Illustration by Peter Grant
With more than 1.45 billion people, India has the largest population in the world. But when it comes to real GDP per capita, India ranks 152nd out of 222 countries as of 2023. Those numbers help explain why India has long faced major challenges providing essential services like health care and education to all its citizens, particularly those living in poverty.
The massive scale of the country makes philanthropic collaboration with government not just desirable but essential, especially if philanthropy’s goal is to bring about lasting change. It happily coheres that philanthropic collaboratives are growing rapidly in India and with cross-sector participation.
Spurred by the urgent need to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated the suffering of historically marginalized and vulnerable communities, the number of collaboratives in India tripled from 2020 to 2023 and the amount of capital invested in them grew nearly seven-fold to $266 million, according to a report by the Bridgespan Group. Despite the sharp increase, philanthropic collaboratives in India remain a relatively small portion of the global total of more than 300 funds tracked by Bridgespan, which collectively distribute $4 billion to $7 billion annually.
Unlike in the United States, where collaboratives tend to be dominated by private foundations and individual philanthropists, collaboratives in India typically involve a diverse mix of stakeholders, from businesses and corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds to families, academic institutions, NGOs, and government agencies.
Indeed, many of the earliest and most successful collaboratives in India, such as The Collaborators for Transforming Education and the 10to19 Dasra Adolescents Collaborative, included representatives of local and state governments from the beginning. Their experiences can provide helpful learnings for collaboratives in India or anywhere else in the world that aspire to—or depend upon—government partners to scale and sustain their impact.
Starting Small
The EdelGive Foundation launched and anchored Collaborators for Transforming Education (CTE) in 2016 in partnership with the government of the state of Maharashtra and a mix of education nonprofits and corporate and foundation funders. But the foundation’s original education goals were much more modest. The story of how EdelGive started small and grew to address statewide needs alongside its government partners is a case study in how to build the skill and will to scale impact.
EdelGive was created in 2008 by the founders of the Edelweiss Group, a financial services provider based in Mumbai. In its early years the foundation gave relatively small grants to NGOs dispersed across India.
Education was an early priority, and in 2014 the foundation funded a pilot program in Maharashtra to improve learning outcomes for children by focusing on enhancing the capabilities of teachers and schools, while enlisting the support of parents and principals. The program worked so well that state government officials took notice. They approached EdelGive with an exciting proposition: “We like this, and we want to get it into more schools. If you can anchor the program, we would like to have you as a partner.”
An intensive 18-month design process followed, to ensure the program would work whether it was in 10, 100, or 1,000 schools. EdelGive recruited new funders both to provide additional financing and to add partners that the government knew and respected such as Tata Trusts, Credit Suisse, HT Parekh Foundation, Dalyan Foundation, SDMC Trust, and the Great Eastern CSR Foundation. The Kaivalya Education Foundation, Gyan Prakash Foundation, and Quality Education Support Trust also joined as operating partners.
In CTE’s first year, the initiative reached 25,000 students in four districts of Maharashtra. The top priority for the state government was to improve student learning outcomes as measured by its Quality Education Program, using training and process changes to make teachers more effective. Outcomes improved substantially, which encouraged the government to expand the program to schools supporting 1.5 million students in year two.
To scale the interventions, CTE and the government created district-level and state-level initiatives to help education leaders institutionalize the changes. Now in its eighth year, CTE continues to partner with the government of Maharashtra to support over 21.2 million students annually. By 2026, CTE aims to cover all 36 districts in the state, building the capacity of 7.3 million teachers and 10,000 government officials while benefiting children attending more than 108,000 schools.
Collaborating to Establish Baselines
Like CTE, the 10to19 Dasra Adolescents Collaborative grew from a relatively modest initiative to become a model for prioritizing the needs of India’s roughly 234 million young people between the ages of 10 and 19. Success came through collaboration with a mix of government agencies to establish a baseline for progress in serving them.
Concerned about the vulnerability of adolescent girls in India, the Kiawah Trust, established by UK philanthropists Lynne and Peter Smitham, approached Dasra in to explore options for how to increase awareness and raise funding to strengthen girls’ agency. Among the challenges for girls in India were low levels of education, high rates of adolescent pregnancy, poor access to health care, and scarce opportunities for employment.
Dasra initially created a giving circle to pool funds from philanthropic families that shared the Smitham’s concerns.
In 2013, the initiative expanded into the Dasra Girls Alliance with the aim of empowering adolescent girls and improving the health of mothers and children. Over the next four years, the initiative unlocked $28 million to support the cause, helped increase the capacity of 200 social impact organizations to accomplish more, and ultimately reached more than 3.5 million adolescent girls, women, and children. The alliance supported a myriad of interventions that helped girls stay in school; delayed the age at which they married; and improved awareness about gender-based violence, nutrition, menstrual hygiene, and reproductive rights.
Encouraged by the results, the Kiawah Trust invested an additional $10 million to become an anchor partner in what would become the 10to19 Collaborative in 2017. The U.S. Agency for International Development followed with a significant investment and Dasra eventually attracted a mix of national and international funders, both foundation and corporate, including Tata Trusts, Bank of America, the David & Lucille Packard Foundation, and several CSR organizations.
The 10to19 collaborative made an early decision to focus on adolescents in the state of Jharkhand in eastern India. A first step in the project was to field one of the largest household surveys ever conducted of adolescents and their families in India, to establish a baseline of vulnerabilities. Such data collection is not possible in India without government consent and support, so Dasra brought on partners from the government of Jharkhand along with national and state agencies such as the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, who remained vital allies as the work of the collaborative expanded and evolved.
By 2023, the 10to19 collaborative had reached 22 million adolescents through its partner-driven programming, system strengthening efforts, and digital campaigns, and established a community of 324 organizations that actively participated in regular learning, data sharing, and fueling collaborative growth.
Lessons Learned
CTE and the 10to19 Collaborative demonstrate the power of collective action to both create effective solutions to complex social challenges and implement them at scale. In both cases, engaging and partnering with the government was critical to success. The outcomes are consistent with research that found that 80 percent of effective social change movements around the world required changes to government funding, policies, or actions.
But attracting and maintaining productive relationships with government agencies is rarely simple or straightforward. Here are four learnings from CTE and the 10to19 Collaborative, which can help increase the odds of successful government partnerships:
- Use your collective voice to balance government power: Unlike individual NGOs or funders who may be tempted to work in silos, collaboratives can engage governments by presenting a unified voice. Engaging officials and regulators early in the process, not just as stakeholders but as active partners, increases the likelihood of government buy-in. The collective credibility and scale of a collaborative also help in securing alignment with public priorities, reducing the risk of misalignment down the road and power imbalances in the initiative.
- Match government systems tier by tier: Governments operate as multi-tiered structures, making it challenging for a single organization to engage across local, state, and national levels. Collaboratives bring together multiple partners with different levels of access and expertise, allowing for coordinated engagement across these levels. This distributed approach helps collaboratives remain adaptable and responsive to shifting government priorities, policies, and leadership transitions.
- Sustain arc of engagement to arc of government efforts: Collaboratives offer governments structured, long-term partnerships that provide stability beyond short-term project cycles. By pooling financial and technical resources, collaboratives can ensure that policy implementation and program scaling are not dependent on a single funder or entity, making them more sustainable and aligned with government efforts.
- Define engagement mechanisms that work well for government partners: Government partners often have diverse and evolving needs. In a collaborative, multiple organizations can share the responsibility of engaging stakeholders, ensuring continuous dialogue and responsiveness without overburdening any single entity. Regular forums, shared reporting structures, and co-created decision-making processes allow collaboratives to maintain strong working relationships with government agencies.
Too often members of civil society worry that working with government may invite red tape that can undermine their goals. The stories of CTE and the 10to19 Collaborative show that philanthropies that work within a national policy framework for education, youth development, and more can achieve their goals at a scale that truly transforms society.
For more information on India collaboratives see collaboratives.gatesfoundation.org.
Read more stories by Naghma Mulla & Neera Nundy.