These collaboratives are reshaping the philanthropic sector, offering efficient solutions and paving the way for long-term systemic change
India’s philanthropic landscape has shifted significantly in recent years, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago. In early 2020, The Bridgespan Group, a global non-profit published a report on philanthropic collaboratives in India, delving into how and why philanthropists and other stakeholders were working together to address social challenges at scale. It was an early signal of the change that was to come.
When the pandemic hit, the collaborative model gained momentum. During the early months of the lockdown, diverse NGOs, philanthropists, CSR organisations, and the private sector came together to reach vulnerable communities—particularly to enable access to healthcare, nutrition, and education. The need for prompt relief meant that grassroots NGOs, working alone, could have only limited reach and impact, especially in far-flung rural communities. This is how the Responsible Coalition for Resilient Communities (formerly the Rapid Community Response), or RCRC, was started. Growing from 20 NGOs in May 2020, RCRC now has more than 98 member organisations united by a desire to help India’s rural population.
From facing crisis to building resilience
In its 2020 research, it tracked 13 philanthropic collaboratives across the country, which were defined as entities co-created by three or more independent actors, including at least one philanthropist or philanthropist. As we note in our latest report, The Growing Momentum of Philanthropic Collaboratives in India, the number of collaboratives in India has grown at least threefold since, with capital invested in them having grown more than sixfold. These collaboratives pursue shared visions and strategies for achieving social impact, using common resources and agreed-upon governance mechanisms.
While the pandemic was key in uniting diverse stakeholders for humanitarian and relief causes, there have been other reasons behind the recent rise in collaborative initiatives. Chief among them is the ability to share risk across many players, making it easier to build solutions at scale. EdelGive Foundation's Grassroots, Resilience, Ownership, and Wellness (GROW) Fund brings together Indian and international funders—including philanthropic institutions, individual philanthropists, eminent businesspersons, and changemakers. Together, they build the capabilities, resilience, and future-readiness of 100 grassroots organisations across India, by investing up to Rs 100 crores across them over two years.Additionally, when collaboratives enable funding for early-stage, innovative initiatives, the risk is divided so it does not fall upon a single funder. The India Climate Collaborative is a case in point, having launched in 2019 with more than 10 funders coming together.
Philanthropic collaboratives also tend to have greater credibility with governments: Having several organisations and individuals united in collective thinking can assuage and influence those in the public sector wary of individual, vested agendas. Another growth driver is the community-level lens many collaboratives undertake, bringing together partners with complementary skills to deliver integrated solutions that aim to lift entire communities or demographics, rather than solve one challenge at a time. Anamaya, the tribal health collaborative, and the Dasra Adolescents Collaborative, each aspire for population-level change for specific communities.
The research also pointed to how collaboratives are now forming across a wider set of issue areas. While most of them addressed near-term pandemic needs in healthcare and education in 2020, collaboratives are now working on environment, rural transformation, climate, equity, and other issues.
Additionally, several have begun operating across multiple sectors, beyond programmatic siloes. ACT, formed in 2020 by a group of venture capitalists, tech entrepreneurs, and social impact leaders to provide pandemic relief, has expanded its focus areas to include education, environment, and gender.
There also has been an increase in long-term funding commitments, signalling confidence in the collaborative approach. The REVIVE Alliance, launched by the Samhita-Collective Good Foundation partnership to assist microbusinesses and small businesses impacted by the pandemic, has since onboarded private banks and other partners to mobilise funding.
The power of the collective
Collaboratives offer efficient solutions because of how they approach their work—most notably how they set goals for field strengthening, scaling impact, and supporting promising organisations. Field strengthening, also known as ecosystem building or field building, is critical in a country like India, where entire ecosystems with multiple stakeholders need to evolve to drive sustainable impact. It involves the often-unseen work of coordinating across diverse actors to pursue shifts in policy and institutional practices, strengthening relationships, enhancing funding, or changing public narratives around an issue. The Migrants Resilience Collaborative (MRC) is a fitting example. A grassroots-led multi-stakeholder initiative formed at the height of the pandemic to provide relief to migrant workers, it now focuses on building resilience by fixing broken social protection delivery systems across India for these communities.
It is safe to say that, given all they have going for them, collaboratives are here to stay—over 90 percent of our survey respondents in the recent study believe collaboratives could account for at least 10 percent of philanthropic capital in India by 2030, up from 2 percent of capital now. They hold the potential to address complex social challenges across the Sustainable Development Goals—such as gender inequalities, poverty, WASH, and climate change—over the long term. This offers domestic philanthropies—corporations, family foundations, and wealthy individuals—many untapped opportunities to have an outsized impact on India’s development through joining forces with other mission-aligned stakeholders.
(The writer is India office head, and co-head, Asia and Africa, at The Bridgespan Group; views are personal)
