May 2025 – Edition 03
ILSS Conversation
Trust, Transparency, and Time: Forging Strong Funder-Grantee Partnerships
Lessons from long-term, trust-based relationships between two leading nonprofit founders and philanthropic foundations.
India is witnessing a notable surge in domestic philanthropy, particularly through family philanthropy. According to the India Philanthropy Report 2025, private giving is expected to grow at 10–12% annually over the next five years, with family philanthropy accounting for 40% of this growth. There are now over 300 family offices in India — up from 45 in 2018 — indicating a shift toward more institutionalised, value-driven, and long-term giving. This growth offers a significant opportunity: to move beyond short-term, project-bound transactions and foster deep, trust-based partnerships between funders and nonprofits. This offers a significant opportunity: to move beyond short-term, project-bound transactions and foster deep, trust-based partnerships between funders and nonprofits.
Relationships form the cornerstone of successful philanthropic partnerships.
Relationships form the cornerstone of successful philanthropic partnerships. People give to people. Yet, this essential ‘soft’ dimension of fundraising often receives insufficient attention. At the ILSS Centre of Excellence for Fundraising, we recognise that fundraising success depends as much on these interpersonal elements as on structured systems and processes. Relationship building is an indispensable component of strategic fundraising, particularly when engaging with family philanthropy. These are donors who not only contribute significant resources but do so driven by deep personal commitments. They seek involvement and expect meaningful engagement, the quality of which depends on the strength of these relationships.
This article draws from close conversations between two pairs of philanthropic partners as they reflected on their shared journeys:
- Poonam Choksi of A.T.E. Chandra Foundation alongside Saransh Vaswani of Saajha
- A family foundation (here referred to as Foundation X) with Zubin Sharma of Project Potential
These dialogues revealed the essential nourishment that allows trust-based relationships between funders and grantees to take root, flourish, and bear fruit across seasons of collaborative work.
Getting Started
Saransh’s relationship with A.T.E. Chandra Foundation pre-dates the beginning of the Foundation. As a Young India Fellow, he was first supported by Amit Chandra through the Mother Teresa Fellowship (which supported early-career individuals working in the social sector) in 2015. Once the foundation was in place, Saajha continued to receive support. In 2019, when ATECF started innovating with dedicated capacity-building grants, they were looking for organisations that were willing to experiment with them, were able to demonstrate an urgent need for and commitment to organisation building, and clarity on their roadmap to success. Saajha was an easy pick because they were a growing team with challenges that were openly and transparently communicated. It became clear that there was alignment in the challenges they were facing and what ATECF was trying to achieve through its capacity-building grants. Their shared commitment to organisation building was evident. Since then, the relationship has evolved to multi-year capacity-building grants for functions like monitoring and evaluation, HR and fundraising.
Foundation X became connected with Zubin Sharma of Project Potential through a portfolio organisation. They found Project Potential’s work to be a strong mix of strategic clarity and grassroots impact and aligned perfectly with their interests. ‘Zubin and his team met us where we were in terms of our philanthropy journey,’ they shared. As institution builders, they were willing to take a bet on the organisation by providing flexible funding as they set up a pilot project. According to the funder, Zubin inspired confidence as an entrepreneur. His willingness to acknowledge the risks, think about contingencies, and patiently address their sceptical questions inspired comfort in the knowledge that the organisation will be able to work with uncertainty.
For both partnerships, alignment on purpose and values proved essential. The area of work and the organisation’s approach were of interest to the funder, and the relationship evolved through shared values of transparency on challenges, commitment to organisation building and openness to risk and innovation.
Trust is the Core
On probing the reasons behind the successful partnerships, trust emerged as the central theme in both conversations. This is also reflected by the widely-read nonprofit blogger, Vu Le, who shares that there is ‘a pervasive lack of… trust between funders and nonprofits’ that is ‘affecting all of us and our abilities to survive and do our work.’ From the two funder-grantee conversations, here are the common principles that emerged as the founding blocks for trust-building:
- Feeling Safe in Sharing Challenges
The Centre for Effective Philanthropy identifies ‘Comfort approaching foundation if a problem arises’ as one of three key indicators of a successful partnership. This is exemplified in both partnership conversations.Poonam admired how Saajha has openly shared challenges like a funder dropping out or governance issues. Saransh shares how ATECF’s long-term commitment to the organisation enabled him to share challenges openly, remarking that this approach has been distinct from that of other funders. ‘With ATECF, the conversations have not been about proving myself. They are about saying this is happening to me and then figuring a way out with them.’ Building on this, he shares that Saajha is trying to emulate this model with other funders as well, strongly recommending that org leaders approach funder conversations with honesty rather than from a place of fear.
Zubin shares that he is in touch with Foundation X pretty consistently. When challenges come up, they discuss them quite quickly. ‘It’s hard to put into words, but it’s the feelings I am left with. I trust that they trust our intentions, and therefore I can share things with them.’ He adds that honesty pays off in the longer term, sharing, ‘If you’re not forthcoming today and pretend that there’s better news than there is, at some point it’s going to show up somewhere and it’s going to sour the relationship.’
- Challenging with Care
As external witnesses, donors can identify long-term challenges that nonprofits might miss while caught in day-to-day operations. As donors focused on org capacity building, ATECF pushed Saajha toward sharper monitoring and evaluation, moving from outputs to outcomes with a third-party evaluation finalised after years of discussion across the table.With everybody, there is a point of pain where they are still figuring it out and don’t have answers
‘With everybody, there is a point of pain where they are still figuring it out and don’t have answers,’ says Poonam. ‘Saransh knows before the check-in what I’m going to ask about. I will push him for results. It is not easy.’ This challenging comes from a place of support. ‘It’s not about power dynamics. It’s because this will help you establish yourself as a solid organisation in the sector, which will then open many more doors.’ Saransh acknowledges this has already happened with their sharper monitoring and evaluation process.
Foundation X echoes this. ‘There have been times when I have an opinion and Zubin and the team think that it’s going to go differently. I think they know how to just express a contrary opinion without making it antagonistic. These are much softer aspects of communication, but really important to build that trust and to also enable more long-term partnership.’
- Shared Belief in Learning & Growth
Both funders appreciated the founders’ openness to feedback, reflected in funder interactions with their organisations as well. Foundation X shared that with other organisations, they ‘have to keep driving home that I’m asking questions because I want the project to succeed and it’s okay to be wrong.’ They appreciated the fact that ‘there’s never once been any sort of defensiveness in Zubin and team while responding to questions that might highlight some of the shortcomings of the project or the implementation.’The Foundation has mutual trust in intentions. As Zubin shares, ‘there’s a larger piece in this than my ego or anyone’s ego, which is that we’re trying to make people’s lives better. Anything that brings clarity on how we can do that better is a gift.’ He adds that ‘Trust is a two-way street’ and requires reciprocity. The fact that Foundation X accepted their invitation to visit their operations in Bihar demonstrated their intention to build a meaningful engagement while making it easy for Zubin and team to clearly demonstrate the direct impact of their work.
With ATECF, Saajha was able to discuss challenges with the mode of reporting required, and ATECF listened and adjusted, strengthening both the process and the relationship. Now, Saajha approaches prospective funders with confidence to build partnerships where there is space for learning and an intention to grow together. ‘We are constantly setting expectations for each other on what the best in standard looks like. It’s aspirational for me,’ Poonam sums it up.
Relationship Building for Resilience
Bridgespan’s research through the Pay-What-it-Takes Initiative confirms that multi-year funding relationships are fundamental to nonprofit resilience. These partnerships deepen over time, fostering mutual understanding and enabling organisations to strengthen the quality of program implementation and allowing them to pursue innovative approaches. 72% of nonprofits report that insufficient organisational development funding prevents them from building essential capabilities that drive better outcomes. Both partnerships detailed here illustrate the transformative potential of trust-based capital: ATECF’s support enabled Saajha to strengthen monitoring and evaluation systems, enabling them to clearly demonstrate impact to attract new funders, while Foundation X’s investment allowed Project Potential to attract crucial talent for their pilot initiative.
This shift matters profoundly as the funding landscape in India evolves. Traditionally, international foundations have been key for the long-term funder-grantee partnership required for financial resilience for nonprofit organisations. With a shift away from foreign funding and domestic family philanthropy now increasingly supporting underfunded causes — 40% backing gender equity initiatives, 29% investing in climate action, and 39% aiming to strengthen the ecosystem — there exists a significant opportunity for Indian family foundations to plug this gap.
This makes it the right time for nonprofit leaders to examine their current approach to attracting new donors and stewarding existing funders, particularly domestic family philanthropies. As our two conversations demonstrate, when authentic, trust-based relationships are established and nurtured over time, meaningful financial support naturally follows.
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