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Building Pioneering Institutions
Building pioneering institutions lies at the heart of The Convergence Foundation’s (TCF) approach. Institutions enable people to work together to solve complex problems at a systemic level, and to drive outcomes at scale over long periods of time. When oriented towards tackling the toughest challenges of India’s development, we believe this represents one of the highest returns on investment and effort for philanthropy in India today. TCF incubates new institutions as well as facilitates the growth of existing ones whose goals mesh with its own: rapid and sustained economic growth and inclusive development. We do this through a variety of means, principal among which are helping find or attract talent, building funding, and helping foster government partnerships. Thus, we help in CEO searches, looking for dynamic and passionate entrepreneurs with the right skill sets to lead these institutions. We also render assistance in setting up advisory boards that can provide effective governance and support for the growth of these institutions. We are extremely grateful to our advisory board members, council of mentors, champions, partners and friends—you all know who you are—for helping build these institutions together with us. TCF is an early-stage funder—we often provide a bulk of the funding for the first few years, giving organisations the space and flexibility to build their teams, develop and test their theory of change, and demonstrate proof of concept. Once they have demonstrated real-world impact and sustainability, our goal is for organisations to fully transition off TCF funding, allowing us to redeploy resources into backing new, bold, and risk-tolerant ideas.
