Ecosystem Building

Strategic philanthropy is about giving focused on long-term goals. By design, it is research-based, using planning, strategy, and proven methods for implementation. It looks for ways to take results to scale using policy. There’s an urgent need to support endeavors that have taken on audacious goals, that work strategically and collaboratively using rigorous approaches.

Bringing together diverse sets of people, restoring their agency, and providing them with accessible infrastructure to solve their own problems, Societal Thinking is the endeavour to reimagine and realise exponential social change.

This idea that first found its expression as a television show and book (Uncommon Ground: Dialogues Between Business and Social Leaders, 2011) created by Rohini Nilekani. Co-created as a dynamic and expanding movement with the CAMP Advanced Mediation Practice and other network partners, Uncommon Ground aims to build a societal muscle for transforming conflict and dissonance into a creative impetus for change by serving as a conduit of shared know-how and competencies.

Work in this area focuses on building institutional capacity, technical expertise, and intellectual capacities for organisations working in the social sector. This field allows organisations to experiment and conduct research in areas where quantification is challenging, thus allowing long-term impact.

The intention of small grants is to leave the door open to discovering and supporting promising and new ideas that work closely with communities. Under this category, we support organisations to tide over operational challenges, fund projects that serve hard-to-reach communities or preserve and advance local knowledge & tradition, as well as enable local leaders to take their work to the next level.