“Co-creating along with funders is a beautiful experience and that is how the relationship should be.” -Anjana Goswami

Equal Community Foundation (ECF) is based in Pune, India and has a mission to raise every boy in India to be gender equitable. In this Insight, ECF’s Executive Director Anjana Goswami shares her thoughts on the valuable role that funders can play as sounding boards to grantee partners. 

Some key takeaways from Anjana’s reflections:

• Sounding board support means funders having listening ears; funders being more empathetic; funders creating a safe space where organizations can be very transparent and open. 

• ECF has been fortunate to have amazing funders who are our sounding boards. They understand what we do and the ground realities. They understand it is not always a rosy picture: there are challenges, it is OK to have these challenges and together we can learn from them.

• Organizations can struggle when their relationship with funders is based purely on money, rather than being an equal partnership. They then fear how to communicate their challenges with funders. This results in a double pressure – the pressure of challenges occurring on the ground as well as the pressure of not knowing how to communicate these with funders. This work is so much easier when you can communicate whatever challenges you have and brainstorm solutions together.

• There are 2 key components of funders being sounding boards:

1. Creating space for organizations so that they can be open and not have concerns about how to communicate with funders.
2. Creating a space where you can brainstorm ideas and benefit from having somebody outside the team listen to you. That has worked especially well for ECF when they have been developing new ideas and programs. We can explore what might work or not work together. Co-creating along with funders is a beautiful experience and that is how the relationship should be.

• Having funders be a sounding board helped me personally when I took on the leadership role during the pandemic. Whilst dealing with the pandemic-related challenges, I was also dealing with my own vulnerability-related challenges in a new role. Having funders who listened to me and who were there for me when I needed someone to talk things through with, helped build my confidence to guide ECF through our challenges.

Learn more about Equal Community Foundation’s innovative work by visiting their website or contact Anjana Goswami (anjana.goswami@ecf.org.in) 

In collaboration with:

Anjana Goswami

Managing Trustee and Executive Director – Equal Community Foundation (ECF)