Giving Compass' Take:

• The author explains how CSR initiatives and funding need to be strategic and sustainable in India to address poverty issues. Corporations must make long-term partnerships with civil society organizations or nonprofits to achieve this goal. 

• How can nonprofits ensure that CSR funding is sustainable? 

• Read more about how to implement effective CSR missions in India. 

Poverty in India is a complex phenomenon. The scale and expanse of poverty and inequality is immense.  There is no single silver bullet that will solve the problem of poverty and inequality in India and therefore, any effort at alleviation will have to, as much as possible, address the root causes of poverty rather than just address the symptoms.

The space for mobilising communities through a process of knowledge and capability building has been the forte of civil society organisations, or nonprofits. Civil society has been a trailblazer in the domain of strengthening communities and facilitating sustainable and inclusive development with the community in focus, offering innovative solutions to the deeply entrenched problems of poverty, livelihood, health and education, environment, and so on.

This is where the bulk of CSR investments must primarily go—towards nurturing civil society, leading to more holistic development. We need to build institutions in civil society that are inspiring, so that the youth is drawn to dedicate themselves in the long-term and pursue their calling. The CSO space has to evolve as an overarching ecosystem for social change, which orchestrates partnerships with different stakeholders, including the state and the market, and catalyses change at scale.

Nonprofits are already recipients of CSR resources in a limited manner; these resources are more toward the delivery of specific outputs, in the short-term, and many-a-time, only as service contracts. There is limited money for institution building.

Most of these are not how CSR funds flow to nonprofits today, and there is need for this to change. We need to build enduring partnerships between corporate organisations and CSOs to bring about the transformational change that we envisage in society.

Read the full article about CSR funding in India by Narendranath Damodaran at India Development Review