Insights
Practitioner perspectives
Field notes, profiles, and reflections from practitioners shaping the social impact landscape across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific.
VenturePulse · Impact Capital
Behave As If Your Investor Is Already on Your Cap Table
Shinoj Koshy on what founders should get right before raising impact capital: impact, measurement, numbers, records, the right capital and the terms they sign.
Read more: Behave As If Your Investor Is Already on Your Cap Table
Women's Health & Livelihoods · Part 1 of 3
From Health Messenger to Village Entrepreneur
Komal Khanna on what it would take for the woman who carries health into her Rajasthan village to also earn a living there. Part 1 of 3.
Read more: From Health Messenger to Village EntrepreneurWomen's Health & Livelihoods · Part 2 of 3
Stop Paying Her by the Pad
Komal Khanna on the quiet conflict in paying a village health adviser from the pads she sells, and why paying her for the health work keeps her advice honest. Part 2 of 3.
Read more: Stop Paying Her by the PadWomen's Health & Livelihoods · Part 3 of 3
Who Pays When the Market Will Not?
Komal Khanna on who durably funds the health work a product margin cannot cover, and the questions to ask before calling a women-led model sustainable. Part 3 of 3.
Read more: Who Pays When the Market Will Not?
Childcare & Women's Livelihoods
Two Mothers, One Missing Crèche
Dr Sharmila Neogi on why both informal workers and salaried mothers need reliable childcare, and who should pay for it.
Read more: Two Mothers, One Missing Crèche
Integrity Due Diligence
Trust, but verify: what our sector can borrow from banking
Smeeta Basak on why checking a partner before you commit is not a sign that trust is missing. It is how trust gets built.
Read more: Trust, but verify: what our sector can borrow from banking
Governance · FCRA Compliance
What the Auditor Cannot See
Dr. (CA) Sanjay Patra on India's 2025 FCRA rules, and why linking financial records to field activities throughout the year matters more than an end-of-year reconstruction.
Read more: What the Auditor Cannot See
Perspective · Fractional Services
What If the Answer Isn't Another Hire?
Aprajita Singh on why changing funding and work patterns make fractional teams a practical way to access senior capability.
Read more: What If the Answer Isn't Another Hire?
Fundraising · Decision-Making
Nobody Counts the Cost of a Wrong Proposal
Pritpal Marjara on the invisible cost of chasing the wrong grant, the four questions every opportunity deserves, and why protecting a team's attention is now a fundraising discipline.
Read more: Nobody Counts the Cost of a Wrong Proposal
Organisational Diagnosis
Who Gets Asked?
Most organisational assessments hear from the easiest people to reach. Abhilash Philip, with Haricharan Conjeevaram Narayanan and Radhika Dhingra, on what happened in Timor-Leste when AI did the work that scales and practitioners made every judgement call.
Read more: Who Gets Asked?Organisational Diagnosis
Strength in Numbers
Pritpal Marjara on what assessing eighteen civil society organisations at once revealed that eighteen separate assessments never could, and how a donor should decide which findings need a cohort.
Read more: Strength in NumbersOrganisational Diagnosis
The Org Chart Lies
Every organisation runs on a hidden network its leaders rarely see. Abhilash Philip, with Radhika Dhingra and Haricharan Conjeevaram Narayanan, on what network mapping across eighteen organisations in Timor-Leste revealed.
Read more: The Org Chart Lies
Knowledge Management
The Filing Cabinet Was Never the Point
Radhika Dhingra on why knowledge management in development has spent too long measuring what it stores, and why the real test is whether knowledge moves, reaches decisions, and changes what programmes do.
Read more: The Filing Cabinet Was Never the Point
Civil Society & AI · India
Can AI Save Indian Civil Society?
The 2026 FCRA package demands more administration from India's NGOs than ever, while capping what they may spend on administering. Dr Abhijeet Pathak asks whether automation can change the arithmetic, and makes the case for a CSO incubator.
Read more: Can AI Save Indian Civil Society?
Coalitions & Collective Impact
When Rivals Become Allies: What Coalitions Do, and How to Know When Their Work Is Complete
Aprajita Singh and Abhilash Philip draw on a landscape study of eight global alliances, two decades of Collective Impact research, and direct secretariat experience to examine when coalitions unlock scale, and what their natural endpoint looks like.
Read more: When Rivals Become Allies: What Coalitions Do, and How to Know When Their Work Is CompletePerspectives · India · Sexual & Reproductive Health
The Baby Bust and the Donor Question: Reading The Economist's Warning from the Field
Dr Abhijeet Pathak reads The Economist's cover on India's fertility decline from the field, and asks what donors funding sexual and reproductive health should do next.
Read more: The Baby Bust and the Donor Question: Reading The Economist's Warning from the Field
Global Health · Nigeria · Maternal Health
We Are Not Just Counting Deaths. We Are Ending Them.
Dr. Dayo Adeyanju on what Nigeria's MAMII Programme is teaching the world about saving mothers, from Ondo's Abiye experiment to a national scale-up across 33 states and 172 priority LGAs.
Read more: We Are Not Just Counting Deaths. We Are Ending Them.Thought Leadership
The Bionic Model: A More Accountable Way to Use AI in Social Impact
The promise of AI for the development sector is real. So is the risk. KairoPact's Founder argues for a model that keeps the practitioner at the centre, where accountability belongs.
Read more: The Bionic Model: A More Accountable Way to Use AI in Social Impact
Guest Contributor · NPO Strategy
How NPOs Can Engage Positively with Mainstream Actors: Three Operational Steps Most Organisations Skip
Preethi Rao on why Theory of Change, stakeholder mapping, and communication strategy tend to fail NPOs trying to engage with the private sector, investors, and government, and how to fix each.
Read more: How NPOs Can Engage Positively with Mainstream Actors: Three Operational Steps Most Organisations Skip
Essay · Institutional Memory
Beyond Brochures: The Case for Organisational Biographies
A.J. Philip reflects on why NGOs and mission-driven institutions should document their journeys before memory disappears into files, cupboards and fading recollections.
Read more: Beyond Brochures: The Case for Organisational Biographies
Practitioner Profile · CSR
Depth Over Display: Gayatri Subramaniam on Shaping India's CSR Landscape
A biographical reflection on one of the practitioners who witnessed, and helped shape, the evolution of corporate social responsibility in India, and who serves as an advisor to KairoPact on CSR.
Read more: Depth Over Display: Gayatri Subramaniam on Shaping India's CSR Landscape