Fundraising is often spoken about as a specialised function, as a job that’s done by the founder, CEO, or a dedicated fundraising team. It is considered a ‘gated’ space associated with high stakes, long-term relationships, difficult conversations, and high rates of rejection. Donors, too, often expect to meet the most senior person in the room, making fundraising feel like a responsibility that only a select few can hold.
Yet fundraising is about much more than simply raising resources. It is about building long-term relationships, building and communicating a shared vision, making choices about organisational priorities, and imagining the future an organisation is asking others to invest in. As organisations evolve, these responsibilities become harder for one person—or even one team—to carry alone.
At Pravah, we arrived at this realisation gradually. Shared leadership has long been part of our ethos and practice. It is evident in the ways we engage with young people, creating opportunities for them to lead and take ownership in significant spaces of their lives and in their communities. As the organisation grew, we began to turn the lens inward more intentionally, asking ourselves how we could deepen the same principle through our internal structures and ways of working.
But this was not only about creating more opportunities to lead. It was also about building shared ownership of Pravah’s future. If more people were helping shape the organisation, they needed to understand where it was headed, what capacities it needed to build, and what future they were asking others to invest in. Fundraising became one of the spaces where these three ideas came together.
This shift gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we began thinking more seriously about domestic fundraising. We realised that fundraising could no longer remain a specialised function as we needed to build more domestic relationships, understand the lay of the land for this, and get more people to take ownership of the organisation’s future. That also meant involving our younger team members in shaping how that organisation’s activities were funded and building their capabilities to do so.
As a result, over the last decade and a half—and more deliberately over the last five years—we have reimagined fundraising as a shared organisational responsibility rather than the expert function of one.
Making fundraising a shared organisational responsibility
Around 12 years ago, fundraising first became an independent function rather than sitting entirely with the CEO. Initially a few members of the senior leadership were responsible for fundraising, but this changed when we started thinking about it as an organisational and leadership capability. This effort towards reimagining the fundraising function also made us look at what the programme teams were already bringing to fundraising.
Our fundraising team had been working with programme teams for several years. And programme team members were already thinking beyond their individual programmes. Bringing them into fundraising was therefore a natural extension.
Our programme teams now work with the fundraising team across the funding cycle.
To formalise this shift, we identified and implemented a few tangible steps. Our programme teams now work with the fundraising team across the funding cycle: from identifying opportunities and shaping propositions to preparing budgets, building relationships, writing reports, and nurturing partnerships.
Today, the four-member fundraising and strategic communications team performs specific functions, but its role extends well beyond identifying funding opportunities. It includes donor identification and relationship development, proposal development, donor engagement, impact communication, and strategic communications. The team works closely with programme teams on fundraising and across the organisation to build capacity for fundraising and business development.
This also changed how donor relationships are held. Relationships with new and existing donors are now co-held by senior and second-line leaders. Email communication, updates, reports, and donor conversations are led by both, giving younger leaders the opportunity to build relationships directly rather than routing communication through a senior leader only.
Building the shift into everyday practice
The shift didn’t happen through a single policy decision. It came together through a set of practices—some deliberate, some built up gradually—that made shared fundraising something people could step into.
1. Creating learning opportunities while on-the-job
One of the first practices was what we came to call the “plus-one” practice. Every fundraising visit began including a second-line colleague. Not simply to observe, but to eventually run similar meetings themselves. During our engagement with The GROW Fund by EdelGive Foundation, we earmarked resources for visits to donor hubs such as Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi, and built the plus-one’s expenses into the travel budget. When the fund ended, we continued the practice through other grants. Over time, second-line leaders moved from sitting in on donor conversations to leading them. It was learning by doing, understanding how funding conversations are held and navigated, how Pravah is represented, and how relationships are built.
Mentoring conversations looked beyond targets and achievements to consider how people were developing as leaders.
The same principle was applied to proposal writing. When a new proposal came up, someone who had never written one before was brought in, with a one-to-three-month runway, and staged feedback. The feedback was not about line editing. It focused on how the person was thinking about the proposition: what the programme was, why it mattered, and what outcome it would deliver. The programme teams were often best placed to articulate why their work deserved funding.
This created a progression rather than a one-time training. Younger staff could begin by representing Pravah at events and conferences, then engage with concept notes, and eventually take on proposal writing and budget-making.
These opportunities were connected to what we call people development plans, making fundraising part of an individual’s learning and growth journey rather than an additional task. Mentoring conversations looked beyond targets and achievements to consider how people were developing as leaders: what barriers were they working through, where were they drawing on their strengths, and what areas needed attention. This could include developing a stronger understanding of the wider sector, improving communication and articulation skills, strengthening attention to detail, or improving the quality of their writing. In this way, fundraising became not just a responsibility, but an opportunity to build the capabilities people needed to grow into leadership.
2. Measuring effort instead of only outcomes
We also started measuring outcomes differently. Instead of looking only at the success of a proposal or a conversion of donor relationship, we tracked the activities that helped build fundraising capability. This included tracking how many donor meetings someone had attended or shadowed, how many proposals they had contributed to in a quarter, and whether programme teams had direct touchpoints with their donors. Relationship trackers also helped us see whether contacts were becoming ongoing relationships rather than remaining one-off introductions. This mattered because fundraising has a low conversion rate. A proposal may not result in funding, and a donor conversation may not immediately become a relationship. The focus therefore had to be on what people were learning and building along the way. The effort was evaluated because rejection is an expected part of fundraising.
3. Creating a culture of safety and sharing
For this model to work, however, people also need to feel safe enough to try. We made financial information accessible to younger leaders within the organisation, including the newest person in the organisation. Shortfalls, targets, and gaps in resourcing were shared across the organisation rather than remaining confined to leadership conversations. This was deliberate and meant to build ownership within teams.
Senior leaders also had to actively create that safety. They would reassure younger colleagues before high-stakes meetings, absorb failure alongside them, and sometimes deliberately step back so that a junior colleague was taken seriously by donors. After meetings, debriefs focused on what the person wanted from the conversation and what they could do differently, rather than correcting them in the room.
This was not always easy. Younger leaders identified confidence in handling risky conversations, rejection, and difficult feedback as challenges in taking on fundraising. Senior leaders, too, recognised that creating opportunities for others to lead required them to step back from roles they have traditionally held. This involved coaching and investing in people, helping them process and learn from mistakes when they happen, and prioritise and practice a culture of learning while also addressing the consequences of those mistakes
4. Organisation-level capacity building initiatives
Alongside this, we invested in fundraising workshops led by the CEO and fundraising lead, and those offered externally in the sector, webinars, and conferences. We intentionally budgeted for these opportunities, even negotiating internally to prioritise them when resources were tight.
Learning also happens through our organisational retreats, where everyone, including the youngest team member, participates in conversations about Pravah’s growth and expansion. While there are structured sessions on relationship-building and storytelling, most of the capacity building happens on the job. This requires senior leaders to intentionally make time for mentoring and feedback by having briefing calls before meetings, followed by debrief calls to reflect on how everyone showed up, what worked well, and what could have been done differently
What has changed
Our funding has witnessed 15 percent growth in budget across five years, with an increase in repeat donors and deeper donor engagement. Domestic fundraising has also increased, with more opportunities to build relationships with donors through programme spaces rather than keeping fundraising separate from programme work.
Fundraising is no longer the responsibility of a few. More staff across the organisation now actively work on fundraising and contribute to partnership-building. While the four-member fundraising and strategic communications team anchors the function, the rest of the organisation (programme and programme associates) works with it. Our younger leaders are increasingly using programme evidence to shape organisational narratives and represent Pravah in public forums, helping build the organisation’s voice beyond its senior leadership.
We now have a stronger organisational voice. Fundraising and strategic communications, once separate functions, now work together as a strategic communications vertical focused on storytelling, thought leadership, and sector influence, not just organisational visibility.
Our biggest learning through this process has been about ownership. Fundraising is strongest when it is closely connected to programme leadership, allowing those closest to the work to help shape the partnerships that sustain it. Over the years, we have often reflected on the difference between working for a cause and owning a cause. Including more people to imagine Pravah’s future and fundraising for it has strengthened that sense of ownership—and, in turn, helped build a more resilient organisation. It has also reinforced our belief in youth leadership, which is a core part of our vision, mission, and culture. We have had homegrown CEOs, and leadership succession is something we think about and plan for. Bringing younger leaders into fundraising, a function often associated with seniority and power, is also a way of challenging the narrative of who gets to be a senior leader and represent the organisation.
Disclaimer: Pravah’s capacity-building journey was supported through The GROW Fund, anchored by EdelGive Foundation.
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Know more
- Read this paper to learn how shared leadership can strengthen learning, collaboration, and team development.
- Read this article to know how investing in fundraising can strengthen organisational resilience.
