Leadership and development courses

A list of leadership and development courses offered for those who aspire to be or are currently part of the social impact sector. The list includes courses offered within India, as well as some offered internationally.

*The courses are listed in alphabetical order. This list was last updated on August 11, 2023. If you would like to suggest any edits to this page, or would like us to add something we missed out, please [email protected]

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Leadership and development courses

Aritra by Phicus

  • Duration: 6 months
  • Course description: This virtual programme equips participants with key organisation building skills and perspectives that will help them drive impactful policies, build strong organisations, and create a resilient, collaborative network of influence.
  • Course objectives: Building skills, knowledge, and perspectives in cause leadership, organisational leadership, and personal leadership.
  • Start Date: July 31, 2023

Cohort-based Leadership Programmes by One Future Collective

  • Duration: Can from 3 days to 6 months (or longer) depending on the participants’ needs.
  • Course description: These cohort-based programmes are designed to facilitate an in-depth understanding of the topics covered in a manner that enables the participants to think and engage with the subject matter critically.
  • Course objectives: Equipping participants with the knowledge and leadership skills to take their social change journey ahead with them.

Designing Strategy by Bridgespan

  • Duration: 3-4 hours per week for 14 weeks for each team member (team size can range from 3 to 7 members)
  • Course description: In this virtual programme, the participating leadership team will define the organisation’s impact goals and align on the strategic direction for the next 3-5 years.
  • Course objectives: Building leadership teams’ clarity on their organisation’s’ impact goals and programmes.
  • Start Date: November, 2023

Developing Leaders and Designing Cultures by Wisdom Tree

  • Duration: 9 months
  • Course description: This blended programme is designed to create a transformative cultural shift within your organisation and help you thrive and maximise functionality. Over the course of an immersive 9-month journey, we leverage our proven methodology to link culture to your organisational vision.
  • Course objectives: Developing organisational culture.
  • Start Date: August 31, 2023

Developing Second Line of Leadership by Bridgespan

  • Duration: 3-4 hours per week for 14 weeks for each team member (team size can range from 3 to 7 members)
  • Course description: In this virtual programme, the participating leadership team will define competencies for their organization and pilot the 70-20-10 development planning process.
  • Course objectives: Helping leadership teams create a robust talent development process.
  • Start Date: September, 2023

Enlightened Leadership by IIMB

  • Duration: 5 days
  • Course description: This in-person programme provides a holistic perspective on the role of enlightened leaders in creating responsible businesses in the emerging environment.
  • Course objectives: Introduction to enlightened leadership and responsible business.
  • Start Date: July 31, 2023

Executing Strategy by Bridgespan

  • Duration: 3-4 hours per week for 14 weeks for each team member (team size can range from 3 to 7 members)
  • Course description: In this virtual programme, the participating leadership team will identity their two-year impact and organization development goals and create dynamic six-month action plans for critical priorities that help achieve these goals.
  • Course objectives: Building leadership teams’ clarity on their two-year execution roadmap.
  • Start Date: 2024 (TBA)

ILSS Fundraising Programme

  • Duration: 3 months
  • Course description: This is a rigorous virtual learning course specifically designed for fundraising professionals. It is the first of its kind in India: a platform for in-depth engagement with leaders in the field, fostering strong networks, and knowledge-building through contextual study.
  • Course objectives: Building fundraising kills, acquiring insights on fundraising from experts, creating lasting networks.
  • Start Date: May 5, 2023

ILSS Leadership Programme

  • Duration: 9 days (in-person); 3 months (online)
  • Course description: This in-person programme offers intensive and experiential learning modules, to inspire, orient, and empower individuals from diverse backgrounds, intent on and committed to taking up roles in the development sector. It aims at building perspectives and enhancing competencies to enable participants to engage with the social sector meaningfully and effectively.
  • Course objectives: Demystifying the sector, immersive experience of on-ground work, and developing the knowledge, skills, and attitude to succeed in the sector.
  • Start Date: August 18, 2023 (in-person); September 23, 2023 (online)

ILSS People Practices Programme

  • Duration: 2 months
  • Course description: This blended programme equips participants with the skills they need to attract, engage, grow, and retain the right talent towards achieving the organisational mission. The Program enables organisation leaders in the sector to prioritize wholesome people practices, building the organisations’ capabilities, growth prospects, and sustainability in the long run.
  • Course objectives: Strengthening leadership, talent management, and organisational capabilities.
  • Start Date: January 20, 2023

ISDM Post Graduate Programme in Development Management

  • Duration: 11 months
  • Course description: This in-person programme blends ideas of development with management theories, combining in-class sessions with collaborative group work and a field component. It aims to develop a cadre of social sector professionals who can design interventions, and build, lead and manage organisations for sustainable social impact at scale.
  • Course objectives: Understanding development, designing interventions for social impact, and fostering development leadership.
  • Start Date: July 20, 2023

Leadership for Growth by Amani Institute

  • Duration: 9 days over a 6-month period
  • Course description: This is a modular, experiential training and development program designed to build leadership and management skills of senior and middle managers of small and growing organisations.
  • Course objectives: Acquiring essential business and leadership skills, implementing a business or social innovation project, developing a peer network.
  • Start Date: September 22, 2023

Mindfulness for Effective Leadership by IIMB

  • Duration: 3 days
  • Course description: This in-person course provides basic to advanced concepts along with teaching the necessary practices for applying mindfulness for effective leadership. This course will help participants cope more effectively with the challenges of their day-to-day life by becoming more self-aware and incorporating meditation as part of their lives.
  • Course objectives: Understanding mindfulness, leadership development.
  • Start Date: September 20, 2023

Organisational Excellence Through Leadership by IIMB

  • Duration: 5 days
  • Course description: This in-person programme aims at providing insights into multiple routes, paths, and drives that have been created by worldclass organisations in successfully reaching the peaks of excellence. It also provides an empirical analysis of leadership, a simple and practical conceptual model of what is leadership, and an actionable guide to develop a competitive spirit, achieve sustained performance, attain durable influencing capacity, enable others in bringing a change, assist in actualisation of human potential in all roles and at all levels.
  • Course objectives: Honing leadership skills and values, learning to manage human resources effectively.
  • Start Date: August 21, 2023

Postgraduate Diploma in Development Leadership at Azim Premji University

  • Duration: 11 months
  • Course description: This blended programme aims to advance participants’ understanding of development leadership beyond programmatic considerations, by helping them anchor their rich experiences and within a broader understanding of civil society and its trajectories.
  • Course objectives: Strengthening leadership capabilities, enhancing competencies related to the oversight of development action and advocacy.
  • Start Date: January 22, 2024

Programme for Leadership Development by Harvard Business School

  • Duration: 7 months
  • Course description: This in-person programme features two on-campus and two virtual, self-paced modules that focus on accelerating your business and your career. You will return to your organisation more confident, more capable, and better equipped to take on new challenges.
  • Course objectives: Improving decision-making and cross-functional skills, acquiring business knowledge, global perspectives, and leadership insights.
  • Start Date: July 10, 2023 (batch 1); November 28, 2023 (batch 2)

Saanstha by Pravah

  • Duration: 8 months
  • Course description: This blended programme is a leadership journey for youth-engaging organisations in tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India. It supports them in charting their growth to the next level.
  • Course objectives: Strengthening leadership skills of the senior leaders, developing a culture of shared leadership, providing the tools and capacities to enable leaders to independently take their organisation forward.
  • Start Date: February, 2023

SPJIMR Post Graduate Programme in Development Management

  • Duration: 1 year
  • Course description: This is an in-person modular programme for professionals working in or intending to work in the social sector, including nonprofits, foundations, corporate for-profit CSR functions, social policy or welfare departments of governments, and social enterprises specialising in development management. It enables participants with essential skills to take forward their initiatives in pursuing social justice.
  • Course objectives: Enabling development sector professionals to contextualise and apply management principles to the social sector for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of social sector organisations.
  • Start Date: February, 2024

Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management by Harvard Business School 

  • Duration: 1 week
  • Course description: Exploring crucial concepts and skills for nonprofit leadership, this in-person programme will prepare participants to strengthen management and accountability while leading the evolution needed to create an effective, high-performing organisation.
  • Course objectives: Improving decision-making, responsiveness, and organisational sustainability.
  • Start Date: July 9, 2023

WYSE International Leadership Programme

  • Duration: 12 days
  • Course description: This is an intensive in-person training programme, where participants from many different cultures, religions and socio-economic backgrounds come together to form an international learning community. The programme provides an opportunity to experiment with new models, creating a holistic view of the world we live in that is underpinned by the need for shared values and an awareness of our ultimate interconnection.
  • Course objectives: Developing leadership skills and values to facilitate social impact.
  • Start Date: July 23, 2023