Facebook India today announced a call for applications from women led nonprofits, for its CSR initiative, Facebook Pragati – powered by The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation. The initiative, which entered its second year, will incubate and accelerate, early stage women-led nonprofits that are working around women related issues (such as entrepreneurship, digital inclusion, technology, and health). This year, Facebook Pragati will award 6 grants of up to Rs. 50 lakhs for each non-profit to scale their work.
In Facebook Pragati’s first year of operation, four exceptional women-led non profits were chosen out of a pool of 1,326 applications and supported through grants and mentoring for 6-12 months. While COVID19 led to massive pain in the Indian non profit sector, with a significant percentage of organisations seeing shrinkage in annual revenues, the inaugural Pragati grantees stood out starkly, more than tripling their annual revenues in FY2021 and planning for another doubling on the larger base in FY2022.
Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook India said, “Facebook has always been committed to promoting inclusivity through our platforms. We strongly believe that with the right digital training and resources, small businesses led by women can create a positive economic footprint for themselves as well as their communities. The impact of Covid on women entrepreneurs in India has exacerbated the vast gender gap. We launched Facebook Pragati last year to help women entrepreneurs in their journey to growth and have been inspired with the success of the first four beneficiary businesses. We are now thrilled to announce the second phase of it and await more such exciting organisations to be a part of this initiative with Nudge Foundation and us.”
“COVID has resulted in a disproportionate negative impact on women in India and across the world, undoing years of work on narrowing the gender gap. In that backdrop, The/Nudge CSI is delighted to continue to partner with Facebook for the second year running to bring the right building blocks to women led nonprofits focussed on serving women, one of the most disadvantaged but oft ignored sections of the country.” added Akshay Soni, Managing Director, The/Nudge Accelerator
In addition to the grants, each of the non profits selected for Facebook Pragati will get access to :
Mentorship: One on one strategic mentoring from esteemed industry leaders who have built scale in for profit or non profit organisations to help each founder break through the barriers to scale for their non profit.
Fund-raising: Along with improving the fundraising strategy of the nonprofits through techniques including targeting and storytelling, the program will also ensure face to face meetings with funders to enable the nonprofits to utilise and internalise the learnings.
Organisational capacity building: The program will work on building second tier capacity within the nonprofits, with a series of functional mentors across marketing, HR and technology. Apart from creating sustainability, this will also let the founder of the organisation spend time on strategic growth, resulting in scaling up faster.
Collaboration with Facebook: The program will also offer in depth coaching from the Facebook team to build an expertise in the nonprofits on the Facebook platform, enabling them to truly leverage the access of Facebook India, and accelerate their impact.
Who can apply?
Nonprofits that are less than 5 years old and have at least one woman founder.
Should be able to demonstrate a viable business plan, working on women related issues (such as entrepreneurship, digital inclusion, technology, and health).
Facebook Pragati, an initiative to boost women entrepreneurship was launched in 2020 in partnership with The Nudge Centre for Social Innovation. The program aims to provide entrepreneurs access to tools, mentorship, and resources to help overcome some of the barriers they face to build a successful enterprise using technology. To learn more about Facebook Pragati, please visit
https://csi.thenudge.org/campaigns/pragati
