A day in life of a Project Manager in CSR or Philanthropy organization.

In this post we'll explore the roles and responsibilities of CSR and philanthropy professionals.

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In my last post, Mapping The Social Sector Ecosystem, I had done an exhaustive mapping of all types of social sector organizations and how they fit in the bigger picture with respect to money flow and impact.

Next, I am starting with a focused series on careers in various types of social sector organizations. To begin with, I am focusing on careers in funding organizations i.e. CSRs, Philanthropies. Before making a switch to them, it helps to know first what does working in funding organizations means on a day to day basis.

Before getting into the details, let’s talk about motivation …Why someone wants to work in CSR /Philanthropy organization jobs ?

Many social sector professionals want to work with a CSR, Philanthropy organization, and when I asked some of them Why, then the following frank reasons turned out to be the more frequently reported ones (in no specific order of preference)-

1. I want to have a better say in program design stage and achieve largr scale of social impact through my work

2. I want to work with a recognized corporate brand

3. After initial years of NGO experience, I want to get the experience of working with donors

4. I have worked in rural areas for few years and want to move to a metro city now.

5. Some financial commitments and education loan installments require me to find a better paying job for myself ( yes I know, you won’t say this in a job interview, and that’s fine.. but wanting to earn more money as a social sector professional, is not a sin,so do not feel guilty asking for more money. Howe ver, it’ll help if money is not the sole reason, specially in funding organization jobs)

   In some discussions, I realized that being in a so-called position of power, or a supposedly easy going corporate job is the primary objective of some persons, but honestly speaking, firstly, this is not the case in reality and second, any well meaning donor organization keeps a check on this attitude and hence you are better advised to not have any unrealistic expectations from CSR/philanthropy jobs !

So, what should you expect from a typical day of a mid-senior level job role in a CSR/Philanthropy ?

To get an answer to this question I talked to following mid-senior level professionals in CSR/philanthrophies. Super thankful to them for sharing perspectives in personal capacity.

1. Ashutosh Tosaria, Senior Manager - Programmes, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives

2. Kshitij Sharma, Head M&E, JSW Foundation

3. Kirti Maheshwari, Manager, Good & Green, Godrej Group

4. A.K. - ( This friend for his own reasons asked not to be named anywhere, by referring dialogue from Lagaan movie- Bhuvan ka naam itihaas ke pannon mein kahin nahi hona chahiye (Bhuvan’s name shouldn’t be recorded in the pages of history). Still acknowledging him for my satisfaction, as his inputs were equally helpful.

Based on these super informative discussions I have summarized a typical day for a manager in a funding organization, as a mix of one or more of the following activities -

1. Project Conceptualization- This stage involves conceptualizing new projects by doing need assessment studies and prioritizing the needs in consultation with communities, NGO partners, government departments, finance team, and internal organization leadership.

   An interesting practical scenario, shared by Kshitij Sharma from JSW CSR is that “Instead of funding a road construction request by a district magistrate, a CSR manager may need to negotiate with the local administration for funding a more strategically aligned project for the CSR. Or one may need to prioritize between the need for funding a local school building request by parents Vs funding a PHC facility requested by another section of the community.

   Hence a lot of local factors, government pressures, and organization vision & budget need to be balanced well at this stage.

2. Proposal Management- With the projects conceptualized and internal planning completed, the next step is to float RFPs inviting NGO partners for implementation. Some philanthropy organizations prefer to do direct implementation through their team on the ground, instead of implementation partners. In either case, project proposals need to be submitted for approval. A grant manager/project manager in the funding organization needs to do a lot of back and forth communication with the eligible NGOs for clarifications and needs to provide inputs for fine-tuning the proposal before being shortlisted.

3. Due diligence - This requires a background check of potential NGO partners. Due diligence mainly includes desk research of annual reports, financial statements, legal documents, reference checks etc. For big-ticket size projects, due diligence may also include a visit to NGOs offices, field visits, and interactions with target communities. Each funder creates its own checklist for due diligence. If it looks like a lot of work, don’t worry, talking to Kirti (Godrej Group), I realized there’s a team that often helps with legal and financial parts but at the same, you may have to anchor the whole due diligence process. Hence mind it! No running away from the details and sweat!

4. Networking- This is an activity that won’t be written in many JDs or may be written as “Stakeholder Management” but it helps many CSR professionals in day-to-day work. The continuously evolving laws, Covid type emergencies, and market slowdowns often require the mid-senior level managers to check around how others are responding to the situation. During the recent COVID crisis while many CSRs committed funds to Covid relief they struggled to find good NGOs in a timely manner. Hence many funding organizations shortlisted NGO proposals based on positive references from reliable networks or from their existing pool of NGOs. Hence, if you are not very social or social, it doesn’t matter, networking outside the organization will be required some time or other!

5. Documentation- Each new project comes with its bundle of email chains, MOUs, balance sheets, expense sheets, monthly reports, photos, approval letters, project completion certificates, and what not! Managing all of these at one place and finding the right ones at right time is also a skill in itself! Wherever there are big funding commitments involved, good documentation is unavoidable!

6. Monitoring & Evaluation - For the approved projects under implementation, monitoring and evaluation includes preparing reporting frameworks for selected projects/NGO partners, for monthly/quarterly progress reporting of target vs achievement on activities done, outputs, outcomes, and impact achieved. You may be expected to analyze the data, makes sense out of it, and seek clarifications wherever required. Both quantitative & qualitative techniques are applied for M&E. Many M&E projects are outsourced to third-party M&E agencies but still it requires someone from the funding organization to question the approach, results, and insights from the M&E studies. If you ask any mid-level funding organization manager, most of the time goes into this effort bucket! I also see this as a good opportunity to get exposure to multiple sectors at the same time.
   

7. Field Visits - Here comes the interesting part of work which helps you remain in touch with the ground realities, especially if your job is mainly head office based. You won’t be able to gain the trust of your NGO partners if you’re not aware of the grassroots reality in which they operate. I was talking Ashutosh ( APPI) and even at his position of a senior program manager, his most of the time is spent traveling to the partner NGO locations, learning from their models, and helping them with necessary support wherever required. Field visits are not meant to be an event for extensive photo-ops but an opportunity to learn from the field workers’ experiences, interact frankly with the community members and understand the development process through a bottom-up lens.

8. Budget management- A significant part of the job involves tracking project-wise budget allocations and disbursement to NGO partners, verifying the utilization receipts, and ensuring that the planned annual budgets are spent and reported in a timely manner. Many new professionals spend their time learning which type of expense can be reported under which budget head. Since there are risks of legal actions against CSRs if they don’t spend their prescribed CSR budget, hence this activity is most critical from a compliance point of view.

9. Communications - While creating an impact on the ground is the central focus of the well-meaning funding organizations, at the same time communicating about the same to relevant stakeholders is an important exercise for many of them, one of the important reasons being corporate brand building. Many potential investors actively track the ESG(Environment, Social & Governance) reports of the corporates, before investing in their businesses. As I write this article, in August, many acquaintances in corporates are parallelly busy writing and iterating their annual reports to be released by September. Many project managers might be parallelly checking the photo albums of their projects and sharing the same with the communications team and also posting the same on social media pages.

10. Employee Volunteering Programs - Many CSRs also run employee volunteering programs under their CSR initiatives. These programs engage employees directly in socially relevant activities of one time nature ( tree plantations, relief distribution etc) or ongoing nature ( monthly contributions, monthly school student interactions etc). But the people behind activities are often the CSR managers working jointly with HR team, motivating the employees to enroll and doing all the followups and tracking of these volunteering activities. “It’s quite a demanding work actually and often takes up half the working time !” Says Nidhi Navadia, BMC Software CSR

Well, if you are still reading this, now you can hopefully visualize a typical day of a professional in a funding organization. Don’t get overwhelmed by the long list of tasks. The priority, frequency, and the time of doing the above tasks may vary depending on which part of the financial year you are currently in. During the first and second quarter of the financial year, many funding organizations focus on preparing annual plans, identifying new partners, doing impact assessments of the previous year’s projects. Mid-year is spent in implementation, field visits, course correcting, and regular fire fighting. The last quarter is mostly about ensuring the spending target achievements, financial reporting and other year-end activities.

1. In my next article, I plan to cover the qualifications, experience, knowledge areas and skills required to join and progress in funding organizations. If you found this article useful and wish to receive them routinely in your inbox, do subscribe below.

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