If we were to map the flow of CSR funding in India, its geography would tell a story of its own.
The case of Maharashtra is a stark example. While speaking to nonprofits in the state, we found that several well-established organisations were working to improve government schools through interventions ranging from foundational literacy and WASH infrastructure to menstrual health and nutritional awareness. Yet most preferred to implement projects in the same four to five districts—primarily Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, and nearby areas. When we asked why, the answer was remarkably consistent: “It makes donor visits easier”.
A recent Crisil report found that only 12 percent of Maharashtra’s total CSR expenditure of INR 19,208 crore in 2023–24 was directed towards aspirational districts. Despite having urgent infrastructural and educational needs, regions such as Vidarbha and Marathwada have faced persistent gaps in access to funding compared to the state’s metro areas.
This disparity is rarely intentional and can be observed across the country.
At a time when CSR has started to play an increasingly prominent role in India’s development landscape, with funding expected to grow by 8 to 10 percent annually, the challenge is no longer just about the availability of funding. It is also about how different projects relate to one another, because without coordination, even well-intentioned work can end up fragmented, repetitive, or unevenly distributed.
In this article, we draw on our experience of working with CSR and philanthropic and social impact organisations across India to trace how and where efforts tend to cluster, the challenges that inhibit the effectiveness of initiatives, and finally, what kinds of shifts can improve development outcomes at the grassroots.
Where efforts tend to cluster
Research has consistently shown that CSR spending remains concentrated across a relatively small number of sectors, with education, healthcare, and livelihoods attracting more than 50 percent of available funding. Moreover, studies have also shown that a significant share of CSR spending is directed towards a few regions, including industrialised states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu.
What often attracts CSR is not simply need, but the presence of conditions that make implementation feasible.
While these patterns are often driven by practical considerations, they raise important questions about how resources are distributed and which geographies are best positioned to attract sustained investment.
Part of the answer lies in what might be called ‘implementation readiness’. What often attracts CSR funding is not simply need, but the presence of conditions that make implementation feasible. The aforementioned states, for instance, tend to have an established corporate presence, nonprofit ecosystems, experienced implementation partners, an understanding of local government capacity, and existing infrastructure that allow programmes to be implemented more quickly, with little capital expenditure, and at a lower cost.
Naturally, this gets replicated over time at the district level, where certain areas develop stronger implementation ecosystems, with trusted and active local nonprofits, responsive district officials, functioning schools or community institutions and infrastructure, and stronger systems for reporting and monitoring. This starts to set an informal checklist for CSR, and districts that meet these conditions often move through internal approvals more quickly and became natural destinations for repeated investment.
Over the past two decades, districts such as Ganjam, Koraput, and Kalahandi in Odisha have developed strong implementation ecosystems through active district administrations, Mission Shakti’s women’s self-help group networks, and sustained partnerships with nonprofits, donors, and CSR programmes. Similarly, the Aspirational Districts Programme has strengthened institutional capacity in districts such as Malkangiri (Odisha) and Nandurbar (Maharashtra), making them increasingly attractive to philanthropic and corporate investment.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle of funding following on-ground institutional and implementation capacity.
Why coordination does not come easily
A seemingly obvious way to mitigate the concentration of CSR efforts is coordination. While this sounds simple in principle, there are structural reasons why it does not happen easily.
For CSR teams, the pressure to show visible results within fixed timelines is real. Programmes are designed around reporting cycles, where speed and clarity of outcomes matter. In some cases, we found that programmes focused on entrepreneurship, livelihoods, or behaviour change struggled to secure funding despite their strong long-term potential, while interventions with more tangible outputs moved through approval processes more quickly.
A classroom can be counted, equipment tracked, and infrastructure photographed. Meanwhile outcomes such as entrepreneurial confidence, local innovation, women’s economic empowerment, or ecosystem development are often harder to measure and attribute within standard reporting and audit frameworks. This reflects the realities of governance, compliance, and accountability within many CSR systems.
Funding is competitive, and collaboration is not always built into programme design.
In this context, it is often more practical to work with known partners, in familiar geographies, and on interventions where impact can be demonstrated quickly. Coordination, while valuable, can introduce complexity and slow momentum.
Meanwhile, nonprofits are navigating a different set of pressures. Funding is competitive, and collaboration is not always built into programme design. Even when multiple organisations are working in the same district, there are few natural spaces to align efforts or share learning as things unfold.
Weak coordination often also creates not just fragmentation, but a visibility gap. No single actor has a complete picture of how resources are moving through a district. Decisions are frequently made based on individual relationships, funding priorities, or ease of roll in the short term rather than with a shared understanding of needs, overlaps, or gaps.
The consequences are not always dramatic and often surface slowly over time. Infrastructure gets built without a long-term maintenance plan. Skilling programmes are introduced without a clear connection to local employment opportunities, which may lead to low placement rates or migration, rather than sustainable local livelihoods.
These are not failures of intent, but the result of decisions being made without a shared understanding of the larger picture.
NITI Aayog has similarly argued that education, skilling, job placement, and employment must be viewed as an integrated ecosystem rather than separate policy silos, with stronger coordination needed between training providers and labour market demand. Likewise, UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report emphasises that investments in educational technology and infrastructure deliver meaningful learning gains only when accompanied by teacher training, ongoing technical support, and enabling school systems. Hence, schools may receive digital infrastructure or new classrooms, but without trained teachers, maintenance support, or complementary investments, these assets often remain underutilised.
When it comes to coordination, district administrations are, in theory, best placed to bring different actors together. However, in practice, they are often managing a wide range of competing priorities at once, from law and order to elections, festivals, and emergencies. CSR becomes just one part of a much larger workload, making proactive coordination difficult.
Yet, there are emerging examples where this coordinating role has been played effectively.
What begins to shift outcomes
We have observed that coordination rarely improves through grand structures or complex mechanisms. More often, it improves through relatively simple shifts in how actors interact with one another.
1. Better communication and coordination
In one district in North Karnataka, a well-known philanthropist was interested in supporting social innovations that would benefit the region. Before any projects were approved, around 20 leading social entrepreneurs were invited to undertake a joint needs assessment. The District Magistrate then convened these organisations to discuss the findings, align them with local priorities, and identify where each organisation could contribute most effectively.
Through this process, a degree of self-selection naturally emerged. Several nonprofits recognised that their proposed interventions would either duplicate existing efforts or were premature, and voluntarily stepped aside or deferred their ideas. In the end, four interventions were identified as the strongest fit for that stage of the district’s development and were implemented with the active participation of the district administration. The experience demonstrated the value of creating a neutral forum for coordination before funding decisions are made and creating a shared understanding of local needs.
In another instance, an international donor encouraged nearly two dozen organisations working on safe water access to form a national alliance. Through regular meetings, members shared implementation experiences, practical innovations, and lessons learned across different geographies. While such collaboration remains relatively uncommon, it illustrates how donors can play a catalytic role—not only by financing projects, but by creating the conditions for organisations to learn from one another, reduce duplication, and strengthen collective impact.
In districts where CSR teams, nonprofits, government officials, local institutions, and community representatives are regularly in conversation, whether through formal review meetings or more informal relationships, efforts begin to align more naturally.
2. Alignment with district priorities builds trust and allows for innovation
When CSR initiatives are designed in conversation with local administration and government plans, they are more likely to continue beyond a single project cycle rather than operate as isolated interventions.
This kind of conversation also gives CSR actors a realistic understanding of district priorities and on-ground capacity. If we return to the example in the beginning, where different nonprofits in Maharashtra wanted to implement several different interventions in the same cluster of government schools, the priority of the senior bureaucrat overseeing the education department was quite different. While the nonprofits wanted to train teachers as part of their projects, the bureaucrat felt that these activities would distract teachers from focusing on classroom learning. As a result, the department denied permission to nearly a dozen nonprofits from working in these schools.
In such circumstances, alignment and communication build trust in the short term and can create more space for experimentation and innovation down the line. CSR funding is also relatively more flexible, and can support pilots, test new approaches, and engage community in ways that government programmes cannot.
The watershed movement in Maharashtra, particularly across the Marathwada and Vidarbha regions, offers a strong example of what coordinated efforts can realise. Over the years, governments, philanthropies, social interventions, and local communities aligned around a shared objective: ‘improving water security in drought prone areas’. This has led to resources being directed towards a landscape-level effort for groundwater recharge, watershed restoration, and long-term resilience.
3. Ensuring community participation in design and implementation
Coordination must extend to the people a project is intended to serve. Community participation plays a key role in ensuring that programmes respond to local priorities rather than assumptions, while also creating an additional layer of accountability. There are already strong examples of this in practice. Goonj’s Cloth for Work initiative enables communities to identify their own priorities and collectively implement projects that address them. Mann Deshi Mahila Bank demonstrates how community-owned institutions can sustain development by embedding decision-making and leadership within the communities they serve.
Even basic mapping exercises can reduce duplication and reveal where support is missing by clarifying who is funding what, where, and for whom.
From deploying funds to connecting efforts
Taken together, these are not entirely new ideas. But they do highlight the need for a broader shift in how we think about impact, coordination, and long-term value within the CSR ecosystem.
CSR in India has grown significantly in both scale and ambition. Yet questions of distribution remain. For example, Maharashtra and Delhi receive roughly INR 450–470 per capita in private CSR spend, compared with around INR 50 in Bihar and Jharkhand. This disparity highlights the necessity to better align CSR capital with regions facing the greatest development needs.
Additionally, the question is no longer only about where funding is deployed. When interventions remain fragmented, even strong work can end up operating in silos rather than reinforcing one another. But when coordination begins to take shape, the shift is noticeable. Resources are used more thoughtfully, gaps become easier to spot, and programmes are more likely to endure beyond a single funding cycle.
A great starting point before taking the plunge is first to map out the entire landscape in any particular area. Next, figure out key allies, including like-minded nonprofits and other philanthropic partners, to leverage and share resources or to work towards comprehensive change in a community. Most importantly, listen to the community and their felt needs. If there is flexibility or a broad enough scope, lean towards identifying an under-explored geographic area or lesser addressed issue. This serves the twin purposes of addressing a critical unmet need as well as greater appreciation and acknowledgement for the investment being made. In the years ahead, the real opportunity may lie in turning a constellation of successful projects into a more connected and enduring system of change.
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Know more
- Learn more about the composition of India’s social sector and where CSR fits into its funding architecture.
- Understand how the logic of CSR funding is evolving and what nonprofits can do to adapt.
- Read the 2026 edition of the India Philanthropy Report.
