Raj Gilda

At the Last Mile, Change Begins with Collaboration From building hyper-local channels of community leaders to driving convergence across government departments, Manmohan Singh, CEO of Aspirational Bharat Collaborative, shares how Bharat Collab is reshaping rural development. Read the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gtwVi9zK Piramal Foundation Ministry of Panchayati Raj

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Long term funding commitment and no strings attached? That was today's conversation in the webinar in India on "Funders & NGOs in Conversation: Building resilience and greater impact together" presented by ILSS - India Leaders for Social Sector and The Resource Alliance. Three foundation leaders, hosted by Ingrid Srinath, showed their approach to trust-based philanthropy, long-term funding, unrestricted funding and why building resilience in civil society is crucial. Some highlights here: yamini mishra, country director MacArthur Foundation India explained about the Big Bet - a 10 year(!), long term commitment funding towards a specific thematic area. The Genius Grants focuses on a 'no strings attached' funding dedicated towards individuals creative new ideas changing the game. Poonam Choksi, head Social Sector Capacity Building at A.T.E. Chandra Foundation exchanged on the foundation's investment in capacity building with the aim of creating financial resilience of the organization as well as increased programmatic outcomes. Their initial impact research shows already multiplied income for the organizations impact. See more here: https://lnkd.in/dCzVCUB6 Shagun Sabarwal, Asia Regional Director Co-Impact explained why they focus on trust based philanthropy and long term unrestricted funding: "We want to create strong organizations, which will lead to strong systems and impact on scale. We see that it's working and creating accelerated programmatic outcomes - and that's what every funder wants, right?" See more insights here:https://lnkd.in/dv72kx4f The recording will become available soon on the Resource Alliance Global Community Platform - https://lnkd.in/exWVR2qb

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In this article for The Economic Times, Dr. Vanita Sharma, Advisor - Strategic Initiatives at Reliance Foundation and I write about the importance of foundational learning in building India’s $10 trillion economy, and how outcomes-based finance can get us there. Our OpEd draws on our work together with the #LiftEd initiative, an $18 million programme aimed at improving foundational learning for 4 million children across India. Read here: https://lnkd.in/dAHYsEEV  

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The Underbelly of Donor-Advised Funds — Lessons for India’s Philanthropic Future Following my last post on this topic, I engaged with several leaders and practitioners and uncovered what many describe as the underbelly of the U.S. donor-advised fund (DAF) ecosystem which offers opportunities for learning and evolving. DAFs were conceived to democratise philanthropy — offering flexibility, immediate tax benefits, and professional management of charitable assets with donors retaining advisory privileges, through the 1968 Tax Reform Act, US. Yet, in practice, the structure has created unintended consequences. In 2023, U.S. DAFs held over US $251 billion, while annual disbursements totalled only US $55 billion. There is no legal time-bound mandate for the remaining corpus to reach operating charities. The funds, meanwhile, continue to grow tax-free, often under management structures that derive incentives from asset accumulation rather than social deployment. The concern is not one of legality but of behavioural economics and governance design. When the system rewards holding rather than releasing capital, philanthropy risks drifting from purpose to performance. The tax benefit is realized immediately; the social benefit, often years later — if at all. As India’s philanthropic landscape matures, we have a window to design a next-generation DAF framework that avoids these pitfalls. We must ensure purpose integrity, time-bound utilisation, and transparent end-use of funds, while still encouraging endowment corpus building as a distinct, well-governed stream. Incentives should be calibrated to reward impact velocity, not merely asset growth. Philanthropy, at its core, is meant to circulate abundance — not warehouse it. As India evolves its own giving architecture, embedding strong governance, transparency, and alignment of intent and outcome will determine whether our DAFs become engines of national transformation or vaults of deferred impact. #SVP #SocialVenturePartners #TiEBengaluru #PatientCapital #CSR #NGO #ASIA Atul Batra Amol Khire Aditya Malik ⚡ Neelam Chhiber Anupam Saronwala Abubaker Koya Ambuj Kumar Govind Iyer

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For years, we’ve seen how data and insights can shape philanthropy - the India Philanthropy Report (IPR), now in its 15th edition, has become a cornerstone for understanding giving trends. But what about the nonprofits driving change on the ground? I’m incredibly proud to announce the India Nonprofit Report (INR) 2025, co-published by Dasra and Kearney, the first of its kind comprehensive report articulating the growth, evolution, and impact of India’s nonprofit sector. With 400+ NGO survey responses, 30 in-depth interviews, and official NGO Darpan data, this report unpacks the shifts in scale, scope, and pace of nonprofit activity. It provides a structured social impact taxonomy to better understand nonprofit operations, challenges, and contributions across thematic areas. At Dasra, we believe knowledge creation is as important as capital in strengthening the sector, and my hope is that the INR will evolve into a flagship resource for nonprofits - just as IPR has for philanthropy. Excited to see how this report fuels action, drives collaboration, and informs decision-making for a stronger, more resilient nonprofit ecosystem in India. Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/d-2HPtk9 Ami Misra, Prachi Pal (She/Her), Anushka Dias, Kasturi Gandhi, Neelesh Hundekari #IndiaNonprofitReport #NonprofitImpact #KnowledgeForChange #INR2025 #Dasra #NGOs #report #knowledge #collaboration #action #scale 

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Why is collaboration amongst CSR funders limited? Aditya Natraj (CEO, Piramal Foundation) believes the reason is - deep specialization needs to precede collaboration. Only when a funder has deep domain knowledge in any sector (water, forests, edtech, tribal communities ...) built up over many years, will other funders value it and want to collaborate, because there is no way they can invest that much time on their own. He talks about the expertise that Tata Steel Foundation and Tata Consultancy Services CSR have built over decades, which he has tapped into. He also uses the auto manufacturing example to illustrate the point that deep specialization benefits the whole system, as well as individual components of the system. #dusspokeindiainc 2025 is here, and Aditya is our first featured leader of the year. This is the 2nd of 4 videos of our conversation. The link to the 1st video is in the comments. Simple, grounded, thought provoking ! Give Grants Give Give Discover Saurabh Adeeb Somedutta Chatterjee

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