Ingrid Srinath at CRY: combining values and viability in a social venture

Written by Philip Anderson

Saturday, 01 August 2009 00:00

Page 1 of 2

In 1979, a 25 year old Air India purser, Rippan Kapur, founded Child Relief and You with six friends and 50 rupees of paid-in capital. A charismatic visionary, Kapur saw CRY as an enabler that would raise funds and channel resources to individuals and organizations who worked directly with and for the children of India.

Kapur began selling greeting cards door-to-door, eventually attracting corporate buyers. He pioneered innovative fund-raising techniques, such as the first national contemporary Indian art exhibition staged for a social cause, and attracted a stellar board of directors. Kapur was phenomenally successful in attracting dedicated volunteers and staff to the organization, and CRY spread outward from Mumbai, evolving from a small volunteer organization to one of India’s most respected and well-known social institutions.

CRY has for thirty years been one of India’s model social organizations, well-known globally in the philanthropy community. Like many such ventures founded by a charismatic and passionate individual, CRY faced at a time in its past the challenge of how to ensure its sustainability as it grew. This case is the story of that time, from the point of view of Ingrid Srinath, who served as CEO of CRY from 2004-2008. My hope is that it helps others who found worthy causes anticipate the issues that arise and manage them effectively, so that more Indians can build social organization that are successful as CRY has become.

CRY never set forth a formal mission statement; its growing staff (which reached 231 people by 1998) absorbed shared values and a vision through direct contact with its charismatic founder and through its track record of funding organizations that supported children. Consequently, when Kapur died young in 1994, many wondered whether such an organization could survive the man who had personally touched and inspired most of the people who had joined the organization during its first fifteen years. For four years, five key regional and functional heads of the organization managed CRY by committee, coordinating with the board of trustees. In 1998, a CEO was appointed from among the management committee members.

Srinath stepped into a challenging situation in 1998. India was going through an economic dip, and CRY’s revenues were impacted sharply because its top line had been temporarily inflated by disaster relief revenues. Resource generation was stagnant, creating serious financial pressure. It was difficult at first for Srinath to get a handle on the situation and sort through options.

Ingrid Srinath

CRY was organized along two parallel lines, geographic and functional. Several regional executives were responsible for CRY’s operations on the ground throughout India, while functional executives were located in Mumbai. The two core functions were Development Support, which made grants, and Resource Mobilisation, which raised funds. CRY also had one director responsible for strategic planning, finance, and information technology while another directed human resoures and administration. Additionally, CRY operated its own shop, conducted policy research, and operated an extensive documentation facility that collected information pertaining to children in India.

Ingrid Srinath joined CRY November 14, 1998 as head of the Western region. After earning an MBA at the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkota, she spent 12 years in advertising. She comments:

Once I got to general manager level, I found myself getting really bored. I felt like I was writing in sand, making no permanent mark, and I thought that if I stayed in advertising, it would be more of the same. It is my dad’s fault; he raised me to believe I was born to do more than make a few shareholders richer. I knew some people who had worked at CRY, and I thought it would be more stimulating than working at any other nongovernmental organization (NGO) because CRY is a great brand. I saw a recruitment ad, which gave me the impetus to make the call. I already knew I wanted to do something in the development sector, probably with children.

CRY hired Srinath because the management committee was looking for someone good at organizing who could provide more of a business perspective. Yet from the start, Srinath was viewed with caution by some of the other senior managers, particularly those who had been with CRY for many years and saw themselves as the keepers of Kapur’s vision. CRY had evolved a culture of consensus; even small decisions had to be signed off collectively. Consequently, Srinath had to learn to navigate the organizational culture even while doing what she was hired to do, improve its business results.

It seemed to Srinath in 1998 that CRY was running on a wheel. She elaborates:

CRY had been in a period of stasis since the founder died in 1994. There was a vacuum in leadership, a focus just on holding everything together. Everyone just concentrated on surviving the founder’s death, and the result was four years with less innovation, while other NGO’s caught up with what CRY had pioneered and how it was perceived.

About CRY

CRY raises funds through donations, events, and by selling products such as greeting cards (the core product that built its brand recognition), desktop calendars, and stationery. It also gains some revenues from licensing and partnerships. For example, Citicorp offers a CRY affinity credit card, and Titan makes and sells a CRY wristwatch, for which it pays CRY a royalty. Procter & Gamble India has pledged a percentage of its sales to CRY, and retail chains offer CRY shopping bags with child art for a small extra charge. CRY has a small shop in Mumbai and another online selling products from the nonprofit organizations it funds, typically objects made by children.

CRY dispenses funds to a variety of other nonprofit organizations and individuals that work directly with children. Many think of CRY as a “social venture capitalist,” because it has seed-funded hundreds of fledgling organizations through its grants. According to Ingrid Srinath, CEO of CRY since 2004, the organization prioritizes people who are unlikely to be funded by other sources. “The more different their model, the more likely we are to fund them,” she says. “We incubate people who have passion and a dream, helping them start an organization, put in structure, add accountability mechanisms, measure impact, and so on, so they get to the point where serious sources of funds will back them.“ An average seed grant is $15,000.

CRY looks for applicants to fit its priorities and investigates them extensively before it funds them. Says Srinath, “We look for someone’s social capital in his or her neighborhood; we talk to a lot of people to establish whether someone is a good egg.” Once CRY funds an individual or organization, it stays intensively engaged, paying four visits per year, each lasting three days, to provide mentoring, build leadership, and help develop strategies and management systems. Approximately 200 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are recipients of direct grants and another 2500 belong to CRY-funded alliances. Says Srinath, “We see venture investing as having a multiplier effect—the same amount of money put into running schools or clinics would have less effect, given the scale of problems India is dealing with, like 200 million malnourished children. We are stringent monitors, and we reward achievement and penalize non-achievement, but our performance parameters focus on things like gender ratio in schools, not market share.”

About 40% of CRY’s revenues are absorbed by administrative costs with 60% disbursed as grants. Says Srinath, “We are within US norms that say fund raising costs should not exceed 35% and deployment costs should not exceed 15% of revenues, but our costs are higher than they could be because we have chosen to raise money from the public. Our average donation size is under $50 per year. We could be a lot more efficient if we got a large grant from Bill Gates, but that doesn’t change anything; it just throws band-aids at the problem. You have to change attitudes by working with the public. That also keeps us autonomous, so we can take controversial positions if necessary.”

CRY’s drift was perhaps a direct result of the charisma and success of its founder, for his death made it clear that the organization had been built around him, with all his strengths and weaknesses. Srinath explains:

Before the founder’s death, many in the second line of management had left. Consequently, he had put together an inside team of middle managers. No one was a functional expert at what he or she did. After 1994, CRY imported a couple of CEO’s from the outside who eventually became frustrated and left. The staff feared that CRY would disintegrate, and everyone agreed not to voice fierce disagreements lest they lose more people. The lack of technical skills led to a consensus culture throughout the organization, a sense of ‘let’s not rock the boat.’

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wilson.poulose
written by wilson.p, June 26, 2010

may god bless you good health and long life.
i am suffering to pay back the debt rs.500000/-. iam living with my family in a rent house in bagalore.now my condition is very bad in any way.
kindly help me some finance.
thanking you,
yours sincerely,
wilson.p

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