From listening to your donors to focusing on ground-level data, here are learnings from Rajasthan on using CSR funds more strategically.
With the passing of the Companies Act in 2013, India became one of the first countries to mandate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).1 Raising more than INR 50,000 crores from 2014 to 2018 alone, the Act has reshaped corporate social spending and expanded access for development financing to governments.
To better leverage CSR funds, online CSR portals have emerged across India. These portals were originally developed by state governments attempting to supplement their own budget shortfalls and provide additional resources towards state development plans. They hosted government-created social development projects that relied on crowdsourcing from corporate donors to fund and implement.
Over the past three years, in states including Odisha, Gujarat, and Telangana, these CSR portals have further developed into information repositories, resource centres, and more grandiose funding platforms for CSR projects. While they attempt to facilitate investment and reduce barriers to corporate social spending, poor implementation and limited flexibility have affected their potential to bring greater efficiency and alignment to CSR spending.
To address these setbacks, the International Innovation Corps, in partnership with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, supported Rajasthan’s Department of Education to develop and launch a sector-specific CSR portal, the first in the country. What follows are a few key insights that have helped Rajasthan raise more than INR 130 crores for government education, to date.
Making strategic use of CSR funds
Across India, the education sector receives the largest proportion of CSR funding. In 2016-17 in Rajasthan, the state received a total of INR 327 crores in CSR funding—32 percent of which, INR 106 crores, went to education. However, the majority of that funding was implemented independently, with limited transparency or overlap with the state’s education priorities.
In late 2017, the Gyan Sankalp Portal was created. An education-sector portal, it was designed as an interactive funding platform for the state’s government schools. While the portal doesn’t dictate where companies spend their CSR funds, it does enable the government and corporate donors to collaboratively address needs in the education sector, use data to determine where the largest gaps are, ascertain what funding is available, and plan for how CSR can contribute.