One Monday morning, some years ago, a colleague stopped me in the corridor. ‘My daughter is very impressed with you,’ he said.

I had never met his daughter.

He had brought her to the office that weekend. While he worked, she wandered between our two buildings. When she got home, she told him what she had noticed.

Every office door carried a man’s name. Except one. Mine.

I had worked in those buildings for years and never once thought of myself as the only woman. She saw it in an afternoon.

Her observation reframed it for me. Visibility, I realised, lies in what your presence signals to others. It is agency, and it carries a responsibility, one I bring into my mentoring: helping other women find that agency too.

Many of the women I mentor on The ILSS Emerging Women’s Leadership Program (EWLP) are also the only one in the room. For them, it often weighs more, because being the only one is about more than being a woman.

One was the first girl to go to school from her village, and from every village around it. Everyone saw pride, even privilege, but what she carried was pressure: every exam, every job and every step had to prove she deserved it.

Another grew up in a conservative community, watching her mother set her ambitions aside for lack of financial independence. Her mother chose to educate her, and she became the first girl in her family to go to college and work outside the home. People saw a trailblazer, but she felt she could not afford a single mistake: one failure would prove the doubters right.

Two lives, the same belief: I cannot afford to get this wrong.

There is a word for what shapes stories like theirs: intersectionality. Gender rarely arrives alone. It comes with caste, class, language, region, disability and sexuality, and together they shape how a woman is heard, whether she is trusted, and whether her work gets noticed.

When no one names how these overlapping identities shape her path, a woman often blames herself. She believes that if she were sharper, more polished or more confident, the doors would open. However capable she is, she still finds herself waiting for permission. So she works harder, speaks less and waits to be certain before she shares her views. Over time, she becomes a reluctant leader, doing the work of leading but hesitating to claim it.

Things begin to change the moment a woman realises she is not the only one.

I have seen this happen, cohort after cohort, in EWLP. The program is rigorous, and alongside the work comes camaraderie. Women who arrived as strangers, from very different backgrounds, find themselves navigating the same waters. In one session, a participant admitted she avoided networking because it felt transactional. Many in the room said the same. For her, it was a comfort simply to know it was not just her. That is how a sense of belonging begins.

Much of what the women I mentor know about leadership, they know intellectually. Once they begin sharing their stories in the cohort, that knowledge becomes real. Letting go of the need to have every answer stops being an idea when they hear a peer admit she doesn’t have it either. Asking for help feels less like weakness once they have watched someone else do it. Together, they learn it is fine to be a work in progress and to choose progress over perfection. As women in the program often put it, the journey is ijazat se agency: from permission to agency.

I still wonder what that girl would notice if she walked those corridors today. More women’s names, I hope.

If you recognised yourself here, this is for you. You are not the only one. And the next name on the door could be yours.

About the Author

Rajyashree Iqbal
Leadership and Transitions Coach

Rajyashree Iqbal is a certified leadership and transitions coach. She partners with professionals at pivotal moments, from stepping into leadership to rethinking direction, helping them craft and own their story. A former media executive with 25 years in the industry, she mentors women leaders through The ILSS Emerging Women’s Leadership Program and Rise Women in Broadcast.

The post What She Saw in an Afternoon appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.

What is a Nonprofit Advisory Board?

Organisations that have been in existence for 3-5 years and moved beyond the proof-of-concept stage often reach an inflection point, shifting their focus towards long-term sustainability. At this stage, founders/CEOs increasingly need strategic advice across areas such as growth and scale, fundraising, governance, people and processes, and branding and communications. Their legal boards, however, may not have the breadth of expertise required across these areas, while the organisation’s structure may limit the ability to bring in new board members in the foreseeable future.

A practical option is to build a group of advisers/mentors who can provide the needed expertise without the legal responsibilities of board membership, while keeping the organisation’s mission at the centre. This group may be called a Board of Advisers, Advisory Board, Advisory Council, Advisory Committee, Council of Elders, or other variants.

An advisory board is not required to meet every quarter. However, when a group of advisers is involved, a clear engagement model helps ensure their expertise is valued, relevant and effectively utilised.

Key Roles and Responsibilities of Advisory Board Members

• Bring relevant expertise and perspective based on their domain knowledge and experience
• Advise the founder/CEO and leadership team on strategy, priorities and the road ahead
• Be available beyond formal meetings for periodic discussions, problem-solving and counsel
• Act as ambassadors for the organisation, building awareness and opening doors through their networks
• Proactively support the founder/CEO in advancing the organisation’s mission and strategic priorities

How an Advisory Board Differs from a Governing Board in Nonprofits

A governing board provides formal governance, oversight and fiduciary stewardship. It has legal authority and accountability as defined by the organisation’s legal structure, and the members are legally accountable office-bearers/directors or trustees. The composition and appointment are governed by law, the organisation’s governing documents and applicable regulations. It carries responsibility for key organisational decisions, compliance, risk and stewardship. Accountability extends to the organisation, its stakeholders and, where applicable, regulators and the law.

An advisory board, on the other hand, does not have statutory or legal authority over the organisation. Members are thought partners, advisers and connectors. An advisory board can be constituted around the organisation’s evolving needs and priorities. It offers flexibility to the founder to bring in domain expertise, networks and lived experience that may not exist on the legal board. It can be relatively flexible in composition, tenure and engagement. Accountability is primarily to the quality and relevance of advice provided.

When Should Nonprofits Create an Advisory Board?

• When additional expertise is needed: An advisory board gives the founder/CEO access to strategic guidance without altering the organisation’s legal governance structure.
• When flexibility matters: It offers greater flexibility in selecting advisers, defining their roles and shaping the nature and frequency of engagement.
• When the need is advisory, not statutory: Advisory boards provide counsel and perspective without the legal responsibilities of a governing board.
• When intentional relationships can add value: Effective advisory relationships are built around clear expectations, trust and alignment with the organisation’s mission.
• When the organisation needs to evolve its support system: An advisory board can bring in new expertise and networks as the organisation’s needs change, with greater ease of transition if the relationship no longer serves either party.

Who Should Join a Nonprofit Advisory Board?

Common Challenges and Considerations

There are fewer challenges to the structure as participation depends on willingness to join:

Practical Steps to Establish an Effective Advisory Board

As the social sector grows and complex and regulatory demands evolve, boards must move beyond oversight to actively support organisational leadership in advancing its mission and doing right by the constituents social purpose organisations are committed to serve.

Building an advisory board is, in many ways, the easy part. It starts with clarity of purpose and finding the right people. The real work lies in creating a living, thinking collective that brings together diverse expertise, challenges constructively, supports generously, and stays anchored to one purpose: enabling the organisation to deliver greater and sustained impact.

About the Author

Samina Alam
Lead – Centre of Excellence for Board and Governance

Samina Alam heads the Centre of Excellence for Board and Governance at ILSS. With nearly two decades in education and skills, she has led large-scale, multi-stakeholder initiatives across geographies for corporates and nonprofit organisations, driving systemic education reform, curriculum design, training, and impact assessment. An entrepreneur at heart, she co-founded an education startup, launching preschools for peri-urban communities and employability skills programs. A ‘Social Entrepreneur’ awardee in Masterpreneur 2015 (CNBC Awaaz), she previously served as CEO of SEEDS Impact, leading work across education, livelihoods, and health. Passionate about gender equity and expanding opportunities for marginalised communities, she brings an entrepreneurial approach to leadership.

The post What Is a Nonprofit Advisory Board? A Guide for SPO Leaders appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.

While I was visiting, I met the mother of one of the students and asked if she was happy with the school. She was almost amused at my question. The government school was miles away, and mothers were happy to drop their children off at the school while attending to daily chores. More importantly, she added that children who started at this school later performed exceptionally well when they joined the government school, with many local government officials having passed through its doors as young kids.

That experience was an eye-opener. It proved that well-meaning, small endeavours can meaningfully serve society. Inspired, I volunteered my time with a small school called Anant Valley Public School, run by a passionate young founder, Prerna Kaushik. Leveraging my vast experience, I mentored her on management, leadership, and time management. Informal calls led to deep conversations, while formal board meetings focused on growth prospects and teaching pedagogy. The journey, for me, has been immensely rewarding.

For busy professionals looking to channel their experience into social good, an advisory board role offers a powerful way to drive impact without the legal obligations of a governing board.

What Makes an Advisory Board Different?

Unlike statutory boards, advisory boards are not legally mandated for a social purpose organisation (SPO). However, an increasing number of SPOs constitute them to bring in subject-matter experts, guide strategy, and strengthen credibility with funders and donors. An advisory board role offers a powerful way to drive social change without the legal liability and obligations of a governing board.

Since advisory roles focus purely on strategic guidance, specialised mentorship, and networking, you can easily serve on an SPO advisory board while maintaining a demanding corporate or government job. Since they lack fiduciary duties, employers generally view them favourably. It allows you to act as a sounding board for the founder, validate new programs, and open doors to funders. It offers a deep connection to grassroots impact, expands your professional network, and sharpens your macro-level consulting skills.

Realistic Time Commitments

A major advantage of an advisory role is its flexibility. The time commitment can be tailored to suit both you and the organisation, typically breaking down as follows:

• Formal Meetings:

  Scheduled bi-annually or quarterly for overall reviews (conducted online or in person).

• Ad-Hoc Consultations:

  1 to 2 hours per month advising on specific projects or challenges.

• Total Annual Commitment:

  Approximately 24 to 40 hours per year for an active SPO board.

The Unique Value of Civil Servants and Public Sector Leaders

Civil servants and public sector employees bring immense institutional value to advisory boards. Their unique background helps SPOs navigate the complex intersection of public policy and community execution. They are in a position to provide deep insights into how state schemes are drafted and implemented at the ground level and how to approach government departments for joint public-private projects. They can also effectively advise on compliance frameworks and provide expert advice on maintaining clean administrative records aligned with state expectations.

Honorariums and Expectations in India

In India, advisory board service is fundamentally built on the ethos of voluntary, unpaid service. Most Indian SPOs expect advisory board members to serve without remuneration, though occasional nominal honorariums may be offered for specialised workshops. That said, larger SPOs routinely cover direct out-of-pocket expenses such as travel, lodging, and meeting meals.

How to Find the Right Advisory Seat

Finding the right position requires leveraging specialised nonprofit networks and proactive positioning:

• 1

  Signal Availability: Highlight your specialised expertise and interest on LinkedIn.

• 2

  Engage with Social Sector Aggregators: Connect with consultancies and aggregators like Dasra and Sattva.

• 3

  Explore Targeted Programs: The shortest and most direct route is through curated initiatives like The ILSS Board Leadership Program run by India Leaders for Social Sector.

Final Thoughts

Joining an SPO advisory board is an exceptional way to channel your professional privilege into social good. For busy professionals, it provides the perfect balance of high-impact strategic contribution and low administrative burden. By matching your unique skills with the right cause, you can significantly accelerate a SPO’s mission.

About the Author

Ravin Khosla
Consultant

Ravin concluded a 37-year military career as the Deputy Chief of Army Staff, holding the rank of a Three-Star General. Through a long and checkered career, he has served along both the Pakistan and China borders. He has actively participated in counter terrorist operations and commanded prestigious field formations, including the renowned Gajraj Corps. At the apex level, he contributed to HR policy formulation and its implementation. Additionally, Ravin served as instructional staff at the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington and the National Defence College in New Delhi. He represented the United Nations in Congo and led the International Cooperation Branch of the Army.

Ravin holds an honours degree in economics from the University of Delhi, MPhil in Defence Studies from Madras University, Chennai and another MPhil from Devi Ahilya Bai University, Indore. His illustrious career earned him accolades, including the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Uttam Yudh Seva Medal and Ati Vishisht Seva Medal.

The post Serving on an Advisory Board: A Practitioner’s Perspective on Strategic Leadership appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.

Passion built the organisation. It won’t sustain it.

Ask most nonprofit founders what got their organisation off the ground and the answer is rarely a system. It’s conviction, a refusal to look away from a problem long enough to build something around it. But as Mekin Maheshwari put it, reflecting on a decade leading Udhyam, the instincts that build an organisation aren’t the same ones that let it scale. He spoke about what he calls the Gandhari principle, a blindfold worn with the best of intentions: he refused to use his own corporate network to help Udhyam grow, wanting the organisation to earn every inch on its own merit, and because he funded its early years himself, no one was ever forced to build real fundraising muscle in those years.

The one area he invested in deliberately from day one was people and culture. At Udhyam, every hiring, promotion, and performance conversation is guided by the same three-lens framework: mindsets, competencies, and personal standards.

This gap kept resurfacing across our research: organisations talk about mission alignment endlessly, but only a few build the systems to hire, promote, and retain people consistently against it. Anu Prasad, our Founder and CEO, named it directly in her introduction to the report, reflecting on seven years of working alongside the sector’s leaders. ‘We have seen their tenacity and grit, but we have also seen the quiet, heavy toll of ‘doing it all.’’

Strategy has to live somewhere other than a document

The panel with Krishnan S., Utsav Kheria, and Subhashree Dutta kept circling back to where strategy actually lives once the offsite is over. Krishnan described how Janaagraha translates strategy from a document into everyday practice. It starts with a shared vocabulary that everyone understands, extends to the operational autonomy people need to make decisions confidently, and is reinforced through quarterly reflections where leaders collectively review and shape the organisation’s direction.

Utsav, from Rocket Learning, made a related point from the funding side: the organisation, which now has a reach of close to five million children, has said no to funders more than once when a partnership didn’t fit the mission, a discipline that only holds if it’s practised before it’s tested, once a leader truly accepts that they are not permanent.

Subhashree, who works with social entrepreneurs through the^delta, named a pattern she sees in the founders who actually pull this off: clarity about what they’re solving for without being attached to how, fundraising capability that’s built rather than borrowed from the founder’s own contacts, and the hardest one, a willingness to hire people who are simply better than them.

Our research names this gap with precision. It isn’t a talent problem so much as a systems one: there aren’t enough deliberate pathways and incentives for anyone other than the founder to hold real decision-making weight. Half the nonprofits we surveyed told us they don’t have the internal leadership capacity their organisation needs, which tracks with what Bridgespan found looking at Indian nonprofits: the gap widens past roughly fifty employees, the point where the founding team can no longer hold every thread personally, and more than half weren’t confident anyone could run things if the senior-most leader stepped away.

What holds an organisation together when the founder isn’t in the room

Shankar Maruwada, Co-founder and CEO of EkStep, closed the evening with the sharpest reframing of the night. Nonprofit leadership today, he argued, isn’t about restoring stability but about building the capacity to navigate instability that isn’t going away. As he put it, the next normal will not be a return to equilibrium; it will be turbulence as the baseline.

The sector tends to celebrate a particular kind of leader, visibly solving and loudly inspiring, exactly the model that stops an organisation from building anything that could outlast its founder. Great leadership looks boring, in his telling: quiet, anticipatory, reading signals early, preventing problems before they turn into crises, spending its energy developing people who can lead without waiting for direction from the top.

His most useful idea was a different definition of institution itself. Rather than seeing it as a building or a registered entity, he described it as a set of clear boundaries that enable rather than restrict. By defining what is possible, and what is not, those boundaries give people the confidence to make decisions without looking to the founder for every judgment call.

That’s the whole distinction. A founder who absorbs every decision builds dependence; an institution that holds its boundaries clearly enough for others to decide within them builds something that lasts. It’s why our program runs on a bench of academicians and practitioners alongside a structured peer cohort, rather than one charismatic faculty member presiding over everything.

Bikkrama Daulet Singh, Operating Partner at The Convergence Foundation, made a similar point at the report’s soft launch at the India Women’s Leadership Conference, drawing on twelve years of watching organisations like Central Square Foundation up close. He spoke about the discipline of building an n-1: four or five leaders capable of independently leading major parts of the organisation.

That, he argued, was what enabled the Central Square Foundation to truly scale. It was also the thread connecting mission, talent, governance, and capital, allowing the organisation to outlast any one individual at the top.

The sector already knows this. The harder part is building for it.

None of this surprised anyone in the room who has spent real time in India’s social sector, and that is partly why our research took the shape it did. We made a deliberate choice not to ask people what leadership training they wanted, but where things actually broke down, and let the gaps tell us what the curriculum needed to be. That question became the ILSS Advanced Nonprofit Leadership and Management Program. It is built directly on what this research surfaced, module by module, because we did not want to build another leadership course that sounds good in a brochure and falls apart on a Tuesday afternoon when the systems aren’t there to hold things together.

Anu’s framing resists the easy version of this argument, the one that just tells founders to delegate more. Her point is structural, not personal. ‘While founders continue to provide vision and direction, long-term strength depends on the wider leadership bench,’ she wrote in the report’s foreword, ‘those who can translate vision into strategy, manage people and resources effectively, and foster a culture rooted in purpose.’ The sector has never really been short on motivation. What it doesn’t have enough of is infrastructure, and that is not something a single workshop can hand anyone. It has to be built by listening carefully to where leaders are actually stuck, then designing backward from that: a long series of decisions about who gets hired, who gets trusted with judgment calls, and what an organisation is willing to build before it is forced to. That is the work we are most interested in right now, and it is the work this program exists to support.

About the Author

Archana Ramachandran
Chief Operating Officer

Archana’s work experiences have focused on leading projects and teams in Learning and Leadership across the Corporate, Government and Social sectors. Prior to ILSS, she worked as the City Director at Teach for India (TFI) where she led the strategy and operations for the TFI Fellowship and Alumni Movement to create a movement for educational equity. Prior to Teach for India, Archana worked with Infosys Leadership Institute and Boston Public Schools in the areas of Human Capital, Competency Development, Change Management and Diversity and Inclusion.

Archana is an Alumna of the Master’s Program in Education (M.Ed.) at Harvard Graduate School of Education at Massachusetts, Master’s Program in Management (MBA) at T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal and the Bachelor’s Program in Commerce (B.COM) at Stella Maris College, Chennai. Across all roles and teams, being a learner and an educator is the core of her work.

Jasmine Saha
Program Manager

Jasmine Saha is a dynamic professional with five years of experience in data analytics and the social sector. She began her career as a senior business analyst, specialisng in automation and process building. Driven by a passion for impact, she joined Teach For India, where she worked on grassroots education reform and piloted a STEM learning project in schools. Jasmine thrives in cross-functional, fast-paced environments and is deeply interested in education and social innovation. Originally from Kolkata, she enjoys exploring new places, cuisines, and cultures.

Prerna Gupta
Program Manager

Prerna is currently a program manager at ILSS, working within the Harish and Bina Shah Centre for Talent and Leadership.

Her professional journey has spanned advertising, the arts, and higher education. She began her career as a digital copywriter before moving to the St+art India Foundation, and later spent three years with the academics team at the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women, supporting curriculum design, classroom learning, and student mentorship. Working closely with students and faculty shaped her enduring interest in how learning unfolds in practice.

The post Infrastructure beyond Inspiration: What Social Sector Institutions Actually Need to Last appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.

The ILSS Board Governance Program changed that, not by pushing me toward a formal advisory board structure, but by helping me find a more organic, purposeful path that suited where Foundation for Excellence actually is today.

Structuring My Thinking — Without Over-Formalising It

One of the most valuable outcomes of the program was the rigour it brought to how I thought about advisory engagement and equally, the permission it gave me not to over-engineer it. Good advisory support is not about creating elaborate structures with charters and titles. It is about identifying the precise gaps in your organisation’s capability, finding the right people who genuinely care about your mission, and creating the conditions for them to contribute meaningfully.

I came away with a clear conviction: Foundation for Excellence was not ready for, and did not need, a formal advisory board. What we needed was something more flexible and immediate, an advisory group of passionate individuals, each contributing expertise in a specific domain, working closely with us as trusted partners. The program helped me ask better questions to arrive at that clarity: What does Foundation for Excellence actually need right now? Where is our growth constrained by gaps in knowledge or networks? How do we find people who are not just credentialed but genuinely invested? Having a structured framework to work through these rather than relying on intuition alone made the path forward visible.

From Classroom to Action: An Advisory Group Takes Shape

What made the program particularly powerful was that it did not allow the learning to remain theoretical. I began acting even while still in it.

I reached out across my network, not to fill formal advisory seats, but to invite passionate, knowledgeable individuals into a fluid, collaborative relationship. In a remarkably short time, we brought together a dedicated advisory group spanning four areas: finance, information technology, social media, and employment linkages. This is not a formally constituted body with written mandates and scheduled quarterly meetings. It is something arguably more powerful: a group of deeply committed people who are engaged, accessible, and genuinely invested in our work.

The finance advisor has brought rigour to how we think about resource planning and sustainability. Our IT advisor is helping us leverage technology as an enabler of mission rather than an afterthought. The social media advisor has helped us think about narrative and community building beyond tactical posting. And the employment linkages advisor is opening networks that directly strengthen one of our core programmatic goals.

What I Would Say to Fellow SPO Leaders

Governance is often treated as a compliance obligation, something you do because you must, not because it creates value. The ILSS Board Governance Program dismantles that assumption. Strong advisory support is one of the most high-leverage investments a nonprofit leader can make, it multiplies your organisation’s capability without multiplying your headcount, and brings in perspectives and networks that would otherwise be out of reach.

If you have been putting off building advisory support because it feels like a big, formal undertaking, I want to offer a different frame. You do not have to create a board. You do not need charters and committees to begin. Start with clarity about what you need, find people who genuinely care, and invite them in. The ILSS Board Governance Program will give you the framework to do exactly that, at whatever level of formality suits your organisation’s stage.

For me, the program was the catalyst that moved an intention I had carried for years into concrete action. Foundation for Excellence is stronger for it, and our work in the communities we serve will be too.​​​​​

Ram Kolavennu is the CEO of Foundation for Excellence, an organisation committed to enabling youth from underserved communities to access quality education and meaningful livelihoods.

About the Author

Ram Kolavennu
Chief Executive Officer, Foundation for Excellence India Trust

Ram Kolavennu is the CEO at the Foundation for Excellence, driving scalable solutions for societal impact. With 27 years of experience, he has led mission-critical programs across startups and global enterprises, excelling in operational excellence, sustainability, and innovation. His expertise includes program execution and business analysis, enabling transformative growth.

Ram holds a postgraduate degree in business administration and is a certified life and career coach, passionate about empowering individuals. He is dedicated to creating meaningful change through strategic leadership.

The post Building the Right Scaffolding: How The ILSS Board Governance Program Shaped Our Advisory Thinking at Foundation for Excellence appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.

About the Author

Samina Alam
Lead – Centre of Excellence for Board and Governance

Samina Alam heads the Centre of Excellence for Board and Governance at ILSS. With nearly two decades in education and skills, she has led large-scale, multi-stakeholder initiatives across geographies for corporates and nonprofit organisations, driving systemic education reform, curriculum design, training, and impact assessment. An entrepreneur at heart, she co-founded an education startup, launching preschools for peri-urban communities and employability skills programs. A ‘Social Entrepreneur’ awardee in Masterpreneur 2015 (CNBC Awaaz), she previously served as CEO of SEEDS Impact, leading work across education, livelihoods, and health. Passionate about gender equity and expanding opportunities for marginalised communities, she brings an entrepreneurial approach to leadership.

The post From Compliance to Catalysts: The Future of Nonprofit Boards in India appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.

It is no secret that one of the biggest challenges for nonprofits is the relentless cycle of grant-chasing that leaves little room for the work that matters most. At ILSS, the leaders we work with often lament that the time they need to spend on building strategy, strengthening teams, and deepening community relationships is instead consumed by the never-ending pursuit of the next grant. The result is organisations that are doing extraordinary work under extraordinary pressure, but rarely with the financial foundation their mission deserves.

Breaking free from this cycle requires a fundamental shift from reactive fundraising to strategic resource mobilisation and treating funding as a long-term organisational capability to be built. This article explores what that shift looks like, why it matters, and how nonprofits across India are beginning to make it.

The Funding Challenge in India’s Social Sector

Many nonprofits in India operate in perpetual short-term cycles of project-based grants, annual renewals, and donor timelines that rarely align with the pace of on-ground impact. This, in turn, affects all other aspects of functioning. India’s social sector funding is estimated to have reached approximately ₹25 lakh crore in FY2024, yet despite this growth, the sector remains approximately ₹14 lakh crore short of NITI Aayog’s projected demand, a gap expected to widen to ₹16 lakh crore by FY2029 (India Philanthropy Report 2025, Bain & Dasra). When funding is in doubt, hiring becomes uncertain. When hiring is uncertain, program continuity suffers. And when program continuity suffers, the communities that nonprofits exist to serve bear the cost.

The most costly consequence, however, is leadership time. When senior leaders spend a significant portion of their energy securing the next grant, that energy is unavailable for strategy, culture-building, and the programmatic oversight that drives impact.

How Building Diverse and Sustainable Funding Streams Actually Works

A single funding source is not a foundation; it is a single point of failure. The organisations that achieve genuine financial sustainability are those that build a diversified portfolio: multiple channels, multiple relationships, and multiple timelines flowing simultaneously.

The opportunity to diversify is real and growing. Private sector funding grew by approximately 7% from FY2023 to FY2024, reaching approximately ₹1,31,000 crore, and is expected to accelerate to 10–12% growth over the next five years, largely driven by family philanthropy from UHNIs, HNIs, and affluent individuals (India Philanthropy Report 2025, Bain & Dasra). Family philanthropy increased by 15% in 2022–23 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of 16% until March 2028 (India Philanthropy Report 2024, Bain & Dasra). For nonprofits willing to invest in donor relationships and storytelling, this represents a significant and growing opportunity.

Long-term funding does not materialise from one-time transactions; it grows from consistent, authentic engagement, impactful storytelling, and from treating donors as partners in a shared mission rather than sources of revenue.​​​​​

Financial Resilience Leads to Long-Term Impact

The organisations that break free from the short-term funding cycle are the ones with the clearest strategy, the strongest donor relationships, and the internal capacity to sustain both. Strong fundraising systems free leadership to focus on creating impact, building organisations, and serving communities. Sector initiatives from leadership programs to peer networks to structured fundraising training are essential infrastructure for this work.

When organisations invest in their own capability, they build the foundation to move beyond day-to-day survival towards the long-term impact their mission demands.

About the Author

Yashika Sharma
Senior Associate – CoE – Fundraising

Yashika is a social development professional with experience across youth leadership, program management, fundraising, and advocacy. She has led national programs on gender justice and youth development, designing multi-location initiatives, building cross-sector partnerships, and amplifying grassroots voices in global advocacy spaces, including the United Nations General Assembly. Her work spans ethical communications, inclusive storytelling, and facilitating safe learning spaces for young people on leadership, SRHR, mental health, and economic empowerment. Over time, she transitioned to driving national and international programs integrating advocacy, capacity building, and art-based facilitation. Yashika holds a Master’s in Philosophy and currently works as Senior Associate at ILSS’s Centre of Excellence for Fundraising.

The post How Indian Nonprofits Can Move From Short-Term Funding to Long-Term Financial Sustainability appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.

As I reconnected with many of them during the celebrations, one group that I met during this period stayed with me in particular: the alumni of Cohort 8.

Cohort 8 was the first cohort of crossover leaders I worked closely with at ILSS. I remember beginning that journey with cautious optimism. These were accomplished professionals choosing to step into a sector shaped by different incentives, constraints, and measures of success. I wondered how they would navigate this shift. How would they work alongside home-grown leaders? What would leadership look like in a space where authority is rarely linear and impact unfolds slowly? After all, in the social sector, change accumulates quietly. It builds through discipline, choices, and patience.

More than five years later, it has been deeply affirming to see the pathways they have taken.

Ishmeet Singh

Ishmeet Singh, now CEO of Central Square Foundation, began his sector journey with Piramal Swasthya. He deliberately chose a field-facing role, prioritising understanding the sector deeply as he makes the pivot in his career. That choice reflected humility and a willingness to learn while leading. Today, that grounding continues to shape his leadership.

Anjali Hegde

Barsha Banerjee

Anjali Hegde and Barsha Banerjee stepped into leadership roles within legacy institutions at Udayan Care and Perkins India, respectively, and have strengthened them further. Leading established organisations requires respect for history, thoughtful evolution of systems, and the discipline to build on what exists and innovate for today’s times.

Krishnakumar Sankaranarayanan

Krishnakumar Sankaranarayanan’s journey, from Sattva Consulting to Equalize Health and now as Senior Adviser in Public Health at E&Y, reflects another pathway. His work straddles advisory, implementation, and cross-sector engagement, demonstrating that impact is not confined to a single organisational identity.

These four leaders are only a subset of Cohort 8. Each member has followed a distinct trajectory. Some moved into full-time sector roles. Some operate in fractional leadership capacities across sectors. Some remain in corporate roles but now engage with the social sector with renewed clarity and commitment.

Their journeys have reinforced a conviction that has deepened over time. Leadership in the social sector is a practice, not a position.

Leadership Begins with the Self

At The ILSS Leadership Program, we do not begin with strategy decks. We begin with self-awareness.

Before discussing governance, fundraising, public systems, or digital transformation, we invite participants to examine their motivations, assumptions, and purpose for working in the social sector. Leadership in this sector demands clarity of intent. It requires individuals to ask why they are here, what service and nation-building mean to them, and how they respond when authority is questioned or when progress is layered, complex and slow.

For many professionals transitioning into development, this inward shift is transformative. Moving from performance metrics to community outcomes requires recalibration.

Anshu Gupta

When Anshu Gupta, Founder of Goonj, engages with our cohorts, he challenges conventional notions of charity through the lens of dignity. His leadership is rooted in proximity to communities and disciplined consistency. That indeed is leadership as practice.

He is an Ashoka and Schwab Fellow, has been recognised among India’s top social entrepreneurs by Forbes and Fast Company, and serves on the World Economic Forum’s Humanitarian Crisis Council

Seeing the System, Not Just the Organisation

India’s social challenges are deeply interconnected. Education intersects with nutrition and gender. Climate intersects with livelihoods. Public policy shapes outcomes in ways that ripple far beyond individual programs.

This is why systems thinking is central to the Program, and is a focus from both a technical perspective led by Mihir Mathur and a multidisciplinary practice-enabling perspective from sector leaders as described below.

When economist Dr A. K. Shivakumar engages with our cohorts, he situates development across both economic and human development indices to spark conversations about growth and progress. He nudges leaders to interrogate data responsibly and understand public systems from the ground up.

Rukmini Banerji

Similarly, when Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham, reflects on decades of improving foundational learning, she demonstrates evidence in action. ASER reshaped national discourse through research and persistent field engagement that built credibility over time.

She received the Maulana Abul Kalam Shiksha Puraskar in 2008 and the Yidan Prize for Education Development in 2021. Originally from Bihar, she is based between New Delhi and Pune and writes regularly on education while also creating stories for children.

Our alumni embody this systems lens across their roles in the sector –

Romonika D. Sharan

Romonika D. Sharan, in her leadership role at Central Square Foundation, works at the intersection of education policy reform and state system strengthening. Building on her former experiences as a bureaucrat, her leadership illustrates how systems change is built through sustained engagement rather than episodic intervention.

Arvind Agrawal

Arvind Agrawal in his role as Pro-Vice Chancellor at Plaksha University, is leveraging his experiences in building business across geographies in the space of higher education transformation. His leadership reflects how universities can shape future problem-solvers who are equipped to address complex societal challenges, with a focus on science and technology.

Vandita Batta

Vandita Batta, Chief of Operations at Saajha, works closely alongside Saransh, the Founder of Saajha, to lead organisational strategy, execution, and institutional effectiveness. Her leadership builds on her experiences as a former CFO to align programs with organisational strategy, build strategic partnerships, enable team performance, and ensure financial sustainability. Her role shows how operational leadership in the social sector is central to ensuring mission integrity and scale

Proteek Kundu

Proteek Kundu founded NeevJivan Foundation, a social purpose organisation working in the area of skill development in rural Maharashtra, creating opportunities for sustainable livelihood in villages. Building and sustaining a social organisation from the ground up demands deep local engagement, along with government and knowledge partnerships. His leadership reflects how impact often grows through creating solutions rooted in proximity to communities.

Piyush Singhania

Piyush Singhania, in his work with CSR for KPMG Global Services, bridges corporate capital and social impact by shaping CSR strategy, partnerships, and programme investments. His leadership lies in ensuring that corporate resources are deployed thoughtfully, aligned to genuine community needs, and measured for sustainable outcomes.

Urmila Sampath

Kavita Gunderia

Urmila Sampath and Kavita Gunderia, run their own organisation, ‘Let’s Talk Money’, while also serving as Senior Finance Advisers at Antarang Foundation, operating at the intersection of financial literacy and nonprofit financial stewardship. Through Let’s Talk Money, they work to democratise financial understanding, while at Antarang, they strengthen institutional finance and long-term sustainability. Their journey demonstrates how one’s strengths and experiences can be leveraged to serve the sector at large, beyond deep work with a specific institution.

They represent diversity across Sustainable Development Goals, across large and small organisations, across implementation and advocacy roles, and across full-time roles, portfolio careers, and entrepreneurship. The point of convergence is around listening deeply to what the sector needs, and adapting one’s capabilities and leadership to lead and serve in the most impactful manner. It is evident that the sector’s resilience depends on leadership being distributed across all these spaces and channels of building India, while showing up as leaders rooted in the context of their work.

Practising Leadership within ILSS

Leadership practice is also embodied beautifully by the various alumni who work at ILSS.

Lt. Gen. Ravin Khosla Retd

Lt. Gen. Ravin Khosla Retd. (Alum, Cohort 19) anchors admissions for The ILSS Leadership Program. After decades in the armed forces, where leadership is shaped by command and responsibility, his leadership today lies in discernment and spotting talent for the sector. He listens for humility, intent, and readiness to serve. Admissions, as a function, becomes stewardship, shaping not just who joins a cohort but also the quality of dialogue within it.

Meghna Jaishankar

Meghna Jaishankar (Alum, Cohort 20) brings nearly two decades of leadership hiring experience at McKinsey & Company and Spencer Stuart. Today, she is building the Alumni Movement at India Leaders for Social Sector, where she brings her rich experiences and capabilities in partnerships and stakeholder management to strengthen alumni engagement and sector collaboration. Her work reflects a crucial insight: Leadership development does not end at transition. It requires sustained networks, peer learning, and community.

Anirban Chaudhury

Anirban Chaudhury (Alum, Cohort 17), who leads the Koita Centre of Excellence for Digital Transformation at India Leaders for Social Sector, brings over two decades of leadership experience in technology and consulting. As an alum, his shift into development required translating advanced technology frameworks into mission-sensitive solutions. His leadership practice lies in ensuring that digital transformation strengthens impact organisations responsibly and equitably

Samina Alam

Samina Alam (Alum, Cohort 18), who leads the ILSS Centre for Board and Governance, brings over two decades of experience in education and skills, including leading large-scale, multi-stakeholder engagements and systemic interventions across states. Her leadership lies in helping organisations and boards move beyond compliance to stewardship by ensuring that governance becomes a continuous practice that supports institutional credibility and long-term sustainability.

Viswanathan S

Viswanathan S (Alum, Cohort 19), in his role as Adviser – HR at ILSS, works closely with the CEO on the key strategic priorities in the organisation’s people practices. His leadership lies in contextualising his rich experience in organisational transformation and people development to the context and stage of ILSS as an institution that has people at the heart of its mission.

Different backgrounds. Different prior positions. A shared commitment to disciplined practice and adapting one’s leadership to create meaningful impact in India’s social sector.

What the Future Demands

Watching Cohort 8 mature over five years has reminded me that leadership development cannot be measured at the moment of transition. It must be observed over time.

The defining moments are rarely dramatic. They occur when a leader chooses to begin in the field and listen deeply to the stakeholders as much as analysing existing data. They come alive when someone strengthens a legacy institution with respect for the journey that brought us here. They occur when data, looked at in a different way, prompts a strategic pivot. When power is shared with various key stakeholders rather than with a consolidated few with titles of power.

I have seen alumni step into senior roles and remain grounded. I have seen leaders in small organisations demonstrate extraordinary systems awareness. I have seen colleagues within ILSS evolve from participants to institutional stewards.

These experiences reinforce my belief that while positions may change and titles may evolve, what endures is the discipline in practice of leadership.

The coming decade will test India’s social sector deeply. Climate volatility, technological disruption, demographic shifts, geopolitical complexities, and funding realignments.

We will need leaders across the Sustainable Development Goals. Across large and small organisations. Across implementation and advocacy spaces. Across philanthropy, technology, and public systems.

After all, leadership in the social sector is not something one arrives at. It is something one commits to daily through reflection, systems awareness, collaboration, and accountability to communities.

While a position may grant authority, it is the practice that determines impact. And in our sector, sustained impact is the only leadership that truly matters.

About the Author

Archana Ramachandran
Chief Operating Officer

Archana’s work experiences have focused on leading projects and teams in Learning and Leadership across the Corporate, Government and Social sectors. Prior to ILSS, she worked as the City Director at Teach for India (TFI) where she led the strategy and operations for the TFI Fellowship and Alumni Movement to create a movement for educational equity. Prior to Teach for India, Archana worked with Infosys Leadership Institute and Boston Public Schools in the areas of Human Capital, Competency Development, Change Management and Diversity and Inclusion.

Archana is an Alumna of the Master’s Program in Education (M.Ed.) at Harvard Graduate School of Education at Massachusetts, Master’s Program in Management (MBA) at T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal and the Bachelor’s Program in Commerce (B.COM) at Stella Maris College, Chennai. Across all roles and teams, being a learner and an educator is the core of her work.”

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Unlike launching a consumer brand or a tech product, there isn’t always a clear playbook. Social problems are complex. Systems are slow to change. Outcomes are rarely immediate. And the funding landscape can feel opaque from the outside.

Yet this moment in India feels different.

Across the country, entrepreneurial energy is unmistakable. Over the last decade, founders have built companies in fintech, edtech, climate tech, logistics, and beyond. Risk-taking has become more culturally accepted. Career paths are no longer linear. Ambition is no longer apologetic.

At the same time, India’s social realities remain deeply complex: persistent inequality, climate stress affecting rural livelihoods, uneven access to healthcare and education, and fragile informal employment. These are not peripheral issues. They shape daily life for millions of people.

It is perhaps inevitable that these two current entrepreneurial drive and unresolved social challenges are beginning to meet.

And that intersection is where the next generation of social entrepreneurs will emerge.

The Shift We Are Seeing

More professionals are quietly re-evaluating what they want from their careers. Some are mid-career leaders who have built financial stability and now seek meaning. Others are professionals unwilling to separate ambition from impact many of whom find pathways like the Young Leadership Program worth considering. But entering the social sector requires a mental shift.

In commercial markets, feedback is immediate. Customers buy or they don’t. Revenue validates product market fit. In social impact work, the signals are subtler. Beneficiaries are not always paying customers. Change unfolds over time. Outcomes can be difficult to measure. This ambiguity can be uncomfortable.

It forces founders to ask harder questions:

• Are we truly improving outcomes, or are we just running activities?
• Is this intervention working beyond a pilot?
• Are communities meaningfully involved in shaping the solution?
• What evidence do we have that this creates durable change?

Unlike many startup journeys, social entrepreneurship demands not just iteration but humility. Sometimes the bold idea must bend to ground reality. Sometimes the community reshapes the solution entirely.

That is not a weakness. It is responsible for entrepreneurship.

Rethinking the Funding Narrative

There is a persistent myth that social entrepreneurs must rely primarily on personal sacrifice or bootstrap indefinitely.

While early experimentation may require personal risk, India’s funding ecosystem has evolved significantly. Philanthropic capital, CSR funding , impact investors, and blended finance models are increasingly open to backing well-designed, evidence-driven interventions.

But funding in the social sector follows credibility.

It flows toward:

• Clear problem articulation
• Thoughtful program design
• Measurable outcomes
• Transparent learning from failure

Founders who approach impact with the same strategic rigour that commercial founders apply to growth tend to build more resilient organisations.

Raising capital in this space is less about storytelling alone and more about demonstrating seriousness of intent.

Prepared for Complexity

The social sector does not merely need more organisations. It needs founders who are prepared for complexity.

That means:

• Listening before designing
• Learning from existing grassroots efforts rather than duplicating them
• Building partnerships across government, civil society, and markets
• Accepting that systemic change rarely follows quarterly timelines

Meaningful impact often takes longer than we expect. It rarely scales in a straight line. It can feel slower, messier, and less celebrated than building a high-growth startup.

But its long-term value can be far deeper.

Why This Moment Matters

India stands at a significant juncture. Entrepreneurial ambition is high. Awareness of social and environmental fragility is rising. Technology has lowered barriers to coordination and measurement. Young professionals are questioning inherited definitions of success.

If even a fraction of this entrepreneurial energy turns toward structural social challenges health access, learning outcomes, climate resilience, and livelihood security the pace of problem-solving could shift meaningfully.

Not overnight. But steadily. And perhaps that is the point.

Social entrepreneurship is not about heroic disruption. It is about disciplined optimism the belief that change is possible, paired with the patience to work through systems rather than around them.

For aspiring founders who feel drawn toward impact but uncertain about the path, this uncertainty is not a signal to withdraw. It is an invitation to prepare.

This may not be the easiest time to build in the social sector. But it may be one of the most important.

Also read: Leadership Lessons from the Indian Constitution

FAQs

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But look at the boardroom? Senior leadership tables? The faces change.

Despite women making up the majority of the workforce in social purpose organisations, they remain strikingly underrepresented in decision-making roles. And this Women’s Day, we at India Leaders for Social Sector wanted to understand why.

Our COO, Archana Ramachandran, has written a piece for YourStory that digs into this uncomfortable truth. It’s not about women lacking ambition or capability far from it. It’s about the invisible barriers that hold them back at critical career junctures.

The research is clear: the issue isn’t a “leaky pipeline.” It’s what happens at the mid-career stage. When mentorship disappears. When networks narrow. When access to strategy and decision-making rooms becomes harder to find. When the path forward becomes unclear, even for the most driven professionals.

Archana’s article shares real leadership journeys from institutional roles to grassroots work and challenges how we’ve traditionally defined ambition and success in this sector. Because leadership doesn’t always look the same for everyone, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is when systemic barriers decide who gets to lead.

This isn’t just about fairness. When we don’t have women in leadership, we weaken our organisations. We limit our impact. We miss perspectives that are critical to the communities we serve.

So this Women’s Day, we’re not just celebrating women. We’re asking harder questions. We’re pushing for real change. And we’re inviting everyone leaders, practitioners, funders, ecosystem partners Walk into most nonprofits across India, and you’ll see women everywhere leading field programs, managing communities, coordinating volunteers, and running day-to-day operations. They’re the backbone of the social sector.

But look at the boardroom? Senior leadership tables? The faces change.

Despite women making up the majority of the workforce in social purpose organisations, they remain strikingly underrepresented in decision-making roles. And this Women’s Day, we at India Leaders for Social Sector wanted to understand why.

Our COO, Archana Ramachandran, has written a piece for YourStory that digs into this uncomfortable truth. It’s not about women lacking ambition or capability. It’s about the invisible barriers that hold them back at critical junctures of their careers.

Read the full article on YourStory

The post This Women’s Day, Let’s Talk About Something <br /> We Don’t Discuss Enough appeared first on India Leaders For Social Sector.