Pitched between a forested ridge and the boundless sprawl of Mumbai, the village of Kokanipada is home to 2,000 people, most of whom work as day laborers in India’s financial capital. Their children attend the Thane Municipal School No. 50, a cement building consisting of a dozen classrooms.

Read related topics about global education on Giving Compass 

Kartik is one of the Kaivalya Education Foundation’s Gandhi Fellows, recruited from India’s top universities to spend two years working with the principals of five government schools to help them become more effective leaders and, as a result, improve each school’s all-around performance. Many principals have minimal job-specific training and administrative experience before starting their positions. The Gandhi Fellowship program seeks to fill that gap. Last year, fellows such as Kartik worked with the principals at more than 1,200 schools, potentially impacting the lives of 250,000 children.

But in the next five years, Kaivalya, the brainchild of Aditya Natraj, a former finance consultant for KPMG, wants to reach 10,000 schools serving approximately two million children. To do so, its fellowship program will have to get far bigger, while working with far fewer resources than many of its counterparts in the United States and Europe.

The good news is that Kaivalya’s track record, current practices, and approach to growth suggest that it is poised to succeed. What’s more, its experiences hold lessons for other nonprofits in India and beyond.

Over the past year, The Bridgespan Group has studied 20 Indian nonprofit organizations, including Kaivalya, that have deftly managed the tension between scale and scarcity and delivered their services to hundreds of thousands and even millions of people. (See “Twenty Nonprofits, Millions Served” on page 21 for more details on each organization.)

Our research surfaced five recurring mind-sets for reaching many more people in need:

The Denominator Mind-Set. Stay focused on the size of the need, while remaining flexible in confronting it.
The Dignity Mind-Set. To serve many, elevate the humanity of each participant.
The Radical Frugality Mind-Set. When scarcity abounds, reduce costs while stretching impact.
The Innovative Hiring Mind-Set. Tap hidden talent from unexpected sources.
The Collaborative Mind-Set. Make government a partner, not an adversary.

If the world can learn from how India’s nonprofits extend their reach to millions, Indian nonprofits can learn from other parts of the world how to better define what success looks like and measure whether it has been achieved. Although each of the nonprofit organizations in our study tracked the number of people it has served, we would all benefit if they could achieve a more robust measurement of their total impact. That said, the denominator thinkers’ ability to refresh and renew is inspiring, and their approach to growth is worth others’ consideration.

Which brings us back to the Kaivalya Education Foundation. Recall that over the past eight years, Kaivalya has reached some 1,000 schools. To reach 10 times that number over the next five years, Natraj is moving his lens up the org chart, from school principals to district administrators. His theory is that since efforts to bolster leadership skills at the school level have been well received, helping district administrators become more effective will help make a difference, on a larger scale.

As of this writing, the foundation is running pilot programs in three school districts to test this new model; it won’t have a good handle on the results for two or three more years.

When gravity pulls one high-flying growth model past its peak, they won’t hesitate to fire up a different rocket and aim for the stars once again.

Read the source article at Stanford Social Innovation Review

Visit GivingCompass.org for more K-12 education resources