India is purported to be in its golden age of philanthropy. Despite optimistic projections about the potential of philanthropy in India, it’s undeniable that most of it still tends towards ‘short-term, easy-to-measure, technomanagerial programs that fill gaps in public service delivery’. Increasingly, even social sector awards, often a marker for success, are privileging quick gains and incentivising the same behaviours.
Work on certain areas such as governance, accountability, gender, and caste remains underfunded, even as they underpin everything else. Nor is there any serious challenge to existing philanthropic practices; a sense of gratitude rather than partnership and shared accountability between grantmakers and grantee partners prevails.
This is concerning. If we only exalt efficiency and social return on investment, rather than how we meaningfully partner for justice, equity, dignity, and rights, we will fail to truly achieve social transformation, no matter the outward rhetoric and positioning.
This is why Gautam John’s article is a brave invitation to philanthropists. He provokes them to consider that ‘no single intervention could meaningfully shift outcomes in a complex, interconnected system’. Hence, he says, funders must move away from just looking at frameworks and prescriptive solutions and towards nurturing connections that make change possible.
In a similar vein, through this article, we present an opportunity to nonprofits to reflect on how we can work better and more meaningfully for social transformation.
The deepest problems require collaboration
Social transformation isn’t a one-funder-one-nonprofit endeavour. And yet, while situating themselves as transformative problem solvers, both philanthropies and nonprofits often fall into this trap.
Emergency relief work or certain programmes may lend themselves to clearly defined inputs, outputs, and outcomes, and a particular nonprofit may be uniquely positioned to take up this work. But working for systems change—that is, confronting root causes of issues (rather than symptoms) by transforming structures, customs, mindsets, power dynamics, and policies—isn’t possible to do alone.
Collaboration is key if we want to tackle some of the deepest problems plaguing us. Let’s take the case of Nagpur where, since the 1980s, marginalised populations in slums were struggling to access basic services (such as water, electricity supply, healthcare facilities, and good-quality roads). With the formation of the Shehar Vikas Manch people’s organisation in 2004, facilitated by our team at Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), community-based organisations came together at the city level and collectively worked on people’s access to land tenure security and other basic rights and services. Through multiple campaigns, media advocacy, and representations to legislative leaders, Shehar Vikas Manch continuously raised the demand for people’s right to land tenure security.
More than a decade later, the first Government Resolution of 2016 granting land titles for slums in Nagpur and other cities of Maharashtra was passed. The process of distributing land titles finally began in 2017 and is still underway.
This people’s movement for land tenure security has enabled a major structural shift, and it was made possible by collaboration across organisations and individuals—journalists, healthcare professionals, active citizen groups, and others. Over the years, meetings and campaigns brought together diverse stakeholders. One of these campaigns titled ‘Fulfill Your Promise’ was aimed at the ruling party which, when seeking power in 2014, had added the declaration of land titles to their manifesto. Through regular meetings and tactical media coverage, the people’s movement kept the pressure on the government once elected. It was challenging to keep the collective together and united in vision, given that it took many years for government resolutions to be passed. Shehar Vikas Manch faced various internal challenges in strengthening youth and women leadership as well as in second-line leadership development. And yet, with people’s collective action, today these resolutions are expected to impact more than 8.5 lakh people living in all notified slums in Nagpur, and a staggering 30.88 lakh people across Maharashtra (derived from 2011 Census figures).
More solidarity, not silos
As much as active collaboration is key, solidarity too is critical. It’s not just a nice word or a good-to-have, but an established concept in social and political sciences. The understanding of ‘solidarity’ is still fuzzy due to the many ways in which it has been interpreted, right from Durkheim to contemporary scholarship. However, it’s undeniable that solidarity is a powerful social driver, furthering inclusion, mutuality, and the sharing of knowledge and resources. And in an increasingly connected world, it can transform how we meaningfully engage and inspire one another.
In our experience, for instance, people’s solidarity across class groups has demonstrated how citizens can actively impact city development planning outcomes. In the case of Navi Mumbai (one of nine cities where we have worked with this approach), solidarity-building processes have pushed for the inclusion of urban poor perspectives in the Navi Mumbai Development Plan 2018–38. Many informal settlements were not even mentioned in the draft development plan, effectively excluding them from the city’s planning process. A survey conducted by YUVA and the Ghar Haq Sangharsh Samiti, a people’s organisation, identified the missing settlements and shared this information with the government, along with incorporating people’s suggestions and objections to the draft plan.
In another instance, in Karnataka, embodied solidarity has been transformative in helping diverse groups of marginalised people overcome systemic barriers and embrace their differences.
Solidarity within India’s civil society sector has also been crucial against the backdrop of hundreds of nonprofits that have lost their licenses under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA). Smaller grassroots organisations, frontline workers, and communities in need have been the most affected by these changes. Deep solidarity among nonprofits as well as network support and a community of care can play, and to some extent already has played, a vital role in absorbing these shocks.
It is important to distinguish solidarity from capacity-building support. While there has been a lot of emphasis and investment (both of time and money) on the latter recently, it inherently seeks to plug what is missing and has its limitations. The nature of capacity building needs to be interrogated too, as it often flows in one direction and does not value grassroots wisdom and knowledge. Solidarity is rooted in mutual respect and support. The camaraderie and spirit of cohesion it creates can enable the sharing of needs of those working within this sector as well as the challenges and risks they face, and push for greater accountability from all stakeholders.
The criticality of solidarity came up at the India Fundraising Conference 2025. Sector leader Ingrid Srinath made an important point during a discussion on the future of social impact. She highlighted the lack of solidarity in the Indian civil society sector as worrying. According to Ingrid, we cannot move ahead with strength if we don’t start listening to one another and build meaningful ways to engage.
It’s worth reflecting on how we can truly embody solidarity, especially in a rapidly changing world facing a range of crises. How can we become allies and cheerleaders for one another, engaging not just for instrumental goals but also to create an ecosystem of care and compassion, support, and reciprocity?
More systems work, less one-dimensional scale
The conversation around ‘systems’ and ‘scale’ has intensified in recent years. It is critical to work at a systemic level to confront root causes of inequality and injustice and subvert them, else we will be caught in an endless loop of plugging systemic gaps. Scale is important too. But the predominant model seems to be to scale wide, not deep, that is, to constantly grow one’s outputs rather than deepen the impact that an intervention can create.
This is especially critical when we consider community-driven systems change work. When the focus is on building people’s collective agency and leadership, the process is often messy and non-linear, and takes time to grow. In our work at YUVA, as seen with our youth collectives in Mumbai or domestic workers’ collectives in Guwahati and Jorhat, one model cannot be replicated with exactness in another area, and cannot grow from 2x to 4x in two years.
In the case of domestic workers in Assam, while women leaders have grown confident in their collective advocacy, many still face resistance and taunts from personal quarters, and this affects how meaningfully they can participate. Yet, despite these challenges, it is undeniable how transformative this work can be in challenging the current systems and actively driving for a just and fair world.
Let’s take another example.
Nonprofits working in healthcare that offer tech-based solutions are able to demonstrate improved nutrition tracking and management, and have achieved scale in partnership with the government. And while this work ensures evidence-driven health management, it often limits itself with this siloed focus, not engaging with the larger ecosystem and faultlines within it. For instance, within the same region of work, why is the provision of public healthcare still lacking? Why are primary healthcare centres or anganwadis non-functional or still unavailable in sufficient numbers? A linear approach to scale, or a preference for it without a holistic response to the systemic context, can lead to a lopsided success model. It can mean that larger gaps continue to remain or, more disturbingly, grow.
Working together for change
Our work in the development sector is rooted in improving people’s lives, often while navigating structural challenges alongside the messiness and unpredictability of human relationships. To truly enable systemic change, we need a way of working together that centres strong networks and alliances, solidarity, attention to systemic faultlines, and a meaningful critique of scale. We also need to build communities of care for the people who engage in this work and make it possible. Without this holistic approach, no matter the increase in domestic philanthropy and easy-to-embed initiatives, we will fail to do our best for social transformation.
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Know more
- Learn why solidarity is the missing link to a stronger civil society ecosystem.
- Read about how effective coalitions can be built.
- Learn about the different ways in which nonprofits in India have scaled their work.
