No-Cost Extension with Deval Sanghavi

When COVID-19 hit, it made clear the undeniable fact of just how vulnerable our poorest communities are. It was a setback of huge proportions, creating a crisis that extended well beyond health to impact on work and livelihoods, education, access to food and nutrition. It exposed how a shock in any one area can snowball pushing communities deeper into poverty. Many small grassroots organizations were the primary support for communities in the worst phases of the pandemic.

The Rebuild India Fund was set up to support those closest to the ground - the small community organizations working at the grassroots to support these communities to become more resilient. The Rebuild Fund does this through flexible funding and capacity building and by recognizing and respecting NGO leaders' ability and power to run their organizations in a manner that serves their communities most meaningfully.

Why is flexible funding so critical for small organizations? How can funders support communities better? After working remotely for so many months, what’s it like to sit down with a group of people in the same room? What is the idea of India? How do we have conversations about change that are respectful and inclusive?

In the first conversation in this series, Deval Sanghavi sits down with the Investment Committee of the fund, made up of NGO leaders from across the country who assess and select the NGOs for the Rebuild India Fund.

Listen in as Anita Patil of Goonj, Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma from Farm2Food Foundation, Deepa Pawar, from Anubhuti Trust, Nandita Pradhan from the Martha Farrell Foundation and Rameez Alam, from Catalyst 2030 – NASE share their thoughts about the initiative and why they believe it’s important.

The Rebuild India Fund, founded by @Dasra and Tarsadia Foundation. For more information about the Rebuild India Fund visit https://www.rebuildindiafund.org/ or follow www.twitter.com/dasra for updates.

How should funders be rethinking philanthropy in the wake of the pandemic? How can they take their egos out of the equation? How can they operate with a greater sense of urgency, transparency, and trust with grantee centric mechanisms?

In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval Sanghavi sits down with Lior Ipp, the CEO of the Roddenberry Foundation that is inspired by the life and legacy of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry who believed that human potential is remarkable and would lead us to a better, fairer world.

Lior speaks with candour about the power dynamics between donor and grantee, how the pandemic was a catalyst for the philanthropic sector to do things differently and how the first of its kind +1 Global Fund enables small organisations across the world to challenge the status quo of burdensome applications, restrictions, or reports, and instead driven by a “network-of-networks” of social entrepreneurs and innovators.

To know more about The Roddenberry Foundation visit https://roddenberryfoundation.org or follow them on @roddenberryfdn on Twitter. To follow No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra.

How does it all begin? Was there a singular experience or encounter that sparked a desire to work on social change? How do you go from being affected by an issue, to contributing a few times, to the realisation that there is more to this? - that working in social change could be the calling, or the profession, and how do you go from that to wanting to build an organisation and so much more?

In this No-Cost Extension special, we combed through our two seasons to bring you inspiring origin stories. Anu Aga, and her daughter Mehr Padumjee talk about how they found their way into philanthropy. Gagan Sethi, talks about the start of Janvikas, an organisation dedicated to fighting for human dignity and equality. And finally, Mathew Spacie on how Magic Bus, a foundation that uses a livelihood program to support disadvantaged youth and help them out of poverty, took shape.

For more information on No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval_Sanghavi and @Dasra

Deval Sanghavi is back with a new season of No-Cost Extension! In this season Deval’s talking to some of the most committed social leaders from India and around the world on what it’s like to work towards the challenging goal of equity. Deval and his guests also speak about what it is like to run organizations post COVID, bootstrapping and entrepreneurship, the work of philanthropy, and what it is like to work with the most marginalized and excluded communities.

Episodes drop November 30, 2023! Subscribe now where ever you get your podcasts to never miss an episode. For more information, go to www.dasra.org/nce.

This special episode is a conversation between Deval and Hansal Mehta that took place earlier this year at Dasra Philanthropy Week. Listen in as Hansal speaks to Deval about his perspectives on philanthropy, what he believes is real impact, and his lockdown beard.

Hansal Mehta is a well-known National Award winning filmmaker, director, and writer. Some of his well-known films are Shahid, City Lights, and more recently, the web series Scam 1992. Hansal is a longtime friend of the development sector. His wife Safeena Husain is a social worker and the founder of the non-profit, Educate Girls in Mumbai.

(14:27) "I think it's really important for us not to look at a metric of I'm giving 1% or 0.1% or 0.03%. It needs to be about what is the problem in front of me that we need to solve? And I think that's critical. And so for me, I guess it really starts with that. Which is, are we trying to really move people out of poverty and enable them to thrive? Or are we complacent when they survive? And I say this because many of the metrics that globally are looked at in terms of poverty are really mortality rates - is somebody living or dying? Literacy is defined by whether you could read or write your name, not whether or not you can read and write enough to gain an education, which leads to some sort of employment or that you can sign documents that you ensure are not cheating you, or that you can read even what's available to you with various government schemes and take action. And so I think the bar unfortunately is so low in terms of survival versus thriving societies."

The interview and the Q and A that followed have been edited. For the full version you can go to Dasra’s Youtube channel. For more information on NCE go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval_Sanghavi and @Dasra.