Impact/Failure
About Impact/Failure
Societal change is a tall, complex order with many moving parts and unique factors that could make or break an intervention. These programmes are designed to benefit those that exist on the margins of society and any gap in accepting and acknowledging failure could be critical. A bridge is necessary to achieve systemic, productive change. It is the need of the hour for us to come together and discuss our failures so we can avoid making the same mistakes, and recognise failure and learning as a core part of our organisational process.
Failure/
Our Journey
The Impact/Failure Conclave held in 2018 was an outcome of SELCO Foundation’s unwavering commitment to acknowledging failure and learning from it. The mission of the conference was to create an environment that encourages organisations to own their failures, understand what went wrong, learn what worked, and what can be carried forward.
Following the disruption caused by COVID-19, SELCO Foundation returned in November 2022 to host the second edition of the Impact/Failure Conclave. The theme for the two-day conference was Beyond the Binary, which highlighted the often neglected aspects of success in failure and failure in success. The conclave opened up the narrative, blurred the boundaries of success and failure, and flipped these concepts to view them on a spectrum of impact and learning.
Highlights from Impact Failure Conclaves
“When one starts implementing as a social entrepreneur, we often focus on donor expectations. But in philanthropy, we have to take the onus of trust and distribute agency and not solutions.”
Rohini NilekaniPhilanthropist, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies 
“At AECF, we are gifted with the openness to fail due to our challenge fund. 417 businesses
later, 300$ million deployed in 26 Sub--Saharan African countries; we are the house of failures -- from technology to geography! Those failures have led to observable systemic changes.”
Victoria SabulaCEO, Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund 
“Everyone in the impact investing industry is emulating what has been done in Silicon Valley in private equity and venture capital. There is no effort to find a new way. Impact investing should have its own narrative.”
Elena CasolariCo-founder and President, Opes Impact Fund 
“One in seven incubators is excellent, one in seven is a failure, and everyone else falls in between success and failure.”
Chintan VaishnavMission Director, Atal Innovation Mission 
“Defining success and failure in public policy is difficult. For instance, AMUL is a success but its replication is not. Similarly, the pilot National Rural Livelihood Mission was a success but its national-level replication was doubtful. There is a need to contextualise public policy.”
MS SriramProfessor, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore 
“We always thought the global financial crisis that involved millions of crores was a systemic crisis, we never imagined that micro-financing could be a systemic crisis. It involved millions of people, which is also a systemic issue.”
Usha Thorat,Former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India 
“In reality, science is overtaken by politics. The SROCC report on which 180 scientists had worked had to be released without two paragraphs which undermined the interests of two countries. We need to be good in politics as well as science if we want policies to be changed.”
Dr. Anjal PrakashProfessor, Indian School of Business 
“Disjointed economics, environment, and ecology affect systems thinking, ethical reasoning and deep listening. Bridging this gap requires looking ahead of Milton Friedman's work into Kate Raworth who speaks about 'Doughnut Economics'.”
Wilma RodriguesFounder and CEO, Saahas Zero Waste 
“Scale in my personal experience turns organisations into monsters. As a sector, can we re-conceptualise scale? Can we do it in an integrated manner with multiple players coming together to achieve it?”
Arvind LodayaFounder, Lodaya Consulting 
“How do you maintain start-up culture even at a scale stage? Start-up culture is very romanticised. It is impossible to have an organisation with 10,000 employees and maintain start-up culture. But we can still make an effort to maintain flexibility and openness in organisations.”
Sourav MukherjeeProfessor, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore 
“Today, there are 4,000 oxygen plants set up across the country. The problem that remains is 80% of these plants are non-functional. By the time these oxygen concentrators and plants were coming up, the crisis was almost over. The question for us now is, how are we going to make sure these are operational when the next crisis strikes.”
Neeraj JainPATH
“Har ASHA ko doctor banaoge kya? There was a pushback from the government and civil society which did not want to give them medical and technical training. Another big challenge in scaling home-based newborn care was that the role of the ASHA was primarily that of an activist and mobiliser. It was assumed that if she became a care provider, it would mean poor care for poor communities.”
Dr. Rajani VedBill and Melinda Gates Foundation 
“Over a period of time, we spent around 2.5 billion rupees on the Watershed Management project. In the last stage of the project the community ultimately threw away all the structures that were installed and asked the implementing NGO to leave. We spoke to them to understand the issue, and they asked us to come and spend more time with them in the village.”
PVS Suryakumar NABARD 
“COVID-19 was a problem that the travel industry transmitted but neither the railways nor the airlines had any idea what to do. Everybody was waiting on the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for directions. One way to deal with coordination is to recognise coordination is going to fail and design for it.”
Nachiket Mor The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health 
“When I went to the field, I realised I knew nothing about the field. The sense that people in front are beneficiaries is the reason for multiple failures in government schemes. We are not talking to them as partners in doing our work but merely treating them as beneficiaries.”
Gauri SinghIRENA 
“I am one of the first generations to experience the impact of climate change and I am also the last generation that can do something about climate change. I feel like I have a big responsibility here.”
Per HeggenesIKEA Foundation 
“It’s a disgrace that less than 2 percent of philanthropy money goes into climate change. On the other hand, there’s a huge opportunity as 98% of philanthropy money that is spent elsewhere must be spent on climate change.”
Per HeggenesIKEA Foundation
“We need to shift our gaze – from leading with energy we need to look at what can be done with that energy. We should ask how the farmer’s life will change. We need to adopt a need-driven approach as opposed to an energy-led approach.”
Stephanie JonesGood Energies Foundation 
“Culturally, we define success narrowly and appreciate it highly. Because of these narrow tight definitions, the collaborative spirit affects our ability to talk to each other about what is happening. The conversation should change.”
Dr. Veena Joshi,Energy and Development Consultant 
“Rare is the donor who says let me fund you after I find out how much you have failed. It’s not that inside organisations we don’t reflect but to come out and publicly be able to talk about failure has become much more difficult.”
Rohini Nilekani,Activist, Founder and Philanthropist 
“We hesitate to talk about our own failure but freely pass judgement on other people’s failures without giving them a chance to defend themselves.”
- Svati Bhogle,CEO, Tide, Managing Director, SustainTech India Private Limited 
“Choosing good, worthy problems is the first step to avoiding failure.”
- Robert Stoner,Deputy Director, Science and Technology, MIT Energy Initiative 
“How do you talk about failure? Very clearly, with brutal honesty, with humility as well.”
- Svati Bhogle,CEO, Tide, Managing Director, SustainTech India Private Limited
“If we dig a little bit deeper into success and failure, different cultures react differently. In the Netherlands, they celebrate the Prime Minister bicycling to work, which probably wouldn’t happen in the US.”
- Jeffrey Prins,Programme Manager of Renewable Energy ,IKEA Foundation 
“Lots of people talk about failures but they talk about the failures of the government, other agencies. We need to reach a point where people are comfortable talking about their own failures.”
- Pakzaan Dastoor,Former Associate Director, Dasra 
“If you think of the role of philanthropy, the role is to take risks.. And if the role of the philanthropy is to take risks with that comes the possibility of failure.”
- Pakzaan Dastoor,Former Associate Director, Dasra
“At the end of the day it’s to change the culture; a mindset question about large collaborations, large conversations, broadening the definitions, and designing new metrics to look at what’s changing on the ground.”
- Dr. Veena Joshi,Energy and Development Consultant
"The reason we always fail among big donors is that our work does not fit in a logframe, we cannot assume what will happen for the future of manual scavengers in the country, it is not about their struggle and achievement but how the rest of the country reflects and responds to what we are saying. That is the measure of our success."
- Bezwada Wilson,Activist, Founder of Safai Karmachari Andolan, and Ramon Magsaysay Awardee 
“If you are born into a particular caste or community in India, that itself is a failure. Society has already decided and designed my life to be a failure."
- Bezwada Wilson,Activist, Founder of Safai Karmachari Andolan, and Ramon Magsaysay Awardee
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Impact Failure 2022 Experiences
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Our Journey
The Impact/Failure Conclave held in 2018 was an outcome of SELCO Foundation’s unwavering
commitment to acknowledging failure and learning from it. The mission of the conference
was to create an environment that encourages organisations to own their failures, understand what went wrong, learn what worked, and what
can be carried forward.
The second edition of the Impact/Failure Conclave will be held in November 2022, the theme for which is Beyond the Binary. The idea is to open up the narrative of impact and failure in the development context, and examine interventions through the lens of successes in failures and failures in successes.
Submit Your Story
Share your failure story with us and contribute to a culture
that can admit and learn from what did not work, one where failing and learning are shared and celebrated.
Previous
Next
Submit Your Failure Story
Share your failure story with us and contribute to a culture that can admit and learn from what did not work, one where failing and learning are shared and celebrated.
