The organisation is a pioneer in addressing gaps in the education and employability ecosystem. It provides educational, training, skilling, and self-enhancement solutions that create lifelong learning links for all age groups through knowledge, innovation, and technology. Over the past two decades, the organisation has reached over 16 Lakh students, 14,000 teachers, 1 Lakh youth, and 44,000 women-centered training participants.
OBJECTIVE OF THE STRATEGY ENGAGEMENT
Having achieved a steady growth year-on-year backed by positive on-ground feedback on their interventions and great donor feedback on outcomes achieved, the organisation aspired to grow 5x in the next five years and move towards long-term, strategic, and sustainable work at scale. To ensure strategic clarity on preparedness to do so, it sought Sattva’s support on two fronts –
- To develop a 5-year fundraising strategy that guides them on deepening and expanding donor engagement in already leveraged donor channels like CSRs and Foundations, as well as unlocking capital from untapped donor channels like UHNIs, Retail, Foreign funding, and loosely restricted funding.
- To develop an external-facing organisation strategy that delves into the “what” and “how” of the right ecosystem positioning for the organisation that aligns its vision and core values with the expectations of the ecosystem partners, government, and beneficiaries.
OUR APPROACH
Sattva proposed to execute the Fundraising and External-facing Organisation strategy-building exercise across three phases over 15 weeks.
Phase 1 focused on gathering inputs and generating insights into the organisation’s goals, strengths, and challenges, as well as studying trends in the broader ecosystem relevant to the organisation. We developed a deep understanding of the organisation’s Theory of Change, programs, and past fundraising patterns through thorough research and supplemented that with leadership consultations to capture their priorities. We also conducted secondary research and analysed data to dive deeper into the fundraising landscape in India and globally, with a focus on CSR, HNWIs, foundations, and philanthropy.
Phase 2 focussed on contextualising the insights from the organisational understanding and data-backed ecosystem research into the organisation’s fundraising and positioning strategy by:
- Synthesising the insights into contextualised, data-backed, actionable strategies aligned with their mission and vision to
- Effectively retain their existing donors
- Grow relationships with existing donors
- Unlock new donors from known channels as well as untapped channels
- Increase visibility and engagement across stakeholder personas like government, donors and ecosystem partners
- Conducting working sessions with in-house experts on different fundraising channels like Retail Fundraising, UHNIs, Foundations, and so on, to share highly practical and actionable context and answer any questions or challenges contextual to the organisation.
- Finalising the five-year fundraising strategy and external engagement plan leveraging on the insights and feedback from working sessions.
Phase 3 focused on enabling the organisation to bring the strategy to life by creating a comprehensive and actionable implementation plan to carry out these strategies. We developed an operational plan with detailed quarter-wise action items, corresponding timelines, HR and skill requirements, progress indicators/KPIs that can help the organisation measure success against the action items, governance mechanisms to be put in place to ensure the plan is implemented, and risk management measures to support implementation.
Along with the implementation plan, some helpful tools and templates (for example, our FundAssist Dashboard, Target-setting templates, donor prioritisation templates, pitch deck templates) were also developed and shared to make the implementation process structured and efficient.
BENEFICIARY PROFILE
In FY 2022-23, the organisation reached over 5,000 schools, impacting more than 1.6 million students, 14,000 teachers, and 1.5 million community members. Their efforts continue to strengthen education systems and foster long-term development across these communities.
PROJECT DELIVERABLES
- Documented findings and perspectives from internal stakeholder consultations and strengths/weaknesses, challenges, and aspirations of the organisation.
- Identified key fundraising ecosystem trends across multiple donor archetypes
- Developed a 5-year Fundraising Strategy document including channel-wise strategies, best practices, relevant donor names in the ecosystem to unlock, key milestones, overall annual targets, and resource requirements.
- Developed an External-facing Organisation Strategy document focussed on external communications, thought leadership positioning, and network engagement.
- Prepared an implementation plan for the Fundraising and External-facing organisation strategy supported by relevant analysis tools and templates
- FundAssist dashboard
HIGHLIGHTS
- The project built contextual intelligence around large grants, collaboratives, and DAFs, while successfully pitching a donor management approach (Retaining, Mining, and Acquiring donors) to the client, which was well-received.
- The external-facing strategy detailed our marketing, communications, and thought leadership priorities through a stakeholder persona approach to ensure different stakeholders and engaged differently considering their respective nuances
- Tangible detailing in the implementation plan and risk mitigation framework provided the client with clear guidance for the next phase.
- Additionally, this project piloted the FundAssist Dashboard, which received positive client feedback.
