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

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

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

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

1. Involve communities in decision-making

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Aim to influence policy

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

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

4. Build scalable solutions

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

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

5. Leverage technology for scale

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

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

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

6. Help strengthen institutional capacity in government

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

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

7. Partner with organisations to scale

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

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

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

8. Create viable markets for the under-privileged

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

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

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

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

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Know more

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

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

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

1. The Northeast is not homogenous

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

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

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

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

2. Funders should invest in ideas and allow failures

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

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

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

3. Funders should re-evaluate their expectations

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

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

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

4. The sector must learn to listen to the communities

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

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

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Know more

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

Adopting a systems thinking approach, which entails considering these diverse interconnections within the broader context of climate change, has emerged as a potential strategy. And while the approach is gaining momentum in theory, questions about how it will play out in practice remain. How will it translate into the work that nonprofits are already doing? Given constraints such as limited resources, time, and team capacity, how can nonprofits adopt a systems thinking lens to address the complexity of the climate crisis?

Liby Johnson, the executive director of the grassroots development organisation Gram Vikas, points out that nonprofits are already adept at understanding the various facets of an issue, such as its causes and potential effects. This is especially true for nonprofits operating at the grassroots. Reflecting on his experience, he adds, “I started working in this sector in the mid 90s. Back then, linear thinking was completely frowned upon. When we proposed solutions, we would immediately be asked about the dependencies. That’s how the sector operated. Our contributions—demonstrating workable models, scaling them up, and showcasing that change is possible—resulted from our commitment to systems thinking.”

According to Liby, nonprofits such as PRADAN, Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI), and The Timbaktu Collective have been working with vulnerable rural communities across the country for several decades. “These organisations have engaged with families to enhance their livelihoods, and not just by improving agricultural practices and increasing farming yields. Their efforts also extend to education and overall well-being, allowing these households to become resilient, over time, to disasters and climate impacts,” he shares.

The responsibility of adopting a systems thinking lens, however, cannot rest solely on grassroots nonprofits. Funders, intermediaries, and others must also think differently. Liby adds that in the absence of support from the larger ecosystem, it becomes nearly impossible for nonprofits to  incorporate a systems thinking framework in their work.

“Organisations, especially younger nonprofits that are still finding their footing, don’t have the agency to dictate a set of operating methods that deviate from how the larger system is already functioning. I don’t think there’s a solution unless the system itself starts thinking this way.”

What will it take to create this enabling ecosystem?

Funders, intermediary organisations, and larger nonprofits can play a significant role in shaping the trajectory of a nonprofit’s work; they dictate where and how resources are allocated and what priorities are set. Therefore, it’s crucial for these different stakeholders to embrace systems thinking in their own practices to enable nonprofits to do the same. Here are some strategies to achieve this:

1. Listen to different narratives

Narratives have the power to shape perceptions. The prevailing discourse on climate change is largely confined to Western-centric, scientific frameworks, which neglect local contexts. To truly address the complexities of climate change, there is an urgent need to broaden the discourse and incorporate diverse perspectives and marginalised voices that are often sidelined.

Larger nonprofits can contribute to this narrative-building exercise in a significant manner. It is critical for metro-headquartered nonprofits not to  impose their worldview and ideas of climate thinking on the local, community-based organisations they partner with.

However, Neha Saigal, director – gender and climate change at Asar Social Impact Advisors, points out that it has been very challenging for organisations with different approaches and perspectives to talk to each other. “We tend to listen to people who are like us and who think like us.”

Asar is a research and consultancy organisation that facilitates collaboration between various stakeholders in climate change–related fields. When it began working with partners—including organisations that weren’t necessarily climate-focused—on different aspects of the crisis at the state level, much of the initial attention was on trying to understand climate through the perspective of the community. This is because everybody has a different understanding of climate.

To bring in these diverse viewpoints, Asar conducted what it calls ‘listening and sensing sessions’. “These are open-ended dialogues. They aren’t focus group discussions or a research exercise, and are, in fact, fairly informal.” Neha elaborates. These sessions eventually shape the work Asar does in the region, she adds. “The inputs from the community enable us to take decisions and prioritise issues, geographies, strategies, and tactics.”

Aman Singh, the founder of KRAPAVIS, a nonprofit that works to ensure sustainable livelihoods for rural pastoral communities in Rajasthan, also notes how conducting regular workshops with community members has benefitted his team. “Through our workshops with local groups, we’ve created an environment for participation and dialogue. As a result, our team members have also become more receptive to community feedback, which we regularly incorporate in our planning.”

For funders who don’t often engage regularly with the communities for whom they are trying to create solutions, having access to these different narratives is essential. This is because  this information can help them better tailor their support to address root causes and build resilience.

Intermediary organisations—those that act as a bridge between funders and nonprofits, disseminating vital information and knowledge—also play a critical role here. Given their tremendous influence in the sector, intermediaries can facilitate a shift in funder attitudes by helping them think through which factors to consider when looking at impact, what measurement metrics to use, and subsequently, how to plan interventions. For instance, they can develop use cases for funders to include a narrative-building aspect within their programme.

2. Address knowledge gaps

Systems thinking isn’t a framework everyone is familiar with. Aman Singh highlights that the systems thinking framework has yet to reach the grassroots level. “While many may grasp it intuitively, most nonprofits working on the ground still lack familiarity with this framework.”

In 2019, DESTA, a research and consulting organisation that focuses on mainstreaming systems thinking for sustainable development, conducted a week-long training session for KRAPAVIS on systems thinking. Over the course of these sessions with DESTA, the KRAPAVIS team expanded their scope of thinking on the work they were doing on restoring orans (sacred groves) in Rajasthan.

Those who are well-versed in systems thinking need to make deliberate efforts towards capacity building and facilitating knowledge exchange.

Aman Singh shares an example. “Orans used to have traditional water harvesting systems such as talaabs, nadis, tankas, baodis, and open wells. But when we started employing a systems thinking lens to look at all the other factors impacting the orans, we found that farmers and industrialists had set up illegal borewells to extract water. This is when we realised the implication that depleting groundwater tables can have on the orans. As a result, as part of our larger aim to restore and conserve these community forests, we’ve started working on the issue of recharging groundwater as well.”

Therefore, while nonprofits possess innate insights into systems thinking from their on-ground experience, providing them with the right tools and training can enable them to expand their understanding and identify interconnected issues that may not have been initially apparent. For this to take place, those who are well-versed in systems thinking need to make deliberate efforts towards capacity building and facilitating knowledge exchange.

However, Aman Singh points out that field teams might be hesitant to learn about systems thinking. “When we introduced our team to systems thinking, they felt it was too theoretical and that it wouldn’t be applicable on the ground. However, after bringing the framework into practice, they started finding the concept easier to grasp. If we want to change something, we have to remain open to understanding and engaging with complexity.” He goes on to add that the language used to disseminate systems thinking knowledge is complex and full of jargon and needs to be made more accessible.  

3. Broaden the scope of funding outcomes

There has been an increasing pressure on nonprofits to think in a linear fashion. “It’s all ‘Go, go, go,’ and there really is no space for nonprofits to sit down, and map the system and the various relationships within it,” shares Neha.

A part of the reason for this focus on linearity is the constant emphasis on measuring inputs and the number of people reached, as opposed to figuring out how these outcomes are achieved. This linear thinking shapes the very way in which interventions are planned. Liby expands on this with an example.

“Consider a nonprofit that works towards enhancing the climate resilience of farm livelihoods in a cluster of gram panchayats. Funders might only focus on specific outcomes: Which crop will increase productivity? What will the increase in price per unit e be that would lead to an increase in income? This narrow approach to planning and reporting overlooks a broader understanding of impact that is needed. For instance, an increase in production for farm-dependent households hinges not only on agricultural yields but also on factors such as the time that is available to women to work in the fields, considering their responsibilities at home,” he says.

However, many donors fail to consider such nuances during the planning phase. “The problem with this kind of linear thinking is that it doesn’t allow us to even factor in any kind of risk. The moment funders begin thinking about the systems that influence farm production, they will have to allow for some margin of failure, allot funds to accommodate for it, and then broaden the scope of the outcomes as well,” Liby adds. He emphasises that to be able to expand the scope of an intervention and understand all the various interconnections, systems thinking must begin when a programme is being planned. 

One solution to these problems is patient grantmaking. It provides sustained support to organisations over an extended period, often with flexibility in funding timelines and reporting requirements. This would allow nonprofits to have the time and resources to understand the multi-dimensional nature of the issues they’re addressing.

It’s essential to think inclusively and consider the needs and practices of grassroots organisations.

Neha adds that this kind of funding can also help ensure that meaningful solutions aren’t prevented from being implemented, just because nonprofits do not understand the broader context.

Another step that funders can take is making it easier for grantees to report. Aman Singh shares that many donors bring their own format to the table and tend to view things from only their perspective. “If we talk about issues beyond what their formats dictate, they say it doesn’t match their vision or mission. While it’s crucial for funders to align with their vision and mission, they must also remain flexible to accommodating the perspectives and approaches of those working on the ground. It’s essential to think inclusively and consider the needs and practices of grassroots organisations.”

Complex problems like the climate crisis cannot be solved overnight. All stakeholders, especially implementing nonprofits, need the space and time for reflection to find sustainable solutions. Liby remarks that while these organisations thrive because of their grassroots understanding, they must also enhance their ability to contribute to a bird’s-eye view. This can only happen when the entire ecosystem shifts its approach as well, changes the way it measures outcomes, makes space for diverse narratives, and demystifies the systems thinking framework to make it more accessible for grassroots nonprofits.

Smarinita Shetty contributed to this article.

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Know more

• Read this article to learn how funders can further enable a systems thinking approach for the sector.
• Read this blog to gain insights into systems thinking in action.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article was originally published on 3ie.

Watch this video about a day in the life of Rama, a fieldworker from Delhi, as she helps waste pickers in Bhalswa transition from chulhas to LPG cylinders. Rama, who has been working on the ground for the last 15 years, starts her morning juggling work calls and household chores, and ends her day with Chinese food and Kishore Kumar songs. In the video, Rama shares the challenges she faced both professionally and personally due to the nature of her work. She expresses her dream to build a shelter for women experiencing domestic abuse, and eventually pursuing a career in politics by running for MLA.

My name is Rama and I live in Jahangirpuri with my husband and two sons. For approximately 15 years I have worked on the ground with communities, first as an anganwadi helper and then as an ASHA worker. Currently, I work as a change agent with Asar as part of the Cleaner Air and Better Health (CABH) project supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and help people in Bhalswa switch to clean cooking fuel. Bhalswa is a neighbourhood located in Northwest Delhi; it is surrounded by a landfill and is predominantly inhabited by waste pickers. Most households in Bhalswa use chulhas (mud stoves) for cooking, which can cause dangerous levels of household air pollution and lead to dire ramifications on the health of the women who do the cooking. LPG gas cylinders, on the other hand, provide a cleaner alternative. They not only help combat air pollution, but are also easier to use and save the time that would otherwise be spent on collecting firewood for chulhas.

I’ve been working with women and men in Bhalswa to raise awareness about the harms of an open fire and cooking with fuels such as wood or coal. However, people are still reluctant to make this switch for several reasons, the primary one being the high costs. Launched in 2016, the Pradhan Mantrir Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) heavily subsidises the cost of the cylinder to incentivise the transition to cleaner cooking methods. However, many in Bhalswa still lack the correct documentation—including Aadhaar card and labour card—required to avail of the scheme.

As a result, my work has evolved to not only advocate for the benefits of clean cooking but also to create awareness about the PMUY scheme and assisting community members with the documentation necessary for accessing its benefits.  

6.00 AM: I usually wake up to the sound of my phone ringing incessantly. It’s almost always someone from Bhalswa calling to ask when I’m coming to their neighbourhood or to enquire about the status of their PMUY form. Today is no different. Amid the chaos of the phone calls. My husband and I prepare breakfast for the family. We also fix our children’s school lunches. My older son is in grade 12 and my younger one is in grade 8. I have a dog, Timsi, who was a birthday gift from a relative. She also needs to be fed and taken for a walk in the morning. My husband, who is an auto driver, tends to her before heading out to work.

The entire family contributes to these chores. I believe that without all their help, it would’ve been very challenging for me to continue working in the field every day. I still remember, when I first started working in the field as an anganwadi helper back in 2011, my younger son was just one year old. My relatives would repeatedly ask me to leave the anganwadi work and take care of my son. My brother even went to the extent of promising me INR 3,000 every month in lieu of a salary. However, I continued working and would take my child to the field with me every day. I’ve always wanted to help people and I felt that was the only way I could contribute.

I usually make myself aloo parathas in the morning as they keep me full until I come back from work in the evening, especially since I can’t eat on the field. Once I’ve had my breakfast, I go over my schedule, which I always prepare the night before. On most days, my work is a combination of spreading door-to-door awareness, conducting public awareness sessions, and helping people fill out forms for PMUY.

Since I work with waste pickers, who start working early in the morning and return to their homes at around noon, I have to structure my schedule around their availability. Today, I have a public awareness session scheduled, after which I will help some of the women in the community fill out forms for PMUY. After making adjustments to my to-do list, I get ready to leave the house to make my way to Bhalswa.

10.00 AM: The bus stop is a 10-minute walk from my house. I wait here for 15 minutes or so for a bus that can drop me at the end of the road. There are days when I can walk the distance, but it’s very hot today and I don’t want to tire myself out so early. I finally board a bus after waiting for 15 minutes at the stop. Once I get off at my stop, I have to wait for a couple of minutes to take a shared e-rickshaw to my final destination. I have to wait a couple of minutes here while the rickshaw driver gathers other passengers travelling in the same direction. Eventually, I arrive at Bhalswa close to 11 am.

Bhalswa is a vast neighbourhood, with localities divided on the basis of religious and regional identities. For instance, some areas have only people from West Bengal, while others have only Muslim families. The various groups living in Bhalswa speak different languages and have distinct cultures, which can be complicated to navigate as an outsider. Although my earlier work as an anganwadi helper and an ASHA worker had its unique obstacles, I was able to establish a strong rapport with the communities I served fairly easily and quickly. At Bhalswa, however, my journey has been very challenging, particularly because communities here have previously had unpleasant experiences with nonprofits and people from the outside. For instance, a few years ago, a group posing as a nonprofit asked locals to deposit INR 500 and promised sewing machines in return. However, they never got the machines or their money back. So, I had to start the process of building this trust from scratch. The diversity in the community made it tricky as well.

In order to build trust in Bhalswa, I started cultivating relationships with people who had influence in the locality, which included ASHA workers. At the same time, I had to work towards dispelling the community’s scepticism about nonprofits. One way of doing this was tapping into my network of nonprofits in the area to help people access resources. For instance, I supported a 12-year-old girl who was disabled in getting a wheelchair by reaching out to a nonprofit I had worked with previously. Over time, both these approaches helped me connect to the community, and soon enough, my phone was flooded with calls from the women in the neighbourhood.

11.15 AM: Upon reaching Bhalswa, I make my way to the local dispensary where I meet some of the ASHA workers. I am good friends with most of them and having this supportive community of women keeps me motivated. We chat about our day and also discuss if any particular grievances from the community have come up in their conversations. They inform me that a family that has just shifted to Bhalswa had reached out to them regarding a gas cylinder and that they’ve forwarded my contact details to the family.

I catch up with some of the other women at the dispensary whom I had helped obtain cylinders before moving to the next item on my agenda—the community awareness session.

12.00 PM: Community awareness sessions are held in a temple right next to the dispensary. Today, approximately 10–15 women have gathered there. Most have come with their toddlers whom they can’t leave at home. Once everyone is settled in, I bring out the toolkit developed by Asar. It’s 17 pages long and uses illustrations to explain the concept of air pollution and its causes, and sheds light on the long-term repercussions of continuous firewood burning.

During the session, I also emphasise the detrimental effects that the prolonged use of the chulha has on the health of the women responsible for cooking, as well as other household members. These include conditions such as stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and acute respiratory illnesses in young children.

The women actively participate in these sessions too by asking questions and sharing their own experiences. Through these sessions, my objective is not only to disseminate information among those who are present but also for them to take this information back to their peers who may still be on the fence transitioning to LPG. There are those who are accustomed to cooking on a chulha and harbour apprehensions about switching to an LPG cylinder. One of the complaints I often hear from women, especially older ones, is that the food cooked on a chulha tastes better. To dispel this misconception, I usually encourage them to speak to other women in the community who have been using LPG. These women talk about how their eyes no longer burn while cooking, and how they’ve noticed a reduction in respiratory issues.

The transition to LPG cylinders poses a significant financial challenge for the residents of Bhalswa.

The transition to LPG cylinders also poses a significant financial challenge for the residents of Bhalswa, a majority of whom are waste pickers and cannot afford the high costs. This is often a point of debate and discussion during these sessions. To counter this, I often advise women to focus on the long-term benefits of switching to LPG. By redirecting a portion of their daily expenses from wood and other fuels for traditional chulhas, they can gradually save enough to afford LPG refills. For instance, setting aside just INR 30 to 40 per day can accumulate to cover the cost of a refill by the end of each month.

Additionally, I bring their attention to the benefits they are entitled to under the PMUY, which was relaunched by the government in 2021 to make LPG gas cylinders accessible to economically disadvantaged households. Under the PMUY, the first cylinder and its installation are free for those from marginalised backgrounds, post which they can access LPG gas connections at subsidised rates. Beneficiaries receive INR 1,600 for the first refill, which covers a 14 kg cylinder and associated installation costs. An extra INR 300 is provided for each of the subsequent 12 refills. In the past, there were frequent delays in these payments, but since the relaunch, this has been resolved to a large extent.

While the documentation process for PMUY has been simplified significantly, people still struggle to get the correct paperwork in place.

However, this throws up another challenge, which is filling out the paperwork required to access the PMUY. While the documentation process has been simplified significantly, people still struggle to get the correct paperwork in place. Some of the documents required include the ration card, proof of address, Aadhaar card, or a caste certificate. In case someone has migrated to Delhi from another state—quite common in Bhalswa—they would also need a residence proof, such as an electricity bill and a rent agreement. There are instances where people do not possess any documentation at all, and in such cases a migrant card or a labour card also suffices.

Just yesterday, a woman who didn’t have any of the required documents enquired about the scheme. I told her that she could still avail of it via a labour card. However, she didn’t have a labour card either, so currently I’m helping her get one. After that, I’ll help her apply for the PMUY.

2.00 PM: Once the awareness session is over, most people disperse for lunch. Because I usually don’t bring food to the field, I utilise this time to help people with their forms. I fill up to 15–20 forms every day. Once I have enough forms, I take them to the nearby gas agency for submission. This is a 30- to 40-minute trip that I take every other week. Once the gas agency reviews a form, they call the household to pick up the necessary equipment and then the cylinder is delivered.

I also keep a record of all the applicants in my register, making a special note of cases where sufficient documentation isn’t available. I regularly have to follow up with some of them to ensure they’re still working on getting their documentation in place.

My friends—the other ASHA workers—also join me during this time. We usually sit and chat for some time after I’m done with my work.

4.30 PM: After concluding my tasks for the day, I leave for home. It’s usually 4.30 or 5 pm by then. I take the same journey back: e-rickshaw, bus, and then the short walk to my house. In the evenings, it can take me anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour to get back. Since I don’t feel comfortable using the washroom at the dispensary, the first thing I do when I reach home is to go to the toilet. I intentionally avoid drinking water so that I won’t have to use the bathroom. This is particularly challenging during the summer and I feel dehydrated and nauseated. But over time I have become accustomed to this practice.

While I freshen up, my older son makes tea for me. As my husband is also back home on a short break, we all sit together and catch up on our day.

7.00 PM: After taking a break for a couple of hours, I sit down to write my report for the day. When I started working with Asar, I did not know how to use a smartphone and could only make and receive calls. Eventually, I joined a computer training class, and now I use Excel on my phone to prepare my reports; I submit these over WhatsApp to the team at Asar every evening. Since I don’t understand English too well, I use translation tools to convert text to Hindi. Being able to acquire this skill gave me a big confidence boost.

After the day’s work is done, I unwind by listening to Kishore Kumar’s music and some bhajans. In the evening, I also spend some time playing and snuggling with my dog Timsi.

Even though my workdays can be exhausting, it brings me joy to know that I am making a small difference in Bhalswa. Since women no longer have to spend hours foraging for wood to fuel the chulha, they have enough free time to engage in other work, such as shelling peas, for extra income. This also helps them pay for the next LPG refill.

I’ve always wanted to give back to society and help women, who are always asked to suppress their wants and needs, live the fulfilling lives that they deserve. One day, I want to be elected as a member of parliament and contribute to even bigger changes in these communities. I also want to have enough resources to open a shelter for women experiencing domestic violence.   

As told to IDR.

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Know more

• Read this article to learn more about how air pollution impacts outdoor workers in Delhi.
• Read this article to learn about the challenges of availing of LPG connections under PMUY.
• Read this article to learn about how solid cooking fuels lead to climate change. 

Kranti was set up in 2010 by Sunita Bhosale to work on various issues related to violence, land rights, education, health, and skill development faced by the Pardhi tribe, an Adivasi community that is discriminated against on grounds of social identity and cultural practices. Initially, Kranti only worked with the Pardhi community, to which Sunita belongs as well. Over time, they also started working with other groups living in remote areas, including Adivasi and DNT/NT communities. The core areas of focus for the organisation include education, gender and caste-based discrimination and violence, health, police brutality, women’s empowerment, atrocities, entitlements, social welfare schemes, and citizenship.

As an organisation led by a woman belonging to a De-notified tribe, Kranti had limited access to resources. As a result, Kranti was able to do very little in the way of organisational development in its first decade. Sunita had registered it as a nonprofit but did not know much about accounting, budgeting, programming, and other governance-related work. During this time, they had an organisational strength of four—of which two people were working in the field—and they faced great difficulty in raising funds. “We had no sustained sources of funding,” says Sunita, “so we had to rely on individual donations of up to INR 5,000 to cover costs.” Later on, Sunita also learned about fellowships provided by Dalit Foundation, CORO, ECONET, ActionAid, and SWISSAID and began to use this fellowship money to pay the staff.

This state of affairs continued until 2019. By this time, they were working in 10 villages in two blocks of Pune and had realised that to scale their work, they needed more staff, including accountants and documentation and fundraising officers. Then, a person who was familiar with Kranti’s work put them in touch with the nonprofit Jan Sahas. This led to Kranti receiving organisational development support through Jan Sahas’ Grassroots Resilience Institute (GRI), which has had a significant impact on Kranti’s fundraising abilities, operations, and reach.

The organisation’s annual budget during its first decade was INR 1–1.5 lakh. This has increased by almost 9x—their budget for the current 1.5-year period is INR 13 lakh. In addition, its organisational strength has grown approximately 8x, from four to 31. All these changes have also broadened their impact, which has more than doubled. Up until 2019, Kranti worked with approximately 1,200 families, but as of 2024, its work covers 3,000 households across 15 villages in Pune district and five villages in Ahmednagar district.

Behind these quantifiable changes are a host of transformations resulting from extensive organisational development efforts.

What changed?

1. Capacity building and connecting with other nonprofits

Kranti had several needs that required attention, but one of their most critical requirements was staff capacity development. The organisation operates in remote areas where skilled professionals are scarce, but with the opportunity for organisational development, Kranti was able to enhance its staff’s work efficiency, skills, knowledge, and leadership qualities.

Priyanka Jadhav, who handles documentation and fundraising at Kranti, says, “GRI’s intervention also involved monitoring and evaluation (M&E) exercises, fostering connections between Kranti and other organisations for funds, mentorship, and Kranti’s capacity development. For example, they put us in touch with other organisations such as Bridgespan that could help us make a 10–15-year plan. They also introduced us to SEWA, where we were assigned a mentor who works with us on skill development and identifying challenges.”

Kranti was thus able to tap into a network of nonprofits where they can start a dialogue on how to approach social issues, as well as certain aspects related to capacity building such as writing proposals and maintaining financial records.

2. Hiring more people

Funding also helped them hire more people. One of the first people Kranti hired was Priyanka. Sunita says, “Priyanka and I have known each other for a long time, almost 15 years. When she was getting her PhD, she expressed interest in serving the community rather than in getting a regular job.” After receiving the grant money, Kranti was able to hire Priyanka as well as an accountant.

Sunita says that having people who were university-educated and could communicate in English helped broaden Kranti’s donor outreach.  “Through Priyanka, we got the kind of know-how we needed for proposals or English translation.” Having all these new skill sets on board has helped them reach a level where they are able to fundraise effectively with other organisations, such as Forbes Foundation and Azim Premji Foundation.

Their work is also happening in a more streamlined manner now. “At first, a lot of our programming was haphazard. In addition, while equal opportunity and non-discrimination are organisational values at Kranti, we only instituted policies for them after receiving support for organisational development.” Kranti has formulated 12 policies, including POSH, finance, equal opportunity, and code of conduct. Although the policies are still being iterated on, the institution of a basic framework has helped bring transparency and a clearer sense of the organisation’s stance on certain issues.

3. Enhanced financial control

With improved financial management and the utilisation of accounting software, Kranti now has better control and visibility over their finances. Sunita reflects on the previous state of financing, “We didn’t know about the rules and regulations around how much money we could keep with us as cash or in cheques.” There were also no established procedures or due processes in place concerning the purchase of items by staff.

Hiring an accountant and instituting a finance policy has paid off and helped in improving resource allocation. Priyanka says, “Earlier, everyone would just go out in the field and buy whatever they thought was needed without obtaining quotations first or doing price comparisons. Now that the finance policy has been implemented, there is greater thought put into how and where money is spent.”  

4. Improved programme planning

The financial stability and enhanced record-keeping have enabled Kranti to engage in more thorough programme planning. Sunita says, “Now, we are able to allocate resources strategically, set clear objectives, and measure impact more effectively.” In addition, there is a structured plan for which programmes are to be conducted when, ensuring the intended outcome of the organisation’s work is measurable. Last year, for instance, Kranti succeeded in registering 1,000 DNT/NT and Adivasi people to the voter list and enabled more than 500 people to acquire caste certificates.

Having an office has also been useful for planning, holding meetings, and inculcating the atmosphere of an institution. For many years, before they had an office, Kranti operated out of Sunita’s home, and so this has been one of the most positive changes for her. “Besides being a place where we can all gather to discuss programme implementation, the office is where we do our monthly meeting in which we discuss what’s going on currently and our plans for the future.” Since the office space is where the entire team—including volunteers, ground teams, and management—meets, it lends to the feeling of being part of an institution. Kranti also has a website and a logo now, which have contributed to instilling a sense of organisational identity.

Challenges along the way

“Breaking old habits and forming new ones is always hard,” says Priyanka. This holds true for both the permanent staff as well as the resource persons that Kranti is associated with. For instance, although the new finance policy has helped account for any money being spent, Priyanka acknowledges that the processes have been an additional burden on the staff.  

Since there are hiring policies in place, the resource persons being engaged for a specific training programme are being asked for a CV. In addition, they are required to produce a plan for the activities they wish to undertake, as well as a report once the activities are completed. “This is jarring for the people we have engaged before, as they don’t understand why we are suddenly asking them for all this extra documentation,” Priyanka adds.  Since resource persons are hired based on educational experience and qualifications, it means more vetting work for the staff. 

To mitigate these challenges, Kranti conducted training sessions with the staff, explaining the importance of these policies and how they contribute to the overall efficiency and effectiveness of organisational programmes. Alongside clear communication and training, which helped them understand the rationale behind the policies, regular monitoring and feedback mechanisms were put in place to ensure that the staff were adhering to the policies and to help address any challenges that arose during implementation.

Advice to grassroots nonprofits

1. Understand the importance of formal processes

Organisations can often fall into the trap of believing that only the work being carried out on the ground is important, thus glossing over the importance of organisational structures, policies, and documentation. Sunita says, “We know 10–15 nonprofits in Maharashtra that do great work on the ground with Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi (DBA) or DNT/NT communities but do not know the first thing about the importance of filing taxes, having your 80(G) certificate, and audit reports.” This hinders their ability to tap into funding since some degree of documentation is a prerequisite to applying for and receiving grants.

On the flip side, however, such information is hard to come by for grassroots organisations, especially those that are operating in remote areas. “No one told us either about certifications, legal compliances, plans and reports, and having a vision/mission,” remarks Sunita. This is why developing as an organisation was so fundamental to Kranti’s work progressing to the next stage.

2. Learn how to separate and take due credit for your organisation’s work

Sunita and Priyanka relate something that happened with Kranti a few times in their initial years. Sunita says, “We were partnering with organisations that would award us fellowships of INR 5,000, INR 8,000, and so on. Over time, however, I realised that some of these nonprofits were passing off our work as theirs and making us out to be an implementing organisation. So, they were being awarded grants in crores of rupees while only a fraction of that amount made it to us.”

Thus, Priyanka and Sunita believe that grassroots nonprofits should be mindful of how their work is being represented, especially since representation impacts the perception of the organisation among stakeholders, including potential donors and partners as well as the community. Ensuring the organisation’s work is well represented can also aid in recruiting volunteers and staff members.  

Advice to funders

1. Fund grassroots organisations directly

Sunita says that in their first 12 years, even direct appeals to support channels bore little fruit. In part, this is because of well-established funding patterns followed by other players in the ecosystem, such as funders and grantmaking organisations. Big funders usually give money to grantmaking organisations that distribute funds to grassroots and implementing organisations. Since fundraising requires skill, resources, and networking—all of which grassroots organisations cannot always tap into—it is challenging for most organisations working on the ground to connect with funders.

Since funders have resources at their disposal, they may be better positioned to seek information on grassroots nonprofits working in the thematic areas they are interested in supporting. This is a complex exercise, but one that can potentially add value to existing funding models.

2. Focus on commitment and potential

According to Priyanka, many funders have mandates that prevent them from funding smaller organisations—for example, funding only those organisations that have a turnover of INR 50 lakh to INR 1 crore. “However, grassroots organisations sometimes do very impactful work even within budgets as low as INR 2 lakh. So, instead of assessing parameters such as annual budgets, a fairer method would be to look at how invested an organisation is in the work they do and how much better they could get once organisational structures are in place.” Funding developing organisations is always crucial, she adds. “Bigger nonprofits can survive because they already have resources at their disposal, but that is not the case for grassroots nonprofits.”

Grassroots organisations work directly with communities and the outcomes of this work are often clear. However, there are several barriers between nonprofits and funders, not least of which is a lack of exchange of information.  

What’s next for Kranti?

Kranti’s efforts towards developing as an organisation—by hiring personnel who could fundraise, building team members’ capabilities, and improving on reporting practices—had a ripple on their visibility to funders, as evidenced by the 9x increase in their budget. The organisation’s future plans, which involves extending their work to the entirety of Pune and Ahmednagar districts, would require them to continue on this path. “Right now, we work in 20 villages and cover 3,000 households. To expand the same work that we’re doing to 100–150 villages, we will need to secure five to six grants over the next two years,” says Sunita.

Ultimately, Kranti’s vision is also to make the villages that they work in independent. Sunita elaborates, “We want the situation to be such that when we’ve worked in a village for five years, we never have to work in it again and the communities themselves are capable of identifying and resolving any challenges that come up in the future.” This would help serve Kranti’s mission of ending the historical exclusion and stigmatisation of de-notified tribes, preventing violence against women, and ensuring the upliftment of marginalised groups.

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About Priyanka and Sunita

Priyanka Jadhav is a social activist and scholar currently working with Kranti as a documentation and fundraising officer. Priyanka has a PhD from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and is the first woman from the Kaikadi tribe (a de-notified tribe) to have completed a PhD in Maharashtra. Priyanka’s MPhil and PhD research projects looked into the changing livelihood practices of the Masanjogi community and the lives of Pardhi women respectively. Through her research, she gained insights into the complexities of marginalised communities’ lives and the urgent need for their inclusion in policy frameworks.

Sunita Bhosale is an activist and a social worker who belongs to the Pardhi tribe of Maharashtra. After working with various organisations at the grassroots level, she realised the need to establish an organisation that would serve marginalised communities in her area. In 2010, she founded Kranti to work on issues related to education, violence, entitlement, and social welfare schemes. Sunita recently returned to and successfully graduated from college, fulfilling a goal she was unable to earlier due to various challenges.

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An earlier version of this article stated that grassroots organisations are started to fill a perceived gap or in response to social issues. This was updated on March 22, 2024, to reflect that all organisations in the development sector are started with this aim and face similar challenges in the absence of organisational development.

This article was updated on April 5, 2024, to reflect that as an organisation led by a woman belonging to a De-notified tribe, Kranti had limited access to resources.

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Know more

• Read this case study to learn how a grassroots nonprofit can approach scale.
• Read this report to learn how a shift in funding practices could contribute to resilient nonprofits.

The interconnected nature of the energy, economic, and political systems creates a complex web of dependencies—any change in one area affects the others, setting off a domino effect. This is where systems thinking can prove to be a vital tool. It can help examine the interdependencies between climate change and various social, economic, and political factors, and the underlying structures at play.

What is systems thinking?

In his book The Fifth Discipline, systems scientist Peter Senge defines systems thinking as “a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns rather than static snapshots. It is a set of general principles spanning fields as diverse as physical and social sciences, engineering and management.”

Barry Richmond, a systems thinking guru, explains that people who embrace systems thinking must be able to see both the forest and the trees, with one eye on each.

In the context of climate change, a systems thinking approach refers to understanding and predicting people’s response to the crisis by exploring the factors and vulnerabilities that influence them. It involves simultaneously seeing the overall climate picture and how it intersects with health, gender, livelihoods, and other sectors–this helps achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.

Aman Srivastava is coordinator, climate policy at Sustainable Futures Collaborative, a research organisation that works on issues related to the climate crisis and the energy transition. According to Aman, there are two perspectives to consider when approaching systems thinking in the context of the climate emergency—the physical perspective and the transition perspective.

From a physical perspective, systems thinking is about how one climate effect can impact multiple systems. “We know that one consequence of global warming can lead to others. For instance, the melting of polar ice can influence ocean salinity, among other things. This, in turn, can disrupt ocean currents, thereby impacting weather systems, rainfall patterns, and more. These changes will likely affect economic sectors such as agriculture and hence farmer incomes and food security. The resulting variability in crop output will necessitate the import and export of food grains, and, consequently, alter international trade patterns”. Essentially, the reverberations of one climate effect can be felt across weather, agriculture, livelihoods, health, and trade.

A transition perspective looks at climate policy. It helps us understand how policy targeting one sector can have multiple spillover—and possibly unintended—impacts. This is particularly critical when engaging in discussions about reducing India’s future reliance on fossil fuels such as coal. For example, Aman explains, phasing out coal could directly affect rail freight revenues. He shares that Indian Railways currently subsidises passenger fares through its freight revenue, approximately 44 percent of which is earned through transporting coal. When the production and transport of coal decrease, so will the Railways’ revenues. This will limit its ability to subsidise passenger fares and could cause them to become more expensive, possibly triggering reductions in travel and changes in migration patterns. And this, in turn, can result in shifts in the economic and demographic landscape of various regions, which would require us to rethink urban planning, employment generation, and other policies.

According to Vinuta Gopal, CEO of ASAR Social Impact Advisors, understanding these interlinkages is critical as India works towards its net-zero goals and transitions to clean energy solutions while also building the resilience of its people, ecosystems, and economy. ASAR is a research and consultancy organisation that facilitate collaboration between various stakeholders in climate change–related fields.

“As we build out new policies and schemes, we need to start thinking much more about how to plan to avoid the worst, rather than build now and say, ‘We can then solve the problem at a later stage,’— because we’ve already reached the stage where the problem is larger than what we can solve. We therefore have to adopt an intersectional approach.”

By adopting a more holistic perspective, we can be better equipped to anticipate these shifts and prepare responses effectively.

Adopting systems thinking for climate: What will it take?

It’s clear that to tackle a problem that is as complex as climate change and has several developmental implications, everyone involved—governments, businesses, and civil society—should think about the bigger picture, connect the dots between different aspects, and adopt a systems thinking approach.

Here are some suggestions that offer a good starting point to transitioning from siloed approaches and adopting a more systemic approach to India’s climate thinking:

1. Incorporate local intuition and knowledge into systems tools

Researchers often employ certain frameworks and tools to incorporate a systems thinking lens in their practice. These include causal loop diagrams, feedback loops, systems mapping, systems dynamics modelling, and participatory group modelling. Introducing these tools to communities and grassroots nonprofits could be a crucial first step. These stakeholders often deal with whole systems all the time and their proximity to the ground enables them to have a deep understanding of the various interconnected parts. 

“We don’t need to tell communities close to the ground how everything is interconnected. What might be helpful is to use these tools to help formalise their intuition and thinking,” says Ulka Kelkar. Ulka is executive director, climate at World Resources Institute India, a research organisation that works at the intersection of the environment and economic development.

One of the ways this knowledge transfer could be brought about is by using these tools to explore the problems and solutions with impacted stakeholders. For instance, systems mapping helps understand the different entities that make up a system and how they relate to each other. When this is done with participation from a diverse set of stakeholders, it can lead to more effective and comprehensive solutions, versus one developed by somebody coming in from outside with a top-down intervention.

Ulka illustrates this with an example of a study on the flooding in the upper Brahmaputra basin, in which a group model building activity engaged diverse stakeholders to collectively comprehend and tackle the complex issue. Over a four-day workshop in Guwahati, Ulka and Navarun Varma, senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore, brought together policymakers, government officials, technical experts, academicians, and the local community, which included a mix of upper-caste farmers and the local Mising people.

Ulka recounts the integral role that bringing together different stakeholders played in the process. “For the first time, we had all of these groups in the room. On the first day, we presented some technical information, some context, and our own understanding of the issue. Then we broke them (everyone present) into different groups and talked them through a systems mapping approach. The participants were then asked to make their own models of the flooding and diagnose the problem through their points of view, which they then presented to each other. There was an open discussion, and of course there were disagreements, but also revelations. In fact, many of them revised their models and added a component that they had learned about from the other group.”

2. Build an ecosystem that fosters collaboration

Providing access to tools like systems mapping isn’t just about building awareness about systems thinking. We need to go one step further to formalise insights from communities and several different entities. To do this, continuous dialogue between all these diverse stakeholders is key.

Organisations working on intersectional issues—including media outlets, research organisations, large nonprofits, philanthropies, and the government— have a broader perspective of the entire system, as well as the resources to facilitate some of these crucial conversations.

For example, knowledge platforms such as the Climate Futures Project carry comprehensive insights on how socio-economic, political, and economic factors impact policies. Similarly, media houses can give insights into policy implementation in different regions. Additionally, these organisations can provide support to other organisations in the ecosystem through convenings, trainings, and forums.

ASAR, for instance, focuses on building the capacity of many small organisations working as close to the ground as possible. According to Vinuta, they do this because not only are these organisations directly connected to people’s needs at the grassroots but they also interact with government systems and businesses regularly.

“We are further trying to connect them to policymaking organisations so that policy is informed by an actual sense of what’s required from the ground. We also build feedback loops once the policies are implemented”, she says. “But for collaboration to truly happen, these ecosystem builders should not be gatekeepers—everyone should have access to the knowledge, tools, and people in the ecosystems,” Vinuta adds.

3. Think beyond economic modelling

A key tool used by governments and think tanks in addressing climate-related challenges is the use of emissions economy models. These models simulate economic systems, taking inputs such as GDP growth rates, technology costs, population, and urbanisation trends, to project outputs relating to emissions, energy mix and use, and incomes. The goal of such models is to help policymakers visualise potential future outcomes based on mixes of various policies and targets.
But a narrow use of these models may fail to account for a wide range of uncertainties that might unfold in the future, such as global pandemics or shifts in India’s socio-economic structures.

Aman explains this with an example. “Consider a model that indicates that, under specific conditions, achieving a particular outcome requires a defined level of coal consumption and corresponding investments. Policymakers could risk taking those as fixed targets without recognising that they are conditional upon a large set of development-related factors.”

Therefore, instead of just thinking about modelling and its results, Aman says that policymakers and scientists working with models also need to think beyond the ‘what’ questions (What are the technologies that can help the climate crisis? What is the capacity that we need of renewable energy?) and emphasise the ‘how’ questions (How can we model better? How can we integrate systems thinking better?). 

This can only be possible through continuous dialogue with other partners who are seeing interventions play out on the ground. People are uniquely vulnerable to change, and the underlying social, economic, or biophysical vulnerability of a place or community must be considered while formulating policies to address the same.

4. Expand what we consider as ‘outcomes’

The recommendations stemming from a systems thinking approach can be fairly wide-ranging. They may not be clear-cut tech solutions or structural, hard engineering ones. Instead, they could be different types of ‘softer’ developmental actions that involve reducing the underlying vulnerabilities, and the effects of which can only be seen over longer timeframes.

“When you take this kind of approach, which is clearly a very thoughtful one, the recommendations can often be very development-oriented rather than climate change–specific. They could range from reducing poverty and improving education to improving institutional governance, and more,” says Ulka.

It becomes difficult, however, to disentangle different problems and solutions and trace this entire web of connections back. For instance, climate organisations relying on funding may face limitations in partnering with or sub-granting to other non-climate nonprofits (such as those working on health or skilling issues), because they have to stay within the thematic scope defined in their founding documents.

What can also help is changing what funders consider impact.

However, non-climate organisations do not necessarily have to change what they’re doing completely. Instead, they have to see what they’re doing through the lens of how the sector/domain in which they work is gong to be affected—what the climate crisis is going to mean for them—and align their actions accordingly.

What can also help is changing what funders consider impact. Funders have a set definition of impact, which also informs how organisations report it. So, it can also help to redefine both impact and reporting requirements. This shift can be encouraged through demonstrations and case studies of how systems thinking approach has led to better outcomes.

Ulka shares the example of when randomised control trials (RCTs) first started gaining recognition as a tool for policymaking. There were clear examples of how RCTs led to more targeted solutions. Michael Kremer, Abhijit Banerjee, and Esther Duflo, who won the 2019 Nobel award for their work on RCTs, demonstrated the impact of the approach in various development contexts in Kenya and India. “Similarly, we need to showcase use cases of a systems thinking approach. Philanthropy and funders can play a vital role in supporting these demonstrative examples to encourage adoption of a systems thinking approach,” Ulka adds.
 
In a rapidly growing country like India, adopting a systems thinking approach is becoming imperative. This is because it isn’t climate alone that is changing; the climate crisis is also impacting people’s living conditions, livelihood opportunities, consumption of goods and services, and land and water use, among other things. Despite this, a large portion of climate discourse is focused on climate mitigation, reducing emissions, and developing renewable energy alternatives. Although critical to solving the climate crisis, these solutions are often devised in isolation, without taking into account the economic and political ecosystems.

By considering the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and economic systems, all organisations—and not just the ones working on climate—can identify areas where they can make meaningful changes to mitigate the effects of climate change and contribute to sustainability efforts.

Smarinita Shetty contributed to this article.

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Know more

• Read this blog on how systems thinking can help achieve food security in India.
• Read this article on why the social sector needs a system for systems thinking.

Do more

• Explore the En-Roads simulator, which demonstrates the long-term effects of the global climate policies by allowing users to test alternate scenarios.

However, funding cycles and pre-decided programmes often influence what nonprofits can focus on. This has led to a series of ‘copy–paste’ programmes across vastly different geographies, which has also restricted the creation of a truly long-term vision.

As a result, we aren’t seeing enough innovation in how nonprofits are run, especially as they grow in terms of budgets and people.

Why do nonprofits stop innovating after a point?

Most nonprofits are born in response to a gap left by the government in serving its citizens, whether it is undelivered services, overlooked communities, unfulfilled rights, and so on. Therefore, when they start a programme or an initiative, they are innovators by default. The challenge arises once they start becoming entrenched in the way they work, which makes them no different from how businesses operate.

Compounding the lack of continuous innovation are additional factors including the following:

First responders in times of crisis: During disasters such as floods, droughts, earthquakes, or pandemics, the country looks to nonprofits to be first responders. In such scenarios, nonprofits often must balance these immediate emergency responses alongside their regular work that focuses on long-term solutions around education, health, livelihoods, gender, or justice for their communities. Additionally, the nature of many social issues entails that organisations may need to tackle new challenges even as they work to address existing ones.

Lack of sufficient resources: To reimagine systems as vast as education or health, for instance, is no small task. Given the magnitude and complexity of these problems, the sector can prove to be resistant to trying anything new or different, especially if they already have a model that ‘works’. Also, those attempting to innovate might be met with a sea of naysayers discouraging a novel, untested approach that is likely to require additional support, skills, and talent in an already resource-constrained ecosystem. 

The ’almost-zero’ availability of means to explore new ideas or even fail has been a primary reason for the lack of experimentation within programmes. 

A focus on standardisation and replication: Over the years, the development sector has expanded as an industry, and several allied systems to support nonprofit work—including CSR, government funding, and capacity-building programmes—have been created. Even as these systems have helped make development work easier, they have templatised the sector and forced it to stay within a box, one which has little to no space for innovation experimentation and failure.

This has led to a repetitive implementation of the same solutions year after year, which has led to changes being affected in terms of logistical efficiency or scale alone. Many corporate funders want programmes to be replicated across geographies; there is little or no emphasis or support for changes in programme design or customisation. As a result, nonprofits seldom see projects or programmes as seedlings that must grow. Much of the critical thinking usually stops at defining the problem and does not always continue into revising and redesigning the solutions. 

Despite these constraints, however, it is important that we find the most effective solutions to the multifaceted issues that the sector is attempting to solve. For this to happen, nonprofits will need to embrace a culture of experimentation and explore solutions that may not be immediately apparent.

How can nonprofits incorporate innovation in their work?

In 2016, we founded Project DEFY in an attempt to reimagine the education system and develop alternatives to mainstream learning. We saw that most organisations working in education focus almost entirely on schools or the after-school segment. The educators we spoke to also acknowledged that despite decades of work in improving learning outcomes, little has changed owing to traditional schooling practices. And while many of them realise the need for a fresh approach to education, most— fearing the risk of failure—choose to remain within the mainstream school system. 

At DEFY, our idea was to look beyond schools entirely. We wanted to create spaces where young people and community members at large could decide what they wanted to learn and how they wanted to do it. In our attempt to do so, we set up community learning centres, which we call ‘Nooks’. These are spaces for self-learning where neither teachers nor examinations are present, and where learners set their own goals and work on projects of their choosing. 

Based on the work that we’ve done to date, nonprofits and state governments have approached us to inject innovation into their programmes. Here are some lessons we learned that can help organisations incorporate an innovation lens into their work:

1. Ask questions constantly

We believe that innovations must be continuously questioned. This is easier at the beginning of an organisation’s journey since it is natural for new ideas to face scrutiny. But it is also important for established nonprofits to integrate this into their processes in order to arrive at the best possible solution for the issue they are trying to address. Organisations must embrace the fact that while the solution they’ve devised may be the best one given their vision and the resources available to them, it may not necessarily be perfect.

For instance, when we started out, we wanted to discover the most intelligent solution to the problem, which in our case was finding an alternative to classroom learning. Thus, we ended up creating Nooks. But we thought of the first Nook that we created as the first version of the solution and not the solution. In fact, we still do not see any single thing as the ultimate solution, but as something that needs to be continuously improved on and evolve.

Therefore, in the process of charting the path from the first Nook to the second one, to now, we’ve continuously questioned our ideas, collected feedback from the people we serve, found loopholes, and made space for discussions to ensure we keep innovating to find a better solution.

2. Build the right team

In order to develop innovative solutions, nonprofits must build teams that can question and design. Designing involves a process of problem-solving which starts by questioning or observing. Whether it is a new social problem or an existing one where a solution has already been implemented, organisations must come up with responses tailored to specific problems and needs. Otherwise, they may be confined to looking for ready-made solutions used by others.

The design process must be a continuous part of the organisation’s day-to-day work, where the aim is improving on established solutions or creating fresh ones that cater to newly observed needs. This would entail hiring people who have the ability to identify problems and gaps as well as the courage to approach these.      

In our early days at DEFY, rather than hiring for a specific skill set, we chose to hire those who deeply cared about the problem we were trying to solve. We believed that if we hired people who were passionate about solving the problem, they would continuously experiment, iterate, and find different ways to solve the issue at hand.

3. Focus on organisational culture

In order to build a culture of innovation in nonprofits—one that nurtures inquisitiveness and passion—founders and senior management must create space for dialogue that enables all employees to freely share their questions and ideas.

A large part of culture building is in the way decisions are made. At DEFY, there is no hierarchy of the sort where your position—as opposed to the merit of your argument—makes you right. The team is encouraged to reflect on decisions and provide critical feedback. They are also offered opportunities to bring about changes in our routines and interactions and co-create new practices and policies that further our mission as opposed to leaving this to the leadership alone. For example, team members at DEFY collectively designed a policy to identify and learn from setbacks. This also led to the team identifying an urgent need to create and document standard operating procedures (SOPs) within the organisation.

We also follow adhere to the principle of implicit trust, where we trust team members from the outset, rather than requiring them to earn it.

4. Create a core team of innovators

For organisations with large teams, integrating innovation as a practice into their operations might prove to be more challenging. One way to overcome this is by creating a sandbox environment within the organisation. This entails building a small team that is bound by neither the usual DNA of the organisation nor by the rules that the other employees must follow.

This team should preferably include the founder if they are still a part of daily operations, and up to six other employees, some of whom need to be well versed in building on ideas from scratch. The only mandate for this team would be to observe, respond to ideas and solutions, and experiment in the process. They should be separate from the organisational hierarchy and not tied to ongoing projects. They will also need sufficient resources that allow them to test out new ideas within a set budget. Having a budget is important because if the experiment itself is very expensive then it is less likely to translate into a viable solution.

5. Scale strategically

Nonprofits rarely have a dedicated research and development (R&D) team; they usually operate with large programme or project teams, which are involved only in execution. So, even if a nonprofit has substantial annual budgets and a large number of employees, they must analyse what these growing numbers imply. Organisations must question the direction of this growth and check whether they have a significant proportion of people who are ideating, versus everyone executing pre-determined solutions.

For us at DEFY, scaling the concept of Nooks has meant the decentralisation of people, resources, and money, becoming flexible about the execution of our ideas, allowing for changes and contextualisation, and choosing smaller organisations as our partners initially as opposed to large ones.

We have also intentionally kept our core team small. So, while we have 95 people who work on Nooks and other ideas produced by Project DEFY, only 17 directly work within the organisation. This allows us to have a flexible team that can respond to changes in design or create and try out new iterations quickly, while ensuring that our idea continues to evolve with different partners in different contexts.      

6. Embrace failure

Failure is not something to move past but to consciously seek. This is not to say that organisations must aim to fail. However, they must not be afraid of trying things that have a high chance of failure because one must take risks to push boundaries.

Technology or science labs, for instance, go through decades of failed experiments before discovering something groundbreaking. During this process, they document their failures through research papers because the scientific community recognizes that even failures can be knowledge tools. On the other hand, the development sector often shies away from talking about failure openly. It is important to learn from failures—one’s own and those of others—and as a sector, we must acknowledge failures as crucial pieces of information that must be shared and discussed.

While these suggestions can help nonprofits to start thinking innovatively, philanthropic support is crucial for them to put this into practice. Funders must support ideas that may seem high-risk, and they must offer core grants instead of project-based ones to enable organisations to build the innovation muscle within their teams. To understand the decision-making process in the organisations they support, they must seek different kinds of reports and not just metrics that capture success. And most importantly, funders must act as partners in change, versus being either passive supporters or demanding clients.

Is this possible for India’s development sector? I believe so. With the birth of a few unrestricted grants and incubation and accelerator programmes for nonprofits, there are positive movements in this direction. But these are small steps, and there is still a long way to go and much bigger risks to take.

—

Know more

• Listen to Project DEFY’s podcast on reimagining modern education.
• Read this article to learn more about design thinking for social innovation.
• Read this article on the challenges of balancing out scalability with innovation.

A health survey conducted by McKinsey Health Institute in 2023 found that Indians had the highest rate of burnout symptoms (59 percent) from a surveyed pool of more than 30,000 workers across 30 countries. The global average was 22 percent. The statistics for India were telling: Indians reported the highest levels of exhaustion (62 percent), cognitive impairment (67 percent), emotional impairment (58 percent), and mental distance (59 percent).

Burnout does no one good, and if we want to eliminate the word from our work vocabulary, we may need to give that other word—sabbatical—more play. A sabbatical denotes paid or unpaid leave for a period, from a few weeks to several months.

The need for sabbaticals is especially important in the development sector where resources are perpetually stretched. Leaders feel the pressure more keenly as they often bear the weight of the organisation. When they burn out, it isn’t the organisation alone that caves in; the people they serve are also adversely affected. And yet, social sector leaders find it difficult to step away from their responsibilities and take a sabbatical.

Vishal Talreja knows this well. The co-founder and trustee of Dream a Dream grappled with burnout and was compelled to take sabbaticals to deal with it. Discovering first-hand the life-changing benefits of extended time off, and alert to the reasons that keep people from it, he designed The Cocoon Initiative—a programme that funds sabbaticals in the social sector. The initiative, which is supported by the Chintu Gudiya Foundation, offers financial assistance to leaders so they can take a minimum of three months off work. Time away is expected to help them reflect on their mission and return to work with renewed stamina and purpose.

In this interview, Vishal and Donald Lobo, executive director of the Chintu Gudiya Foundation, talk to Smarinita Shetty and Joeanna Rebello Fernandes about the value sabbaticals can bring to the social sector; why more funders should put their weight behind the policy; and what organisations can do to bridge policy and practice.

Why are sabbaticals important?

Vishal: I have two perspectives on this. The first is from my own experience as a social entrepreneur and leader. For the first 10 years of running Dream a Dream, I didn’t believe I would ever get exhausted or burned out. But then I did. A day came when I just didn’t want to go to work. I packed a few clothes, got into a bus and, eight hours later, landed in Coorg. I switched my phone off, slept, and went on long walks, all the while seeking answers to the question: Why did I not want to go to work?

In the nonprofit world, especially in India, the pace of work only keeps increasing.

Many entrepreneurs are feeling burdened quicker and reaching burnout faster.

In the pursuit of creating transformative change in the lives of young people, I had run myself aground physically, mentally, and emotionally. Time away from work helped me see the blind spots in my leadership; the way I was building the organisation, its culture, systems, and processes; and the way I was showing up for my team. This week-long self-enforced break and the subsequent year-long investment in honest self-reflection led to a fundamental shift in my approach to work and leadership.

This is the power of a sabbatical. It helped me rebuild the organisation into the high-impact, thriving nonprofit it is today. But it wouldn’t have happened had I not been forced to take that break. Stepping away gives you a different lens on the work, the organisation, and your own leadership style.

My second perspective has been framed by entrepreneurs I have met and mentored. The regulatory and governance environment in India has become very difficult for nonprofits over the last decade. At the same time, there has been a big push towards new ideas, innovations, and scaling big and fast. Many entrepreneurs are feeling burdened quicker and reaching burnout faster. But their organisations lack the support systems to bolster them; they recognise that they need to take time off and rest and recalibrate, yet they’re unable to do it because the organisation has not reached a level of stability to allow them to take that kind of break.

Donald: The importance of long breaks from work has been established for a while. It’s common for tech companies to give employees a paid sabbatical of three to six months after they’ve worked for five to seven years. In the nonprofit world, especially in India, the pace of work only keeps increasing. I’ve seen leaders struggling with it, but neither they nor their organisations had the capacity or the structure to allow them to take a break. In the few cases that people did take one, they also took a financial hit. So, getting funders to promote sabbaticals is also one of the key objectives of The Cocoon Initiative.

How can leaders identify and deal with early signs of burnout?

Vishal: Ideally, we shouldn’t reach the stage of burnout at all; that’s too late already. A sabbatical is something leaders should look forward to, rather than something they’re forced to take because they’re burned out. It should be an intentional, conscious break they take every few years to thrive, flourish, recalibrate, and rest.

Having said that, we don’t have the systems and mechanisms to support sabbaticals yet. I’ve taken three sabbaticals over 23 years. I was forced to take two of those because I fell extremely ill. My body reacted to the exhaustion and burnout. I had gut issues; I was dealing with depression. When your body starts responding adversely, that’s a clear sign you need a break.

I also took a sabbatical when I sensed I needed to play a different role in the organisation. I had done what I could as a leader, but if I had to leapfrog to the next level of personal and professional growth, I had to do something fundamentally different, either by upskilling or adopting a very different lens to the work and my approach to leadership. It was this realisation that pushed me to take the sabbatical.

You could also be driven to it when you realise you don’t find joy or purpose in your work anymore. Planned sabbaticals can give us the time and space for authentic reflections.

Donald: Once you burn out, the recovery period is much longer. We should instead treat sabbaticals as part and parcel of life. But people aren’t even taking enough holidays. I think the board and senior leadership should nudge people to take breaks on a continuous basis, rather than just when they’re burned out.

What support systems are needed to encourage sabbaticals, both within the organisation and in the larger social sector ecosystem?

Donald: A positive culture of approval should be built around breaks and vacations. Such a culture would also strengthen the organisation by creating a system where other people can step in and take the organisation forward when the leader takes a break. However, this is hard to achieve without the help of a funding ecosystem.

With initiatives like Cocoon, we’re saying here’s something to get it started, and hopefully, over time, more and more funders—perhaps even your existing funders—can help you establish a sabbatical policy. Ultimately, provisions like this should fall within a normal funding cycle. It should be part of your regular HR policy and organisation budget. You shouldn’t need a third funder. Programmes like ours should not exist forever. 

Vishal: From my own experience, in the early years of this work, there was a lot of guilt attached to taking a break, even a weekend off. This is due, in part, to the social and cultural norms in India, where we are constantly told we need to work hard because hard work will pay off in the long run. We are told to keep busy, so we won’t be depressed; to keep our minds occupied, because having free time is wrong.

The lack of financial stability that many leaders at the grassroots struggle with impacts their ability to take a break.

Now, that was probably true for a different generation. But in the fast-paced and complex world we live and work in today, hard work doesn’t necessarily lead to thriving; it could potentially lead to burnout and mental health challenges. It took me a while to understand this. There were months when I felt stuck at work, but I told myself, “Just keep doing the work, and you’ll get out of this phase. It’s just a phase.”

At the organisation level, as Lobo said, policies and budgets that can contribute to a culture of rest and rejuvenation are absent. And funders don’t necessarily take that approach to investment in leadership.

When I took my sabbaticals, I didn’t get a salary from the organisation. This meant that I didn’t have the funds to take care of a lot of my personal expenses. And I couldn’t support my parents with some of their expenses or medical emergencies. Our salaries are not high, and many of us do not have the savings to take care of anything unexpected that crops up. The lack of financial stability that many leaders at the grassroots struggle with impacts their ability to take a break, and they continue to function month on month because that monthly salary is critical for them.

What also holds leaders back from taking sabbaticals is the lack of second-line leadership. If there’s no one to take over in the leader’s absence, or if the organisation does not have the systems and processes needed to run the organisation and handle crises, the leader will keep getting pulled back to tackle urgent issues, and even mundane ones like sharing OTPs. All this brings the leader back into the organisation when what they need is a clean break.

The third problem is, in India, governance boards are typically advisory boards. This means they’re there to support the leader or the entrepreneur, but they don’t necessarily know what to do if the entrepreneur is not around. So, again, we need to build the leadership capacity of the board to take care of the organisation in the leader’s absence.  

How do you put these support systems in place?

Donald: Most organisations won’t get it right the first time around, or even the second or third time, but their approach could be, “OK, this person is going to be away for the next three months; let’s make sure that we can continue at 80 percent capacity and have systems in place so that we’re not compelled to get in touch with them. Setting up processes and improving systems to make this happen will build much stronger organisations.

How can organisations bridge the gap between policy and practice to enable employees to take breaks?

Vishal: At Dream a Dream, we had a policy called Learning Leave where any team member could take 10 days off every year and do whatever they wanted—a no-agenda leave. We realised that only approximately 25 percent of the team was availing it. This led us to wonder if there was something in our culture that was preventing people from taking this leave. One reason was the guilt attached to taking leave for personal growth, which comes from social conditioning. The second was that even though people wanted to take leave, they were worried that managers or team members might not appreciate it.

We had to work with our team for a couple of years to make the shift from eyebrow-raising to celebrating when someone takes a break. This meant that we, at the leadership level, had to role-model it and start taking that leave ourselves. Simply having a policy on paper does not help; it needs to be built into the culture of the organisation.

How can funders help?  

Vishal: Funders can proactively allocate funds for sabbaticals. If you’ve been funding an organisation for three to five years and have built a great relationship with the leaders and the team, why not extend an additional fund to help them create a sabbatical policy? In an ideal scenario, 5–7 percent of a funder’s allocation should go towards the team’s well-being, which could include sabbaticals.

Donald: What I tell nonprofits is, when you are given unrestricted funds, use them to invest in people, to make them happier at work, to increase salaries and benefits. Funders need to explicitly tell their grantees to spend 10–20 percent on their people, and paid sabbaticals and breaks could be a part of their allocation. We don’t do a very good job at that in the sector. That’s what our pitch to funders should be—give the nonprofit the flexibility to invest in what would make their workplace more fun and a lot safer and allow employees to experiment and learn for themselves. 

What will it take to convince funders to come on board this initiative and, over time, build sabbaticals into their normal funding cycles?

Vishal: My sense is, it’s too early to start talking to other funders. We need to have a few stories out there of senior leaders who have taken sabbaticals and been impacted by them. We can then use that to go to other funders and say, this is the kind of impact it can have on the leader and on the organisation and its work, so it makes good business sense to invest in the well-being of the senior leadership. It means that they can come back with more growth, ideas, and innovations and create a bigger impact. We’ll have to show that connection.

We’re not going to be able to change everyone’s minds immediately.

We don’t want The Cocoon Initiative to exist in perpetuity. What we’re hoping is that organisations themselves will start seeing the impact of this and put policies in place, and then ask their funders to invest in it. The initiative will give them the evidence and stories to help them talk to funders.

Donald: We’re not going to be able to change everyone’s minds immediately. There’ll always be the early adopters, the midterm adopters, and the large percentage who will come on board slowly. In addition to demonstrating how useful this is, we must also talk about it extensively with other funders.  

What kind of impact would you like to see this initiative have on the sector five years from now?  

Vishal: For me, it’s about creating an attitudinal shift in the sector. It’s about moving away from the mindset of scarcity—of guilt about investing in yourself and having to sacrifice and work till your last breath to create change—and towards a mindset of abundance. The work we’re trying to do in the sector is complex; we’re dealing with very difficult issues, and we witness more failure than success. So, it’s important that we operate from a space of abundance and celebrate the breaks along the way. One of the things social sector leaders struggle with is, as soon as we climb a summit, we’re looking at the next summit. We don’t pause to acknowledge past victories. We should celebrate milestones, celebrate rest, because it’s a necessary step to be able to do better.  

Donald: Even if we have 10–20 nonprofits instituting these policies, encouraging people to take time off, and investing in people much more than what we are doing today, and if we have three to five large funders supporting those nonprofits, that would be success to me. Having the sector take care of its own people proactively is essential, because you want them to recharge long before they come anywhere close to burnout, and in a way that’s financially, morally, ethically, and culturally acceptable to everyone.

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• Dive into this series for a panoramic perspective on the impact of well-being on social change work.
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It is the development sector that shoulders much of this work, raising and routing funds and human resources for the range of simmering problems the sector attempts to solve. But nonprofit resources are often limited and bound by red tape. India’s social sector has fewer than 10 lakh civil society organisations (CSOs), and only 11–12 percent of these are active (according to the Between Binaries report published last year by Centre for Social and Economic Progress). This means there is one active CSO for 11,000–12,000 people. In the poorest districts, this ratio could plummet to one organisation for a population of 25,000–50,000.

To make matters worse, the funding crunch that the sector is witnessing on account of legislative changes in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) has resulted in staff downsizing and even closure, with hard-hitting consequences on service delivery. In light of these constraints, can nonprofits in India find alternate ways to sustain their programmes? Can a committed volunteer base help keep the engine running?

Where do volunteers fit in

While volunteers cannot replace trained social sector workers nor replicate their skills developed over years on the field, they can contribute significantly—and often in unexpected ways—to a nonprofit. But nonprofits don’t always see it this way. They fail to engage volunteers meaningfully in their work, or for an appreciable length of time, and this stems from a lack of vision for the role a volunteer can play in an organisation.

Nonprofits often look at volunteers as only a provisional resource for menial tasks such as helping with an event or conducting a survey—a stopgap that can be easily replaced with someone else. Sometimes, volunteers are not valued enough for their efforts or are treated discourteously. Disappointed, they may choose not to volunteer with the organisation again, costing the organisation an opportunity to build an army of allies for the long term (a devoted volunteer may later bring their family and friends along too).

Volunteer engagement requires dedicated effort, creative thinking, fierce networking, and strategic planning.

Some nonprofits, such as those involved in anti-trafficking operations or juvenile rehabilitation, undertake highly specialised and sometimes risky work that demands specific skills and long-term commitment. These organisations need volunteers too, but fear that inconsistency or complacency on the part of the volunteer could endanger the work. For example, an anti-trafficking nonprofit might need someone (who is unfamiliar with trafficking and policing and unknown to the sector’s circles) to act as a decoy customer to bait a trafficker—an assignment that would require long and rigorous training. Nonprofits often don’t know where to find volunteers for these missions.

In our experience, nonprofits haven’t yet discovered the true value a volunteer can bring to the table. Volunteer engagement requires dedicated effort, creative thinking, fierce networking, and strategic planning. It was to bring these resources to the table and connect nonprofits to volunteers in new and sustainable ways that The Movement India was set up in 2017. We are a platform that deploys citizens in volunteering opportunities in three social sectors: education, mental health, and anti-human trafficking. Our aim is to help nonprofits meet their short- and long-term goals and enable volunteers to find a sense of purpose through enriching experiences.

Here are some of the techniques and approaches we have adopted.

1. Engage volunteers affiliated with existing volunteer bodies

Nonprofits looking for volunteers can consider the National Service Scheme (NSS), a central sector scheme that enables school, college, and university students to participate in community service. Each student member is awarded a certificate on completion of 120 hours of service a year. Approximately 10–30 of these hours can be reserved for nonprofit work; the rest are earmarked for central and state-level social initiatives.

At present, 39 lakh students are enrolled in NSS units across the country. This is a substantial pool of human resources that nonprofits can tap. Working with CSOs also allows students to engage in varied and exciting projects, apart from the mandated beach clean-ups and tree-plantation drives. When young volunteers are co-opted into activities that excite them, volunteerism becomes more than just a certificate-centric task; it cultivates a sense of purpose and fosters social consciousness. These objectives also align with the spirit of the NSS, which aims to raise legions of socially responsible citizens in the country.

Volunteers can be found within large residential societies, schools, clubs like the Rotary, the National Cadet Corps, and religious institutions too. Nonprofits simply have to reach out to them. They can alternatively turn to volunteer aggregation platforms such as The Movement India, Chezuba, Goodera, ConnectFor, and ThoseinNeed that draw on these very resources, saving nonprofits the trouble of approaching volunteers directly and negotiating volunteering terms with them.  

2. Craft a strong pitch

In 2018—around the time Kerala was witnessing widespread floods—our team was out recruiting volunteers at St Andrew’s college in Mumbai. The principal told us it was going to be a hard sell. “I don’t think anyone is going to be interested; they’re already busy with classwork and internships,” she warned us. We often encounter such reluctance, and the way to overcome it is to build a strong pitch for our cause. 

One thing that organisations can do is convince citizens about the cause more compellingly. 

And so, we started our conversation with the students with a simple question: What’s everybody talking about these days? “The Kerala floods,” they shouted. We then asked them, “How many people have been affected by the floods?” They all made their guesses. Approximately 1 million, we confirmed. We prodded further, “Do you know of a problem that is eight times bigger, but that no one talks about?” This immediately grabbed their attention. They all wanted to know what the problem was. We said if they were keen to learn about it, they should sign up for the seminar we were going to conduct in their college. Three times the expected number of students turned up. The subject we were referring to was human trafficking in India. Getting people’s attention is half the work.

St Andrew’s college is now one of our top volunteer bases. We have even been invited to pitch volunteering as a mental well-being exercise during the induction and orientation of new batches there, and at other colleges such as Mithibai in Mumbai.

Nonprofits looking to build support for a campaign or a cause are often met with pushback and told, “People don’t care; what are you going to do about it?” One thing that organisations can do is convince citizens about the cause more compellingly. 

Unfortunately, many nonprofits struggle to articulate their value proposition, or sometimes the problem itself. Here value proposition refers to highlighting the value in what a nonprofit does and why citizens should care about it. For example, the value proposition of an educational nonprofit is more impactful when worded as, “We free children from exploitation by engaging them in education,” rather than just stating that they provide education for children in slum communities.

Nonprofits also find it hard to tell volunteers what is happening on the ground and what is expected of them. Volunteers need to hear compelling appeals such as “Help us get a child to school this summer. Join the Mission Admission squad!” or “Every form you fill today has the potential to change the future of a child, forever.” The ‘ask’ must be clear and specific.

Good communication is especially indispensable when it comes to causes that people hesitate to volunteer for. We once tried to schedule a volunteering session for corporate employees at a juvenile home, but many shied away from it because they were reluctant to engage with those who were in conflict with the law. In such cases, familiarising volunteers with the context of the mission, destigmatising the place, and assuring them of the safety protocols in place can help.

3. Make it easy for volunteers to serve

Many people want to lend their skills to a worthy cause, but not everyone has the time or resources for a big commitment. So, volunteering should be made as flexible and practical as possible. Enable people to volunteer from their homes, for perhaps a few hours a week or month, and refrain from asking for a long commitment upfront.

All organisations have a list of tasks that can be easily performed at home. For example, volunteers can create teaching material and record stories for children on their phones or laptops. They can be roped in for fundraising and to make slide decks, create jingles, run data analytics, write proposals (not every nonprofit has a good proposal writing or fundraising team), or design motifs for nonprofit products—all from the comfort of their own homes. Making it convenient for people to contribute their time and skills is one way to have more of volunteering. Just like tech platforms have benefitted retail giving, technology can be utilised to strengthen volunteering.

Nonprofits can tap additional services this way and build capacity without having to stretch their scant resources. A nonprofit that works with women’s self-help groups can market their products on social media without having to hire a social media marketer. Fashion design students can contribute designs to a small-scale tailoring unit run by vulnerable women.

There’s a lot that can be done even without pressing specialised skills into service. During the pandemic, for example, we had volunteers on phone duty, calling up former prisoners and women rescued from sex trafficking to check on them and remind them of COVID-19 protocols. A simple gesture like this not only helped spread awareness but also made those receiving these calls feel special and valued.

4. Engage with corporate employees

Not every nonprofit can access CSR funds. They may fall short of the company’s criteria for grants, or their proposals may fail to impress corporate decision-makers. Yet, if not money, companies can volunteer the skills and talents of their employees through CSO outreach programmes. They can conduct business skills training for women in skill development programmes, manage large-scale events, conduct online spoken English or content creation classes, or help job candidates polish their interview skills.

All it takes is one employee to convince their teammates to pitch in for a worthy cause.

We once brought a corporate team to a home for survivors of human trafficking. After the employees interacted with the children, we urged them to help raise the visibility of the organisation on LinkedIn by following their page and interacting with their posts, a simple action that would be noticed by their social media contacts. This would help the shelter’s own network grow and improve the likelihood of receiving funding in the long run. 

Sometimes, corporate volunteers can help raise funds for the nonprofits themselves, outside their company’s CSR remit. Their familiarity with the nonprofit and its work may even lead employees to recommend the organisation for future funding through formal CSR channels.

When seeking corporate volunteers, CSOs could also consider approaching individual departments within a company if they haven’t had success with the formal CSR route. We’ve experienced that in large organisations, such as Tata Consultancy Services, teams have enough autonomy to take on their own social impact projects; these decisions don’t always sit with higher-ups. Nonprofits could explore opportunities with employees directly. All it takes is one employee to convince their teammates to pitch in for a worthy cause.

5. Set up opportunities for self-reflection

At the end of every volunteering assignment, we ask our volunteers two simple questions: “What did you do?” and “What did you really do?” The first question draws a prompt response, where they recount the tasks they performed as volunteers. A person might say they visited a low-income community and surveyed 15 families. When asked the second question, they start to reflect on what they ‘really’ did. They then begin to appreciate the deeper implications of that action: “I didn’t just conduct a survey, I helped bridge a child’s access to education.”

When volunteers are made to see their role as transformative, it kindles a deeper commitment with the cause and drives them to prolong their engagement with the organisation. The simple truth is, volunteering is as much about helping others as it is about being able to appreciate our skills and talents in a new light and value ourselves in a new way.

The simple truth is, volunteering is as much about helping others as it is about valuing ourselves in a new way. It creates room for us to appreciate our skills and talents in a new light.

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Know more

• Read this article to learn about emerging trends and approaches in volunteering.
• Read this article to learn more about skill-based volunteering.

Do more

Connect with The Movement India at hello@themovementindia.com to design a volunteer engagement programme for your organisation.