Mapping The Social Sector Ecosystem

Many of us look at only CSRs, NGOs & Consultancies as the potential employment avenues. But that's not the case. In this article, I'll take a birds eye view of the social sector ecosystem.

Welcome back to my weekly newsletter of Devsec Career Network, a career guidance and mentoring support network I am creating for the young social sector professionals. If you have not yet subscribed to the blog but have started taking my weekly posts even a bit seriously, then I’ll be shameless in asking you to first subscribe, before moving forward ! Mehnat and time lagta hhai bhai, it’s not easy !

In my last post, I talked about the generalists and specialists approach to career planning by young social sector professionals.

In this post I am going to share a birds eye view of social sector ecosystem, so that the beginners in social sector can make an informed choice about which type of organizations they can work with in near future or in long term. Yes this may sound easy and simple, but scroll below quickly once, yes I was also laughing at myself, when I finished listing all the different types of organizations !

One way to understand the social sector ecosystem can be to understand 4 key players, whose end objective is same i.e. creating social impact, however they play their own unique roles in the ecosystem.

1. Regulators (Government & its allied agencies)

2. Funders ( Government, CSR, Foundations, Philanthropy, Bilateral & Multilateral Agencies, International Donors)

3. Implementers ( Large/Medium/Small NGOs/Direct Implementation by Govt, or by CSRs/Foundations, Social Business)

4. Ecosystem Builders/Facilitators ( Consulting Firms/ Service Providers/Research & Advocacy/ Academia/Individual Consultants/ Media )

Typically those who fund also drive the macro level development agenda/decisions/ resource allocation. With inputs from the Facilitators/Ecosystem Builders, the regulators, funders and implementers keep taking the corrective actions or new initiatives on a time to time basis.

Please see below diagram to understand the social sector ecosystem better.

If there was one thing I wanted you to take away from this post, it was the big picture shared in above diagram. Sometime it helps to step back and see where you are working in the bigger picture, you can accordingly plan which direction you want to take next.

Note: Experienced professionals may continue reading further at cost of re-reading some known facts ! This will be more beneficial for the younger/recent graduates with relatively lesser exposure to the social sector. As a top up, I have shared relevant links to public databases of organization names under each category to help you explore them independently for various career opportunities or for other outreach objectives.

A little brief on each of the above mentioned types of organization is listed below.

Funders

1. Government - Needless to say, government is the largest funder of social initiatives in India. In it’s regulator role , it also sets the framework within which various social sector organizations operate.

2. Corporate Social Responsibility ( CSR) - As per the Companies Act 2013¹, Corporates are required to spend prescribed budget for Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, if the company (including its holding or subsidiary) is meeting either of the following conditions during the immediately preceding financial year:

   • Net worth of Rs. 500 Crore or more, or

   • Turnover of Rs. 1000 crore or more, or

   • Net Profit of Rs. 5 crore or more

   Corporates traditionally implement their CSR projects directly or through implementation partners, who are either large NGOs or in some cases local NGOs near the factory/plant sites. Many CSRs also prefer to use part of their CSR budgets for directly funding government initiatives. Some of the well known CSRs in India are Tata Motors Ltd, Mahindra Group, Marico Ltd, Reliance Industries Limited etc. The National CSR Portal is a very good and exhaustive database of companies involved in CSR.

3. Corporate Foundations² - Some corporates implement their CSR mandate by funding a foundation established by the company (foundations are a Section 25 company) or a subsidiary/associate company. This model provides more flexibility and more control over their programs. Some popular corporate foundations are Tech Mahindra Foundation, Wipro Foundation, SBI Foundation.

   Some corporates take a mixed approach by implementing some projects through their corporate foundation and other projects through partner NGOs of the corporate CSR vertical.

   An exhaustive (but unverified) list of Corporate Foundations in India is provided here

4. Philanthropy - Voluntary funding for social causes, by Indians or foreign based High Net-worth Individuals, family foundations, corporates philanthropy initiatives, comes under the ambit of philanthropy. There are quite large philanthropy initiatives in India, including Tata Trusts, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives ( APPI) and others. They often report their impact and financials on a voluntary basis, unlike the mandatory CSR Reporting by the Corporates( Under the CSR Act 2013).

   Read more about India’s Philanthropy ecosystem in the report published by Dasra, Bain & Company here³

   Disclaimer: While Corporate CSR verticals, Foundations, Philanthropies may look synonymous in their names, work and definition but there are quite many legal and operational differences in their work, which are out of scope of this article. Above definitions are purely for an introductory purpose.

5. Impact Investment Agencies - These agencies are involved in making investments with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. Some prominent impact investors in India are Asha Impact, Intellecap Group, Omidyar Network etc.

   Read more about the Indian Impact Investors here

6. Bilateral Agencies - A bilateral organization is a government agency or nonprofit organization receiving funding from its home country's government and then deploys it in a developing country, in order to meet their geo-political objectives. Some common bilateral agencies in India are USAID, Australian Aid, DFID, JICA.

7. Multilateral Agencies -Multilateral agencies provide guarantees and loans, technical assistance for investments that are aligned with their development goals. Some common multilateral agencies in India are UNDP,UNICEF,UNWFP, World Bank, Asian Development Bank.

   Read more about multilateral agencies in India here

Implementers

1. Large NGOs - This is a fairly well known category, having large NGOs typically working with state/central govts or large scale funders/CSRs on public health/education/agriculture and other projects at large scale eg: Multiple districts/state(s) . Lot of these organizations work in a hub and spoke model with smaller NGO partners for local implementation of projects. Eg: CARE India, PRADAN,TRIF, Pratham. They also work on generating research based evidence to mobilize targeted funds for their causes. For eg: Jhpiego, MAMTA etc.

   One of the verified NGO databases in public domain is available through Guidestar India here .

   A special note on fellowships: Many large NGOs work on the ground through a team of trained/mentored fellows, who are typically freshers/ experienced professionals from corporate background, with interest in social sector, or they are young post graduates from social sector academic institutes. Gandhi Fellows, Teach India Fellows, Aspirational District Fellows, are some of the well known fellowships.

   A detailed must-see list of fellowships has been compiled & made available by IDR at this link

2. Medium/Small NGOs - Many (not all) of these organizations are the unsung heroes working on ground as the last mile partner of a Large NGO. They often have a very good understanding of field realities, good local presence and impact in their society. They either raise grants from Large NGOs, local government departments, or state government schemes or work on CSR projects of factories/organizations in their vicinity. Many such organizations are part of networks like VANI or Guidestar India

3. Social Business - This is an interesting category of organization, which can be often sub grouped in following way -

   • Product based business - These are often for-profit startups that build products which are directly or indirectly creating social impact. Typically they reduce the cost of ownership, running cost or address very localized product use cases not addressed by mainstream products in that category. For eg: affordable agriculture machinery, low cost solar lamps, multilingual kinder garden education kits, affordable healthcare devices, low maintenance toilets etc. SELCO, Garv Toilets , Sickle Innovations , are some such fast growing organizations.

   • Service based business - These organizations often provide specialized skills/knowledge based services to social sector organizations. For eg: Legal advisory firms, impact consulting firms like Sattva, IT Consulting firms like Dhwani Rural Information Systems ( Yes, I work here !)

     There are others who facilitate last mile access to services or products which were not available earlier through mainstream market players. For eg: Microfinance companies provide easy access to loans products at doorstep. Sales & distribution companies like Dharma Life delivers essential products through a Village Level Entrepreneur Model. Corporate initiatives like E-Chaupal by ITC provides timely access to important information & agriculture commodity prices to farmers.

     Many of these social businesses also parallelly fall under the next category, Facilitators & Ecosystem Builders.

Facilitator & Ecosystem Builders

1. Consulting Firms - Development consulting firms play a crucial role in sharing knowledge, setting the agenda for development, by providing in-depth research based consulting, program design and delivery support to clients.

   Governments & large corporates often takes advice of the consulting firms like KPMG, E&Y, Deloitte, PWC, Grant Thornton etc. These organizations setup Project Management Units(PMU) for large scale projects and coordinate them through various partner organizations.

   Many Corporates and NGOs take services of specialized social sector focused research & consulting firms like Sattva Consulting, Dalberg Advisors, The Fourth Wheel Consulting, Sambodhi, Samagra, Bridgespan India, NRMC,FSG,BCG etc. The mandate of these firms is quite wide within one or more thematic areas, and covers one or more aspects of strengthening the social sector organizations/initiatives eg: Program design, fundraising support, delivery, monitoring & evaluation, capacity building, reporting, due diligence, knowledge management etc.

2. Fund & Network Aggregators - These organizations specialize in convening multiple stakeholders around a cause, advising donors, raising focused capital for social sector interventions, designing and implementing projects with a network/cohort of NGO partners. The good ones in this group have a skin in the game and setup relevant support teams, monitoring mechanisms to ensure desired impact is achieved on ground. Some of the most well known organizations in this group are Dasra, Samhita, AVPN, United Way, ATMA .

   Online Crowdfunding platforms like GiveIndia are a major player in this group.

   Before COVID imposed lockdown I Always looked forward to attend the networking conferences by these organizations and the lunches at these conferences, of course paid ones !

3. Social Incubators - A social incubator has a specific focus on providing financial and non financial support, guidance, networking platform to startups creating social impact. Some of the popular social incubators in India are CIIE@IIMA, UnLtd India, Villgro etc. Learn more about some of the popular social incubators here⁴

4. Academia - Social sector academic institutions need no introduction. Most of you are an alumnus of a bachelors or master course in Social work or rural management. These institutions also take up a lot of funded research projects, impact assessment studies, industry training workshops through their doctoral fellows, research cells, faculties. Some eg include: IRMA,TISS,XIMB, Nirmala Niketan,XISS etc.

5. Research & Advocacy Agency/Think Tanks - These agencies work with government, political organizations, funders, grass root organizations to generate quantitative and qualitative research based evidence and awareness on specific issues related to public policy, health, education, social justice, gender & inclusion etc. Some of these organizations include Center for Policy Research, CFAR, Dvara Research, Brookings India, J-Pal, Praxis etc.

6. Media - This is a fast emerging space with digital first platforms being the dominant ones. They have a focus on sharing reflections, insights & news related to social sector initiatives from time to time. One of the credible and popular media platforms in social sector is India Development Review. I am a big fan of their articles ! Other popular platforms with regular job vacancies, news of social sector are ngobox.com, Devnetjobs.com

7. Individual Consultants - Theses are domain specialists or skill based specialists with experience ranging 2-3+ years to 15-20+ years in social sector, and they help government, funders & NGOs with all support activities like program design, technical inputs, strategy, proposal development, monitoring & evaluation, project management, communications & outreach etc.

Pheww !! From career planning point of view, its quite a wide variety of players to choose from !

Many of the organizations mentioned above may fit in more than one category, and if you want me to add a new category, feel free to comment or mail with a strong reasoning, I’ll be happy to discuss & update the article.

Since this was already a long post, I didn’t talk about career opportunities in this one. I felt it was important to set the foundation first. In the next post, I’ll talk about the various career opportunities available with these organizations.

Meanwhile, If you want to connect with mid-senior level professionals in these organizations, feel free to reply to this mail and share your request. I’ll be happy to connect.

Now that you have come till the end of article, and if you still haven’t subscribed to the blog, be smart and subscribe below !

1. https://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2021/224640.pdf

2. https://www.livemint.com/Companies/YusnG28qGd6DPH5qkI92CP/Large-firms-prefer-setting-up-foundations-for-CSR.html

3. https://www.dasra.org/assets/uploads/resources/Bain_Dasra_India_Philanthropy_Report.pdf

4. https://www.thebetterindia.com/51427/11-social-incubators-helping-indian-social-entrepreneurs-transform-lives/