.

There’s this connection in Asia that is quite powerful when you think about the role of individuals and their businesses. It is a little bit more intertwined. I also find collaboration with governments quite interesting in the region. An example that comes to mind is the Azim Premji Foundation working with the government and healthcare workers. It offers an opportunity to act holistically and identify ways in which government, philanthropy and industry can work together, to unlock scale and sustainability for the long term.

We’re also seeing emerging support for the ecosystem overall. And that is important because there is some newness to be seen in institutions in Asia such as Centre for Social Innovation in Singapore or Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Ashoka University in India.

What would it look like to enable givers at all levels to have the trust, confidence, information, and support that they need to really thrive? It requires taking a fresh look at the different components and infrastructure needs for the supporting ecosystem and helping build it for the next generation.

I think a lot of helpful knowledge-sharing is taking place, be it from the US to Asia, or from Asia to the US, or even from one country to another within Asia, and this cross-pollination of ideas is very encouraging.

How do you think we can do this?

Sharing ideas is an area that the field has struggled with a bit. We at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focus a lot on the role we can play as conveners, and COVID-19 has taught all of us to be more open to new ideas. Getting people together and engaging in a meaningful way is extremely valuable and we have to continue to think about how this can be managed best.

The willingness to embrace things with an open mind is also crucial. I’m glad you asked the question the way you did because often people ask me what we can learn from the American perspective. And every time my answer is that we can all learn from each other.

There are going to be differences from culture to culture but generosity cuts across humanity. There is no monopoly by one culture. The Middle East, for example, has an extraordinary amount of giving. We need to find ways to inspire people to be thoughtful about where their giving is going. 

You spoke about what you’d like to see more of, like collaborations and learnings. Is there something you’d like to see less of?

I get concerned when people are overly rigid in terms of prescribing what’s good giving and what isn’t. That being said, COVID-19 has made the different hierarchies of needs very clear. Any time there is generosity we as a society should applaud and encourage that. But at the same time, I would like to see people be thoughtful about the opportunities in front of them, and where their resources might go.

It is understandable that people might focus their giving on the affiliations they have, whether that’s a university or church or something else. But it would be nice for them to think a little more holistically about their portfolio. This doesn’t apply to only wealthy donors, but to everyone who donates.

We should highlight more organisations that are doing great work so that they can grow and scale.

I am also a little concerned that givers can have a distorted view of a recipient organisation if the organisation has a lot of resources to focus on fundraising. To put it in other terms, should a product with the highest marketing budget win over a product that’s better but has no marketing? We should highlight more organisations that are doing great work so that they can grow and scale. 

But how do you change that?

There’s a very important role that intermediaries can play here. An individual organisation might be doing incredible work but may not be visible to Western donors. We can basket organisations working on the same issues and provide them with a trusted intermediary. For example, if I want to focus on homelessness in Seattle, I can rely on Seattle Foundation to know which organisations can make the most difference with my donation. Such trusted intermediaries can be hugely helpful.

So first, as donors, we should figure out what areas and issues we care the most about. And then discover organisations through these intermediaries. Technology can also play a huge role in curating and bringing these opportunities closer.

Usually attention has been focused on big money in philanthropy. But we are beginning to see more smaller philanthropists emerging. How do we provide support to these philanthropists?

I think it’s understandable why large donors make headlines and draw attention. But this should not be at the cost of ignoring everyday donors. In the US context, everyday donors are a huge part of funding. It’s also almost entirely unrestricted funding, which is valuable for the recipient nonprofits, and critical to the fabric of civil society and a thriving democracy.

Incentives certainly matter. Structural incentives such as tax policies can help. We also need to create visible pathways for donors, and I believe that’s where technology and media can help. 

We always hear about how nonprofits should talk of failure. Could you shed some light on why it’s important to talk about failure in philanthropy as well?

Talking about failure is very important. People need to take on risky things and be okay with failing. This is how innovations happen. Think about how many clinical trials don’t work, or how many promising interventions do not turn out as expected.

In philanthropy, we need to learn about why something works and why something doesn’t. In order to do this, we need to foster a safe and encouraging environment for communication. It’s natural to get things wrong. But you need to fail fast and move on. How do we move on if we don’t realise what’s going wrong? Not talking about failure is dangerous to the field. It is extremely tragic to get the same things wrong thrice or four times because nobody shared why it went wrong the first or second time. And in our field, we see a repetition of the same kinds of failures.

Why is it that philanthropists don’t talk about failure as much?

Honestly, it takes willingness to embrace it. We talk so much about why people give. But I also want to hear about why they don’t give, or why they don’t give more than they already do. If they have a plan to give out USD 2 billion, why is it that they are only at USD 200 million? This is still an extraordinary amount, but if you look at the timeline for when they might reach their goal of USD 2 billion, the track is just not right. And, because this is an optional exercise, nobody wants to feel like they squandered their money.

The potential of having a huge impact is so high and so exhilarating that coming around and recognising that an initiative that was, let’s say, USD 20 million led to no results can be very disappointing. So, on a human level, it’s very understandable why people might not want to fully embrace that. We need to create peer networks where conversations like these are encouraged and supported. I’m a part of such a network—it is inspiring, and is a place for both positive feedback and thoughtful cautions. It’s helpful to have a blueprint of what someone followed and why it didn’t work for them. It helps us learn.

*Rob Rosen was a speaker at the AVPN Global Conference 2022, where he spoke about ‘The Catalytic Role of Philanthropy.’

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