Taniya D’Silva & Swechha Sikaria

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Research by The Bridgespan Group highlighted that one of the key issues nonprofit boards and CEOs face is succession planning. The turnover rate at senior levels for nonprofits, the study highlighted, is huge. The top reason for this turnover? Low pay. More than half (57%) of survey respondents said that low compensation was at least a partial factor in the difficulty of retaining senior staff.

There are certainly other factors driving staff turnover in the nonprofit world, but compensation as a factor looms large. A recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article, “Low Pay is Driving Workers Away,” highlights the issue as a problem at all levels of nonprofit employment.

In a recent study that India Leaders for the Social Sector (ILSS) undertook with Indian social purpose organization leaders, many echoed the sentiment that retention of employees was a high-ranking concern within their institutions. On digging deeper, organization leaders shared that funding limitations adversely affected the organization’s ability to attract, retain and meet the talent’s changing needs and expectations with increased salaries and bonuses.

The same study also had us interact with leaders who had been able to retain their high-performing employees for many years. These were employees who had grown with the organization since inception and now held critical positions despite fairly modest pay scales. What enables these organization leaders to hold onto their employees over the long-term despite funding constraints and limited incentives such as bonuses, ESOPs to fuel employee motivation? We had Indian social purpose organization leaders share insights. But first…

What is the challenge underscoring the salary-retention paradigm?

While there is recognition amongst most organizations that their long-term success resides in its people, attempts towards improving employee retention are often reactionary. In the development sector, where working towards a mission is considered a reward in itself, and lower salaries are the norm, engaging employees in charting out learning and growth opportunities as they advance in their careers is often neglected. Another reason for the reactionary approach towards employee retention is that leaders are too fixated on day-to-day operations and lack the bandwidth to focus on more strategic organization-building priorities and investments in employee engagement.

On the other hand, most people within the sector find themselves deeply aligned to the mission of creating a better world and often take pay cuts to work in it. However, in spite of the high mission alignment, organization leaders expressed that talent retention continues to be a challenge within their organizations that they don’t know how to solve for, despite their best efforts.

Employee turnover is an expensive proposition. The costs to replace an employee are estimated by Gallup to be 150% of an employee’s annual salary and benefit not to mention the intangible costs around lowered overall employee morale and decreased productivity. In the nonprofit sector, Dasra’s ‘Talent First’ report highlights that inability to offer higher compensation contributed to significantly high attrition rates within organisations. However, compensation itself does not determine rates of employee retention within organisations. Deloitte’s Talent Survey 2020 discovered that employee retention was also significantly influenced by non-financial elements such as: trust in the leadership to execute on the outlined strategy and being engaged with meaningful work. Additionally, benefits such as flexible work arrangements and strong growth opportunities determine whether they choose to stay with their employers. This is especially true for post-pandemic recruitment as we see employees opting for employers who offer these benefits. 

Our research underlined the following key challenges that organization leaders were struggling with vis-a-vis employee engagement and retention:

• Lack of funding to reward employees: Lack of unrestricted funding strains a nonprofit’s ability to invest in talent through budgets for increments or exposure to opportunities. 
• A dearth of learning and development opportunities for employees: With below-market salaries an accepted norm at nonprofits, professional development substitutes as a major opportunity to both enhance and recognize performance. Therefore, the dearth of training and education opportunities is a major impediment to morale, productivity, and retention.
• Lack of talent retention strategies that account for employee diversity: Nonprofits have a unique blend of employees that hail from various backgrounds. With the lack of people management teams and limited bandwidth of founder/leaders, development of talent strategies to retain the various types of employees within the organization is often sidelined.
• Maintaining motivation through remote working conditions: The pandemic brought to light the challenge of transitioning to remote working conditions and the ensuing changes in employee productivity whilst being mindful of the physical and emotional toll that the pandemic wrecked on people.

What are nonprofit leaders that have better employee retention doing right?

While there exists great mission alignment and a vocation that employees often feel motivated to go above and beyond for, it is necessary to keep in mind that nonprofit employees too have bills to pay, aspirations for their own lives, and seek to grow and achieve higher levels of self-actualization through their jobs. In that sense, it is necessary to understand that these jobs are also a source of livelihood for those who work in it. The development sector loses talented people often because it is mired in the mentality of scrappiness that undervalues and underinvests in the same people who further the cause of justice and social equity: the works who do the work every day.

Understandably, the reasons for the chronic underfunding are myriad and complex stemming from the preference that overheads involving infrastructure building and people-related investments are minimized (more about raising funding for people development in a subsequent article in this series). And being realistic, the expectation is not that the nonprofit sector can compete with the corporate sector in terms of pay overnight (although one might argue as to why not?).

However, knowing that the evangelization of the funder towards recognizing the importance of investing in talent might take a while, what some nonprofit leaders and funders are largely getting right is the recognition that while the salary they offer might not be at par with what the employees deserve to be paid for their contributions, they do not also expect their employees to be martyrs. A recognition that their motivation to the cause is a highly valuable resource that must be nurtured and kindled by ensuring that their efforts are acknowledged and rewarded, albeit in non-financial means is a critical mindset that enables leaders to proactively think through strategies to retain and engage committed people in their organizations.  

Beyond Compensation

In the study we undertook, with organizations that were able to retain employees long-term, organization leaders shared that they prioritized the following:

• Mission & Culture Reinforcement: Leaders focused on ensuring that the mission, values, and culture of the organization as well as how each employee’s work tied into the larger mission were consistently reinforced right from onboarding through to other employee engagement forums.
• Doubling down on Communication: Leaders ensured that multiple channels of communication were opened at many levels within the organization to understand the strategy, plans, and decisions made by the organization through townhalls, all-hands meetings, Ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions with the leader, ensuring managers effectively tackle questions and concerns raised by their reportees, etc.
• Focus on growth opportunities for employees: Leaders built a practice of ensuring that employee career aspirations were tied and aligned with the roles they pursued within the organization. While some employers were able to provide dedicated L&D budgets for their employees, others chose to enable the growth of their staff through in-house L&D initiatives, opportunities for employees to represent the organization at conferences or lead meetings with bureaucrats and high-ranking officials, and providing employees with autonomy to explore new ideas, lead internal project teams and having executive coaches assigned to them.
• Rewarding performance: Rewarding contributions of employees through not only promotions and increments but also public recognition of performances by managers and incentives such as acknowledgment of efforts in open forums, a trophy or token gift (e.g. book, gift voucher)  helped boost employee motivation.
• Ensuring psychological safety and well-being for team members: Ensuring that the employee can experience psychological safety and well-being within the workplace and has measures to address grievances and issues through regular skip-level meetings, anonymous grievance redressal forums, access to in-house counselors, or an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) service. Additionally, non-financial incentives such as flexible work environments, flexible leaves, and compensatory off policies, etc. help prevent employee burnout that is commonplace within the social sector.

Conclusion

Many employees at nonprofit organizations feel deeply aligned to the missions of their work in the sector and have embraced the idea of opting for non-cushy jobs, non-lucrative salaries, and pay cuts to work in the sector. With this, however, nonprofits face a bind in terms of keeping their employees engaged with limited abilities to fuel motivation through financial incentives. The research study, therefore, highlighted the importance of non-financial factors such as flexibility, growth and development opportunities, healthy work culture, transparent communication, and wholesome employee recognition and feedback mechanisms as means to ensure employees are aligned, engaged, and motivated by their workplaces.

Taniya D’silva and Swechha Sikaria are members of the ILSS Team focused on research and program development around People Practices in the Social Sector. For more information on the research insights, write to us at peoplepractices@indialeadersforsocialsector.com.

The post How to Make the Workplace Enough when Money Isn’t appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

I thought transitioning from an investment banking career to a social entrepreneur was tough enough. But the stakes changed drastically when I decided to join the impact world after running a social enterprise for more than a decade. I was excited to be part of an inspiring mission, and took up the challenge to lead the fundraising efforts for one of the largest collective philanthropic efforts in the country.

But I must admit, fundraising for a nonprofit has been the toughest job I have ever done. As a banker, I would ask clients to part with their money with the promise of great returns. But in the nonprofit world, it can be intimidating to ask people to part with their hard-earned cash. Building and maintaining relationships during a pandemic can be challenging, but with the right strategies, we can create long-lasting bonds.

1. Research, Research, and then… do more Research.

Recently, I gifted one of my donors a painting by an acclaimed folk artist. Knowing he had a keen interest in the History of Art, I bought the painting from a NGO that was supporting this particular diminishing folk tradition. When I shared the NGO’s story with him, he immediately wanted to support their work as well. Doing research and understanding your donors is the first step to build a meaningful relationship. Fortunately, today we have more access to information about our donors than ever.

You need to be able to answer these questions if you want to get to a donor’s heart:

• What kinds of causes or passions do they care about?
• Do they have a history of giving? What other causes have they given to before?
• What are their objections, fears, and concerns about giving?

In other words, understand your donor so well, it’s like you have read their mind.

2. Keep the Ask Simple.

As a rookie banking professional, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given by one of my mentors was: Keep the ask simple. Always link what you want to ask for with a specific goal that can be quantified and shared. And this is not just important for fundraising; it’s about setting specific goals for your organization. And the only way to do it well is practicing your ask with these simple outcomes/goals in mind. For example, building a ‘Gift Tree’, showing how their gift could make an impact is a very effective method. 

3. Build Strong Relationships. Listen and Respond.

My journey as a fundraising professional started early last year. Due to the COVID crisis I could not have any in-person meetings. Suddenly the world of fundraising, which thrived on face-to-face meetings, moved into a virtual space. At this juncture, decades of experience of building strong relationships came to my rescue. I studied what my donors are interested in, and communicated with them regularly. I sent them articles according to their interests and wrote personal notes. As an organization, we would engage them in various activities as advisors, mentors, and advocates.
One of the personal learnings in this exercise has been to listen more. Listening carefully can be a very underrated part of communication skills, especially when it comes to responding to the nuances of donor needs. 

4. Perseverance is Key.

Every fundraising professional has been rejected by donors. I was dejected after hearing a “No” from a CSR Board after months of hard work. But being able to put it aside and not become disillusioned or demotivated was the only way I could move forward. Major gifts require a lot of hard work, tenacity, and determination to pull off. Since it often requires an organization to build a long-term relationships, perseverance is a crucial quality for a fundraising professional.

5. Continue to Show Gratitude.

At our organization, we don’t just thank donors at the time of giving. We find opportunities to show our continuing gratitude. We celebrate their “donorversary” by sending personalized thank you notes. We thank them with a story of how exactly their gift has created an impact, leaving a lasting impression and an emotional connect. One of our donors even shared such a story with his friends, who in turn were motivated to get involved with the cause.

6. Create a Process-Driven Approach.

Having a strategic process goes a long way. It is essential to capture all the information and data in one place, like in an Excel spreadsheet, in CRMs, etc. This has helped us gain insights on prospective donors, communications, and donor engagement strategy. With additional contributions and referrals from donors, this approach has multiplied our returns. On top of it all, a process-driven structure helps to leverage the diverse skillset of a team, maximizing performance.

7. Make it a Collective Effort.

In a nonprofit world, fundraising is a collective effort. Everyone who is connected to the cause, including founders, advisors, and extended team members, can majorly contribute to the fundraising effort. They open doors for you, extend their support, and champion the cause. Aligning their strengths, networks, and passion to the cause is the key to build a strong group of fundraising champions.

8. Commit to the Cause.

After a fundraising pitch, the donor committed his contribution saying, “I can see your passion, and that’s why I feel energized to contribute to the cause.” This was one of the biggest highs for us in the team. When a fundraiser is truly passionate about the organization, it shines through in their work. We don’t convince donors. We help them realize that they already care, and then connect their passion to the cause. Once donors believe that your cause truly matters, giving almost becomes an afterthought. Of course they’ll give!

9. Invest in Yourself.

Even though I had the experience of fundraising in my earlier corporate avatar, the world of the nonprofit was very different. I decided to invest in my learning and signed up for the ILSS Fundraising Program – one of the best decisions I made. It not only helped me to understand the nuances of philanthropic fundraising, but also build my network with some amazing nonprofit leaders who are now close friends and mentors.

Fundraising is a roller coaster ride with its ups and downs (sometimes the downs are more than the ups)! But the everlasting impact it can have on your cause makes it all worthwhile.

The post The Rollercoaster Ride: Fundraising in the Impact World appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

My First Fundraising Experience

I was maybe eight years old and visiting my grandmother in Dehradun along with a gaggle of my other cousins. My uncle (mum’s cousin) lived some distance away, and this one time, my grandmother sent a whole bunch of us kids to give him some kheer she had made – apparently his favourite.

He lived in one of those old Dehradun homes with a long driveway and a garden, with the home set far inside the property. They had a fairly vicious dog at that point – this chap was famous for taking outsized bites out of all visitors’ ankles. So clutching the kheer ka dabba we were at the gate and sort of clanging it hoping to catch the attention of a human while still keeping a metal contraption between us and the vicious dog. My uncle saw us from his verandah, which was set off from the gate by a good 100 metres or so, and not being the most sunny-tempered of people himself, came charging at us with his stick literally chasing us off his gate, shouting and spitting.

We were stupefied; as children you know adults are always mysterious and act so weirdly, but this was something else – I can still remember being gawp-faced watching him tearing down the driveway shaking his stick yelling, “Bhag jao! Hum kisi ke liye chanda nahi dete!” Get lost! We don’t want to donate for ANYTHING!

From the verandah he hadn’t recognized us and thought we were a gaggle of kids raising funds for some neighbourhood do-gooding activity and he was very subtly letting us know that he wasn’t all that keen on participating.

Somewhat unbeknownst to me, that was my first fundraising experience. I must say that in all the years since then, so much has changed. And so much remains exactly the same.

My Weirdest Fundraising Experience

I’ve had so many – in my next life I want to be a fundraiser for whom this never gets weird. But this one time we had gone to meet this person, hoping to be able to get a decent sum from him. I had never met him before, but I was assured by a lot of people who had met him that he was a tough negotiator, and not exactly the straightest arrow. But sometimes if you managed to get all the random ducks that controlled his giving behavior in a row – bingo, you could get lucky.

So we show up and he has this sob story all ready about how he absolutely cannot spare a penny and so on and so forth. Then he says to us, I may not have a cheque for you today, but I do have advice.

(As an aside here, can I say to all you funders and donors out there, that’s the first sentence of the fundraiser’s prayer, i.e., please dear God if the funder does not have a cheque, please may he not then have some advice for us)

But what could we say? We just simpered and said insincerely; of course, we would love to hear it. So he starts off on how we can raise enormous funds if we simply start making paper products that have a demand; not just things like cards etc which no one wants. “Have you thought of calendars?” he says.

“Yes, we do have calendars – with tribal art and children’s drawings and modern Indian art, etc.” I began to chunter.

“Oh no, that’s not the sort of calendars that have a demand!” he cuts me short. “The ones that will really really sell and earn you millions and you will thank me for the idea and I will say I gave it to you free –  is those Kingfisher calendars. Now that – that has demand!” Yes, those Kingfisher calendars, featuring swimsuit models for every month.

I will never ever forget ushering ourselves out of his presence, all the while muttering on repeat the second line in the fundraiser’s prayer, please dear God, if it has to get weird, please can it not get Kingfisher calendar weird?

The post Misadventures in Fundraising appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

As CEO of Apni Shala Foundation, a Mumbai-based nonprofit working to implement programmes for emotional wellbeing in schools, Rohit Kumar was one of several organization founder-leaders to invest in building his fundraising skills through the ILSS Fundraising Program. Some months into the Program, through conversations with peers and pitching the Apni Shala cause to donors, Rohit realized that there was fundamental personal work to be done before these lessons could be truly applied for his organization.

“It is a relatively recent phenomenon that nonprofit leaders are coming from middle and working-class backgrounds,” says Rohit. “While there have been many social workers and activists from very diverse, at times deeply economically challenged backgrounds, the social sector as we know it was mostly started by upper-class families’ efforts to ‘do good’ with their money.”

“There aren’t yet structures in place to address these gaps within the sector itself, and we don’t know how to have those conversations. So, people working in the development sphere usually have to approach asking for funds whilst having a complicated, sometimes painful, relationship with money themselves.”

Rohit reflects on his upbringing in a middle-class North Indian family, which informed some of his own beliefs about money. “Growing up, having money was like having respect. It should be earned, not given to you, let alone asked for. If you don’t have money and have to ask for it, it is considered a personal failure, and becomes a site of trauma. After years working in the social sector, I realized that asking for money, even though I knew I had to do it for my organization, still carried with it the shame, guilt, and other painful associations ingrained into me from my early years.”

Class politics are also, unfortunately, fully at play in the everyday efforts of running a nonprofit and raising funds. Rohit remembers an experience he had meeting a potential donor in Mumbai. After a full day of fieldwork, Rohit made his way to the appointment at the donor’s plush apartment building, and was stopped at the gate. “The security guard thought I was building staff, telling me to use the back service entrance,” Rohit recalls. “After I told him I was a guest of one of the residents, a hesitant phone call was made, and I was let through.”

More than anything, this event highlighted the vast class difference between Rohit and the donor, cementing the social messaging that he was undignified in asking for money, and should be ashamed. “I don’t really care about the misunderstanding… you can think of me however you want. But, I did come up to the donor’s flat with a distinct feeling that I do not belong here.”

“I was in a different bracket of human, based on my class perception. How could I possibly apply concepts of ‘Making a Good Pitch’ and ‘Creating a Strong Organization Narrative’, let alone even being personable, when I am struggling to gather my humanity?”

Rohit knew he was not the only one with these experiences – with deep trauma around money to be unpacked. With this in mind, Rohit organized a session with his organization’s leadership team, where the agenda was just that – talking about how we feel about money. “We started with exploring how our body responds to money. Many of us felt the weight of shame in our stomach, or aching hurt in our chest…” The session led to everyone articulating their insecurities around money, sharing their hurt around it based on their life and experiences.

“It became a space of healing, where we for once could talk freely about this realm of life that is often given very little attention. We opened ourselves, and cried, and held each other in our vulnerability. We also found each other, felt together, and laughed. It helped to be able to name and place our trauma, and have compassion for conflicting experiences, even within the room.”

“Most importantly, it was critical to recognise how social and economic systems induce shame and guilt that we do not have to live with.”

The Apni Shala leadership team decided that the outcomes of creating this space should be first, compassion – for themselves and each other, as well as figures who may have hurt them in the past. Rohit explains that, “even the privileged donor with biases, discriminating against people who do not fit their model of appropriately poor, or conveniently disadvantaged, have their own self-work to do. Their prejudice is a reflection of an inability to fully engage with the world, that must be actively undone. When we understand that, we open up space for dialogue. Narrative Practices, one of the philosophies that Apni Shala’s work is informed by, invites us to consider that people are not the problem, the problem is the problem. No matter where you are in the class ladder, your outlook is informed by the same hierarchical system.”

That’s where the healing begins. “In development work, when we start leaning on and supporting each other, we create opportunities for everyone to heal from systemic pain, creating new possibilities of relating to one another.”

“Those who have privilege also have the responsibility to do this self-work. Hating or dismissing each other is not going to help us in our healing. Luckily, in my work of fundraising in the last few years, I have also met some really thoughtful and self-reflective donors who are engaging with us in this reflective, co-healing journey.”

The team also realized that understanding this hurt and shame affected the way they related to the beneficiaries of their social work. “We asked ourselves how class and money affected the way we relate to our professional roles, and how we relate to the children whose lives we are a part of. Naming our pain, and therefore deeply trusting ourselves as educators, gave us a clearer picture of our impact and work on the ground. As a result, we could now really envision donors as our partners and supporters, which was just an abstract concept before.” Soon after their session, the Apni Shala Foundation held a large event where they invited existing and potential donors, showcasing their vital work with confidence and assurance like never before.

An oft-repeated mantra in the ILSS Fundraising Program reminds fundraisers that, “If you don’t ask, the answer is no.” While undeniable, it is essential we acknowledge that the notion of asking for money itself is incredibly loaded, and potentially fraught. Money, after all, cannot be separated from the context of India’s deep class divides, which inevitably run through the very sector that is working tirelessly to undo them. At the core of these fissures are the very real, lived and felt experiences of the people that make up the social sector – trauma to be healed, and solidarity to be celebrated. Rohit and the Apni Shala team understood that we cannot leave behind the inherent humanness of development work, in all its complexities, as we strive and sweat toward a harmonious world. The journey begins with self-compassion.

The post Healing Our Relationship with Money: Unpacking Funding Systems appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

The waves of the global COVID pandemic – and subsequent lockdown across India – have brought along a period of distress for everyone. The social sector, in particular, has been brought to the frontlines to serve communities in this difficult time. 

With a large portion of the sector’s funding diverted to COVID-related causes, financial support for other causes and interventions started to dry up. Social Purpose Organizations continue to struggle to raise funds for their regular programs. Many have had to downsize their operations – giving up office spaces, rationalizing salaries, and letting go of important staff members. With this squeeze, many development professionals are feeling disillusioned, discouraged, and even tempted to leave the sector altogether.

With the aim to address fundraising as a major pain point – during this crisis and otherwise – and the organization’s overall mission of building leadership and capacity in the sector, ILSS announced the launch of the Fundraising Program in June 2020. The Program, an online learning experience, presented a great opportunity for social sector leaders and professionals to hone their incumbent skillsets in raising money for social causes.

In turn, keeping in mind the dire situation on the ground, and with the hope of retaining talent within the social sector, A.T.E. Chandra Foundation came on board to devise a novel ancillary Scholarship Program. The Scholarship offered employment and course enrolment to motivated, young professionals who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic crisis. The Scholars could build their skillsets in fundraising through the ILSS Fundraising Program, and simultaneously apply their learnings within the development verticals of Placement Organizations for a period of 6 months.

Participating NGOs, in turn, got to experience first-hand the impact and advantage of retaining a fully-trained fundraising professional for their programs. 

After a rigorous selection process, 8 Scholars were identified and mapped to 8 Placement Organizations (POs). Through the next 6 months, the Scholars worked closely with the fundraising heads of the POs, whilst being a part of the ILSS Fundraising Program cohort. To bring their learnings from the classroom to their POs in a more focused manner, Scholars and their supervisors set goals for the duration of their placements. Specific fundraising and personal targets could then be set within a timeline and periodically assessed.

Every month, Scholars would share new learnings with one another, supporting each other’s initiatives and working through challenges as a group. For example, one of the Scholars set up a detailed Business Development Operations Management System at their PO, and was then able to guide two other Scholars with their own retail fundraising processes. Another Scholar shared a structured method to research prospective donors gleaned from their PO. A third demonstrated how they used detailed census social indicators data at the district level to build a case for funding. This cross-pollination of ideas and best practices helped take learned concepts of fundraising to the next level.

By March 2021, the scholars had graduated from the ILSS Fundraising Program and completed their 6-month stints with their respective POs. 

To measure the success of the Scholarship Program, A.T.E. Chandra Foundation and ILSS set up a rigorous set of review criteria. This covered assessments of the Scholar, of the PO, of the overall project management, as well as of the ILSS Fundraising Program.

One of the most critical measures of success for A.T.E. Chandra Foundation, in particular, was that Scholars stay in the sector with full-time employment after the 6-month Program. This depended on several factors including the Scholars’ expectations, and financial feasibility for the PO. Three Scholars were retained by their POs as full-time employees. Two stayed on as part-time resources while also taking on other assignments in line with their own personal career goals. One is starting their own SPO. The remaining two Scholars are exploring employment options outside the sector.

ATECF Scholars Program Highlights, in Retrospect

Changing the Culture Around Fundraising

This Program helped 8 organizations, diverse in domain and size, experience the value of having a full-time fundraising resource. It pushed founders, irrespective of their ability to offer full-time employment to the Scholar, to consider such a resource for the organization. Four of the POs, where fundraising was traditionally managed by the founder, have now decided to invest in a full-time fundraising resource.

Building Capacity of Critical Talent

The Program had a success rate of almost 40% in getting full-time employment to fundraising talent after the 6 months. This is a particularly good value-add keeping in mind that the Program’s intent was to retain critical trained talent in the sector.

A Risky Bet on an Innovation

A.T.E. Chandra Foundation took a leap of faith after seeing scores of valuable people in the sector getting laid off due to lack of funds. The Scholarship Program allowed the Foundation to explore an area of innovation within capacity-building, getting immediate impact and feedback from the ground by funding an experiment.

Scholar Reflections

On Building Confidence: ‘I am confident that I can raise funds for any NGO/ cause.’

‘The scholarship gave me the space to think about what I really wanted to do. I now feel armed for the future.’

On Collaboration: ‘I have learned that communications and fundraising have to go together, and teams must collaborate deeply to create impact’.

On Pursuing Long-Term Learning: ‘Fundraising is a long-drawn process, and one needs to keep at it. That fundraising cannot be separated from deep program knowledge.’

On Networks and Resources: ‘The ecosystem created, and its collective effort will help grow the mindset of giving in India. Strategies for each donor profile, taught by experts, will stay with me for life.’

The post Unusual Times Call for Inventive Measures appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

The meeting was set up by one of my mentors and well-wishers. He said the philanthropist was open to hearing about the work I do. My thoughts were running at a dizzying speed, with a healthy dose of both nervousness and excitement, as though meeting someone for a blind date.

There I was, in the lobby of his swank office.  I had to be on my best behaviour to convince and cajole (or at the very worst scare?) a potential funder into falling madly in love with my cause. He’d immediately write me a large cheque, and then get on the phone to invite all his rich friends to also support the stellar work we were doing. 

Of course, it never goes like that. This was my first ever fundraising meeting. I had never met someone before with the sole purpose of asking for money, and especially not for my own organization. It was awkward and stilted, and I was more nervous than I would have imagined. Simply put, I just wasn’t sure how this conversation was supposed to go. After one is done extolling the virtues of the work, what does one do next?

Money, of course, was the proverbial elephant in the room. Should I be straight up and just ask for funding? If I don’t mention it, surely the philanthropist will wonder why we had the meeting in the first place. He may even think me a fool for not making the move! But if I ask, what should the number be? Asking too little could seem like an insult to him and his time. And asking too much could scare him away or sound entitled. Should I be asking at all in the first meeting?

My questions then evolved into the existential. What is it about asking for money that reduces a normally ebulliently confident go-getter like myself into a dithering preteen? Had I taken the time to articulate what I really wanted from this fateful first date? Isn’t fundraising supposed to be about building a relationship first? And how long does it even take to build purposeful partnerships? What would be most critical to my organization’s success at this stage- did I need his trust and support more, or was his money more essential?

I came away from that meeting with no money, but a kind offer to consider my cause the following year. To be honest, though, it may be a while before I feel prepared to go back to him, mostly because the memory of my stuttering self is so humiliating that I can’t bear to meet again the only other person who witnessed it. 

My biggest learning a year and a half later?

Fundraising begins in your head. It isn’t simply about the great work you are doing, but also your ability to put yourself out there, take rejection on your chin, and learn over time to ‘win friends and influence people’. Dale Carnegie was clearly on to something when he wrote that book. It is equally about your ability to do the research, figure out where you stand, how you can pitch for the context, and – perhaps most of all – build the right partnerships with the right funders who will walk the path with you and champion your work beyond just dipping into their wallets.

Looking back, I realise that fundraising – and the inevitable donor relationship- is a dance that one has to choreograph. Two steps forward, three steps back, cha cha cha. It may take a while to find a rhythm and to fall into step together, but once you’ve synchronised your intent and resources towards a common vision, it can be magic all the way.

The post Of Blind Dates, Fundraising, and Cha-Cha-Cha appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

Pratyush Rawal & Radha Arakkal

Funds are the lifeblood of social-impact organizations. The criticality of fundraising for a non-profit cannot be overstated.

At India Leaders for Social Sector (ILSS), we conducted a detailed study on the development sector fundraising landscape, the main challenges that organizations and social sector leaders face while raising money, and the best practices that some of the most successful fundraising organizations follow.  We interviewed over 70 non-profit leaders, donors, experts, and intermediaries and had over 50 informal conversations for this study.

In the first article of the two-part series, we enumerated the key challenges faced by non-profits while fundraising. In this piece, we discuss the best practices followed by organizations that have been successful at fundraising and have aced the domain.

• They have robust governance systems. From financial reporting to impact assessment, organizations that build strong governance and reporting systems are often the donor’s favourites. Besides helping nonprofits with access to funds, these systems also ensure a strong stewardship model and better relationship management with the donor.
• They have irrefutable evidence of impact. Most donors like to fund projects that are not only sustainable but promise long-lasting outcomes and impact. Successful fundraising organizations present irrefutable evidence of impact through pilot projects or RCTs and inspire confidence among donors.
• Their interventions are simple to understand, technologically driven and scalable/replicable. Despite working in the complex world of human development, organizations successful in fundraising communicate their interventions in the most basic terms, without relying on jargon. Safeena Husain, founder of Educate Girls mentioned in the ILSS Fundraising Program how she practiced her pitch in front of a nine year old child. Such organizations also emphasize the use of data and technology in their interventions, and how their projects are scalable or replicable.
• They have a clear plan for growth. Successful organizations meticulously plan their growth trajectory, both in terms of project expansion and finances. The whole organization- from the leadership to the ground staff- are strongly aligned to these plans.
• They have a diverse funder base. Successful non-profits do not put all their eggs in one basket. The diversity of their donor base ensures sustainability and ability to deal with external shocks.
• They invest in marketing and brand-building. Successful organizations do not shy away from investing in marketing and brand-building. This enables them to build a strong brand and harness the power of retail fundraising and untied funds.
• Finally, successful organizations invest in building fundraising capacity and cultivate a culture of fundraising. These organizations understand the criticality of fundraising. The head of development gets a seat at the high table. Fundraising is not a compartmentalized function, but an activity which the whole organization engages in, and enjoys.

We found out that successful fundraising organizations strongly believe that social change is impossible without successful fundraising. This is an important lesson for all social impact organizations to emulate. These organizations must not only recognize the centrality of fundraising in their work, but also actively invest in recruiting and upskilling fundraising talent. The success of their social missions will closely follow the success of their fundraising efforts.

The post Fundraising the Right Way appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

Pratyush Rawal & Radha Arakkal

It will not be incorrect to claim that fundraising ranks amongst the top three challenges faced by most non-profit leaders.

Researching prospective donors, crafting a pitch deck, securing the first meeting, making the actual ask, writing grant proposals, reviewing budgets, reporting impact to donors, and/or organizing a crowdfunding campaign have surely given sleepless nights to all fundraisers. No doubt fundraising is considered ‘the other F-word’ for non-profit organizations.

At India Leaders for Social Sector (ILSS), we conducted a detailed study on the development sector fundraising landscape, the main challenges that organizations and social sector leaders face while raising money, and the best practices that some of the most successful fundraising organizations follow.  We interviewed over 70 non-profit leaders, donors, experts, and intermediaries and had over 50 informal conversations for this study.

In this first article of a two-part series, we enumerate the following key challenges faced by non-profits while fundraising.

• Communication Challenges are the primary struggle for many social purpose organizations. For example, many small and medium organizations addressed the difficulty in making strategic pitch decks, with a strong problem statement and solution. While most organizations facilitate transformative projects with their communities, effective storytelling as a skill is difficult to hone. Organizations also often lack the ability to write complex grant proposals. Moreover, we found organizations are generally unable or unwilling to spend on marketing and communications, probably because the leadership and/or the donors do not understand the benefits of brand-building as a part of org strategy. This prevents these organizations from establishing themselves as strong and trustworthy brands. Very few organizations make full use of technology, including social media, for brand-building and retail fundraising.
• Networking happens to be another huge challenge, especially for small organizations. In the absence of an evolved and mature non-profit fundraising environment in the country, fundraising on many occasions is driven by personal connections and networks. Smaller organizations often have very limited access to these networks, an advantage that large organizations enjoy.
• Recruiting, training, and retaining fundraising talent is a concern across the social impact sector in the country. While everyone in the sector understands the criticality of the fundraising, not many professionals are keen to join the fundraising vertical of the organization. There is also a dearth of funds channeled toward training and capacity building. 
• Many organizations find it difficult to maintain strong relationships with donors. Social development is a slow and gradual process, and fundraisers struggle to show results on a quarterly basis, which many donors ask for. Organizations also mention how the power dynamics with the donor makes fundraising a tough task.
• The difficult regulatory framework, especially with respect to foreign funds, is an important pain-point for non-profit fundraisers. Navigating the plethora of complex laws, regulations, and reporting mechanisms that govern the Indian non-profit space, reduces bandwidth allocated to raising money.
• Apart from a few large non-profits, most organizations have not been able to harness the power of Retail Fundraising, which is often seen as a cost and not as an investment. It is intriguing that while 61% of the social sector funds came from everyday giving in the US last year, this share was just 6% in India (Sattva Everyday Giving report, 2019).
• Finally, the reluctance in asking and fear of rejection are among the biggest behavioural challenges for fundraisers. In the ILSS Fundraising Program, we incessantly reiterate our core mantra: “If you don’t ask, the answer is no”.

This is not to say that fundraising is a sad, hopeless field. In our research we came across several organizations – both small and large – that ace fundraising, and are the top choices for donors, institutional and individual alike. These organizations strongly believe that social change is impossible without successful fundraising.

We discuss these best practices in the second article of this two part series.

The post Fundraising in the Social Sector: Common Challenges appeared first on India Leaders for Social Sector.

On March 9,2020 Mumbai recorded its first case of Covid-19. The city went into a frenzy fearing the worst. Soon the country went into a prolonged lockdown. We at SNEHA, a Mumbai-based NGO working to improve the health of women and children in the most vulnerable slums, with a population of about one million, realised that it was not going to be business as usual for us. We would no longer be able to visit homes for door-to-door counseling on health and nutrition, gender-based violence, mental health and for palliative care.

With no past experience to draw from or a roadmap prepared for the future, the only certainty we had was that our communities needed our support now, more than ever. The question was, how do we keep our staff safe, while continuing to support our communities?

As Brian Tracy once said, “The true test of leadership is how well you function in a crisis.” Leading my organisation at a difficult time like this, there were two things I felt strongly about:

1. Being true to our mission of serving the slum communities we work with
2. Being true to our team by keeping them safe, equipped to work and motivated.

The goal posts, in a sense, was well defined. The challenge was placing the ball into the net without any formal training in football!

Working with diverse stakeholders

Our stakeholders range from women in slum communities who are not familiar with the use of mobile phones to doctors who were working overtime in the pandemic and donors who were struggling with their own businesses. We had to reach all of them through new online platforms, in a timely manner. Everyone was struggling in their own way to deal with this unprecedented situation.

As we spent the next few weeks connecting with each of our stakeholders, I learnt a few things:

1. Be the calm in the storm: As a leader in an unprecedented crisis, you too are grappling with the situation. But your team looks to you for stability, decisiveness and direction. While non-profits usually have very participatory decision-making, this is a time when you have to make some big decisions quickly — and make them alone. But for this, you must have great clarity in your mind about the criteria and goals for making these decisions. It calms people’s nerves to hear one voice and hear the same priorities. It gives them a sense of security.
2. Ask the right questions:  Don’t second-guess your stakeholder needs. Use your team like your tentacles to bring in the voices of your stakeholders. Then act swiftly. There was initial apprehension from the teams about our ability to undertake food relief due to fear of contracting Covid-19. But given that such relief was the need of the hour, the question to ask ourselves was, “How can we do it in the safest possible manner?”
3. Innovate and calibrate: New needs emerge during a crisis – as a leader, it is important to keep a close watch on these. In the Covid-19 world, a critical and ongoing need is the dissemination of information on to stem the spread of the virus. With new information emerging every day on Covid-19 and misconceptions and stigma spreading fast, we needed to act quickly. We were able to meet the community’s needs for information by making quick decisions on providing data packs to frontline workers and volunteers, building capacity to use online platforms and using locally available communication channels like Cable TV and WhatsApp. Effective feedback loops also helped us calibrate the information.
4. Operate in good faith: Maintaining trust is an important part of navigating a crisis. Working remotely, distributing food in the community or safety gear to public health professionals required us to rely on a host of stakeholders. The belief that everyone will act in the best interests of the communities we serve is integral to working effectively with stakeholders.
5. Have honest conversations: This was a time when we had to keep our top donors on speed dial. Sharing our situation and concerns honestly helped us evoke empathy in our donors and a desire to support our efforts. It was heartwarming to see how supportive people were and how they rallied around us to see us through.

Leading and motivating teams

A crisis brings people closer together like nothing else can. It also reveals human nature — you see what lies below the iceberg. At this time, how can we as leaders let our teams know that they are truly our highest priority?

• Communicate clearly and consistently: As soon as the lockdown was announced, clear communication on our overarching priorities was critical to guide everyone in the same direction. But communication also needs to be consistent, regular, and directed at addressing the team’s challenges. Daily team meetings helped understand the changing situation on the ground, take timely decisions and disseminate the information across the organisation. This also helped teams to switch to online platforms (a challenge given our diverse team) and continue our routine health intervention and Covid-19 work and keep the momentum going.

• Time to let go: During a crisis, leaders play an important role in getting the engine to move smoothly on the track. But we also need to listen to signals when the train is moving smoothly so we can step back and give our teams the space to manage themselves.

• Time for abundance: Despite all the funding constraints, I took two important decisions: not releasing any staff and giving annual increments. It required a huge leap of faith that we would be able to raise adequate funding in a difficult time. But more importantly, that seemed like the correct thing to do for our staff, especially since 70 percent of our team lives in the slums we serve, with other family members out of jobs. We have got to let teams know that we have got their backs!

• Bonding and self-compassion: As our teams went way beyond the call of duty, some even risking their lives, we could feel the fatigue and mental strain set in. We started Friday learning sessions on themes such as ‘happiness’, ‘workload management’ and ‘improvisation’, and discussed practise of our organisation values, thus creating a safe space for staff to share, learn and grow as a team.

• Be realistic about team performance: These are difficult times, professionally and personally. The psychological costs of fear are steep.  Don’t expect your team’s performance to improve significantly because it could be difficult for them to match what they could have done in normal circumstances. Reassess priorities and timelines. They are also trying new ways of doing things; be kind and patient!

Managing the head-heart pendulum

The pandemic led to an outpouring of empathy everywhere. More so in the non-profit world where we witnessed, at close quarters, some of the most challenging times for the most vulnerable. Migrant workers walking for days, overnight income loss by daily wage earners and food insecurity, coupled with intense fear of contracting Covid-19, made our hearts bleed. Every decision was weighed with empathy. As a leader, managing the head-heart balance is always a challenge.

1. Taking calculated risk: As a health NGO in a pandemic, we were called upon to help public health systems to screen for Covid-19. We understood the criticality of this exercise and made sure our teams had protective gear and all the necessary information to keep themselves safe.
2. Balance between ‘doing’ and ‘being’: The pandemic has forced many of us leaders to strike a fine balance between delivering on the mission and also being sensitive to our teams and their needs, more than before. Apart from usual work on strategy, business development etc. in the past few months, there has been the emergent need to work on building morale, helping teams manage uncertainty, being empathetic to challenges of ‘work from home’ and also being more vulnerable by sharing and talking about our own challenges, to bring people together and build trust. In a recent zoom meeting, we could hear a young child going through an online school session while her mother was presenting to the team. On another call, a staff member had to handover her presentation to another colleague mid-sentence as she had to run to attend to the cries of her young child. It’s all become par for the course!
3. Harnessing peer networks: I don’t think leaders have ever connected with so many of their peers at such a level before as they have in the past six months. While discussing important topics at hand, there has also been sharing of challenges, fears and embracing their own vulnerabilities. This sharing has also led to joint efforts at problem-solving which has then helped with more prompt responses and playing to each other’s strengths and the ability to take up larger challenges and help more people.

The pandemic has been a crisis in a million ways, but not in leadership. Crisis moments create opportunities and help us seek clarity and find direction. They ignite our creativity, push us to our limits and force us to think outside the norm. By and large, it has brought out the best in leaders. Pushed to their limits, leaders have emerged wiser, more resilient and more compassionate. Real leadership is leaders recognising that they serve the people they lead. They are centred, grounded, and comfortable with their values, who they are, and how they present themselves. This is the place from which they will always make their best decisions and be of most service to others in troubled times or otherwise.

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India’s school system reflects an ever-widening gap. Students from privileged backgrounds get the best resources, especially in early childhood, which ensures that they are able to develop much better cognitive abilities and soft skills and puts them way ahead of children from underserved communities. The moment children from low-income families set foot in schools, they are already far behind their privileged peers.

Bridging the gap

There is a crying need to level this playing field, and create equal opportunity for all children to learn and grow. For this to happen we need work to happen with parents because children spend significantly more time with their family and the community than in school. Parents will always play a vital role as companions in their learning. We at Saarthi Education have worked relentlessly for the last three years to build a system that offers mothers from low-income families necessary resources and counselling to allow them to ensure that their children are adept in foundational learning skills.

There are two critical factors in ensuring learning outcomes at home:

• Good quality, ample resources for the child to learn and practice.
• Awareness, on the part of the parent, of the child’s existing learning level and confidence in their own ability to help the child.

The new layer of complexity with COVID19

The COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown have aggravated deep-set class and social differences, widening the already existing learning gap. Children from high-income families have access to requisite technology, internet connection and other school supplies compared to their counterparts from lower-income households. Maintaining this ‘privilege gap’ looks to be a struggle for children from low-income households.

On a national scale, we have been witnessing the crisis migrant workers are facing during the lockdown, with severe implications in terms of reduced income and increased burden for these families. Faced with concerns about survival, their children’s education is understandably not a priority for such parents at this point.

If anything, the pandemic has shown us that we cannot adequately prepare children for the future of learning without first ensuring equality of opportunity. The issue of equity in education has to be at the top of our agenda with a focus on critical thinking, problem-solving, and self-management along with digital skills as skillsets to move forward.

We are currently treating education as a Formula 1 race with the driver having the best time record getting to start from the pole position in the race while the rest of the drivers will start further down the line-up. If you are starting from the first five positions, you are most likely to win the race. If you are restarting from the bottom five, the gap with the top drivers only increases as the race progresses. It will be a longer, harder race to the finish line.

We need to actively work towards the vision of all children being able to start on an equal footing in their learning journey.  We need to do it with creativity, flexibility and resilience, tackling problems as they emerge. No child should have to struggle throughout their lives just to be able to learn.

Investing in foundational learning skills is the proactive measure that is both effective and economically efficient, than trying to close this gap later on.

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