Introduction



“niiti”, a Sanskrit word means, in different contexts, policy, ethics, tenets. To us, who belong here, it is our raison d’etre, our touchstone. So we constantly turn to our ethics and tenets when we re-examine the basis of what we do and how we do it over and over again. This is our space to engage with our core, with you, our readers and companions on the path towards an equitable society in the deepest meaning of the word. Over the past years, there are several social issues and organisations that we have engaged with and been enriched with both experience and knowledge along the way. We believe that in creating a conversation platform for those engaged in the field, including some of our clients, partners, all of you out there who have reached this site wanting to be the change and others who have expertise to comment and critique, we can actually crowd-source actions and solutions for some of our most pressing social issues.

Some of these stories feature organisations and people who have been the change; others highlight innovative approaches to long-entrenched social issues; yet others point to ways in which change can be facilitated, simply. If you are inspired by them as well and motivated to replicate their work, or want to share inputs on other bright examples like these, do write to us at info@niiticonsulting.com.

This is your platform. Feel free to contribute, critique, and most importantly, converse.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Socially Yours

In the cyber-noise that is social media today, one can’t be blamed for wondering at the real value of trying to be heard out there in the midst of the world posting photographs of their school reunions, dinners, puppies, children, family get-togethers et al. 



However, recent numbers tell a compelling tale.
  • Facebook is the most browsed social network on social media with a large base of 100 Million users, clearly it is not fading away anytime soon in India. More than 80% of those users access Facebook via their mobile phone.
  • Total Twitter users in India are 33 Million and from this base 76% of users access it via their mobile phone.
  •  LinkedIn has 26 Million India users, of the total 300+ Million users.
  • Of the total chunk of 70 Million total users in Pinterest, 5.5 Million are from India.
(source: http://blog.digitalinsights.in/important-statistics-digital-and-social-media-users-in-india/05224987.html)

While the top brands on Facebook are dominated by the telecom industry, there is a very strong case for the social sector as well.
  1. Monies: It is possible, without ANY expenditure, to run a hard hitting social campaign. Yes, even without resorting to buying digital media. This is important for cash-strapped social campaigns.
  2. Honesty: Social media enables transparency and honesty like no other medium today.
  3.  Immediacy: The response time on social media is very VERY fast. Almost instantaneous in the case of Twitter in particular.
  4.  Reach: Time it right and post the right kind of localized matter and presto: you have a world-wide reach.
  5.  Partners: With the right kind of content, you can reach out to partners who would be difficult to access outside of the virtual world. Tag them, follow them, play relevant content and watch the magic.   
These are only a handful of reasons why it makes sense to be on social media, in particular for anything social (forgive the pun) that you might be doing. I once ran a gender safety campaign single-handedly off social media and look at the kind of response it generated (without any media outreach or PR on my part).

Now that I have (hopefully) sold you on the “why”, let’s take a quick look at the “how”. This is fairly involved and like any other outreach, requires an understanding of basic principles of communication.

Just like any sustainable communication strategy, social media needs strong content. This does NOT mean inventing news when there is none, but feeding in interesting content in a strategic manner. The content life-cycle lies at the heart of any social media strategy worth its salt. The “offline” feeds into the online and back into the “offline” or real-world to create a self-sustaining cycle (see figure)



The key to social media success lies in engagement rather than just adding on likes and followers. And the key to that lies in how strong your content is and how well it is presented. Do you listen to your followers? Respond to them? Invite them to engage with you in a manner that is not lost in the sea of social media?

Think on it.

We’re always there if you want to take the discussion on social media further. Just join the doer’s lab on social media (22nd January 2015). These labs are by and for practitioners and focus on practical tools and knowledge.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Creating a "culture of reflection"

Seven years ago, when I found myself actively involved with the social sector, I was deeply touched by the sheer number of interesting and passionate people I started meeting, all with a common goal of doing good. The reaction to the projects I worked on, the feedback from those who it touched made the whole shift from the corporate sector so totally worth it!

As I understood the sector better, and the process of running high impact social projects better, I realised that in so many cases, that the impact could have been so much more had it been captured well, gaps analysed and addressed to make the processes more efficient. In many cases, there is a strong "culture of doing" but an active "culture of reflection" is missing.

In one of the projects we at niiti were working on, where large scale rural livelihood initiatives have been deployed, we were amazed at the sheer scale of operations, the dedication of the staff and the commitment of the organisation for grassroots level change. Its admirable because bringing large scale change at the grassroots isn't the easiest thing. It takes a lot of hard work, unflinching commitment and selfless people to make it work.

But sometimes, "doing" can overwhelm and consume one so much that one forgets to pause to reflect. Given that almost all social sector projects are run rather frugally, determining from time to time whether processes can improved to make them more efficient may actually be more helpful in achieving the final mission.

Monitoring and evaluating (M&E) projects on a regular basis help bring in a "culture of reflection", and help identify gaps and inefficiencies in running operations, so that they can be improved or changed to achieve better results. This of course, is easier said than done. Often, to implement a good M&E design in an organisation requires change management strategies as a precursor. For, passionate grassroots workers may feel uncomfortable with the M&E team scrutinising their work, and may resist or rubbish the whole process in its entirety. These are legitimate concerns and absolutely need to be addressed. I recently chanced upon a wonderful site (http://www.unodc.org) where some examples of the right approach to bringing in this reflective culture through implementation of a good M&E process are.


Often, monitoring and evaluation as a task is thought of as an end tool to "measure" social impact. Yes, it definitely could have uses to measure social impact, but creating organisations that are open, adaptable and focussed on achieving  their social mission through processes that are most effective in a dynamic environment is a far greater output of having monitoring and evaluation programmes as an integral part of operations. 

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Demystifying the Company Bill 2013 - Part 2

To create sustainable social impact, funding is important but often it is not directly proportionate to the depth of impact.  The Companies Bill, 2013 (Section 135 of the Indian Companies Act) makes it imperative for corporates in India to spend a portion of their profits on CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). On Dec 19th, 2013, we initiated a conversation on twitter to discuss the various aspects of the law and how organisations can leverage this for creating lasting impact and execute this in the spirit that it was intended.

We have attempted to summarize the conversation that came up during the tweet chat in the form of two Q&As for ease of reading. The first one (posted here) is around the legal aspects of Section 135 of the Indian companies Act that was passed earlier this year. The one below outlines recommendations around choosing, monitoring, evaluating and reporting on CSR projects.

If you have any questions on the Bill that have not been covered here, or have a point of view to share on any aspect of doing business in a responsible manner and creating sustainable social impact, please write to us at info@niiticonsulting.com or leave a message on our twitter or facebook pages. 


Q1. Isn't it enough for us to measure how much money we’re spending, to know if we’re being effective or not?

 A1. In the social sector, it is not always the case that if you spend more money the amount of positive impact you create will increase.  Usually what people do with what they get – be it products, skills or a  sense of empowerment – determine the positive impacts/changes in their lives that they are able to realize.  You must measure these “things people do” and the impacts that they realize to know if you are being effective or not.

Q2. Isn't this something that can wait until the project is over?

A2. To know whether someone has realized a positive change in his/her life or not, you have to know what his/her situation was (the baseline) before your project began.  In turn, you need to have articulated what impacts you expect your project to create, and how, to know what baseline data to capture.  All of this should happen before the project begins.  In addition, regular monitoring during the life of the project will help you to detect problems early and make course corrections if necessary.  This requires you to know what to monitor, which again should be connected to the impacts you want to create.


Q3. What will a project evaluation tell us?

A3.Project monitoring will answer questions like, “What is the progress toward goals?”  “What are the short-term results (outcomes)?”

Q4. What will a project monitoring tell us?

A4. Project evaluation will answer questions like, “Why did these outcomes occur?” “What are the long-term results (impacts)?”  “What unanticipated results occurred?”  “What are the knock-on impacts?”  Some evaluation designs can also answer the question of whether the project caused the outcomes measured.

Q5. What are the steps to setting up an M&E system?

A5. The first step is to create a logic model that articulates what impacts you expect your project to create, and works backwards through your outcomes, outputs, activities and inputs.  The second step is to formulate indicators at all these levels: impacts, outcomes, outputs, activities and inputs.  The third step is to determine which indicators you will measure through monitoring, and which through evaluation.

Q 6. Isn't there a standard set of indicators we can just use?

A6. If your indicators are not relevant to the changes your project is trying to create, they will not tell you anything about whether you have been successful or not.  Therefore, it is very important that your indicators are directly relevant to your project.  However, once you have decided what you want to measure, standard indicators can sometimes be useful in telling you how to measure it.

Q 7. What is a good evaluation design?

A7.  A good design is one that is both feasible and is able to meet the requirements of the evaluation (in terms of what needs to be assessed, and the levels of statistical precision needed).  Some of the factors that determine feasibility are the time, data and resources available.  Without a control/comparison group, you will not be able to say definitively that any positive changes that have been measured were caused by your project and not by external factors.