Building the Bridge: Kiran DM on Funding, Careers and the Calling to Serve
Highlights from the "Know the Social Sector" podcast series
Kiran DM has spent four decades helping non-profits and companies grow. He was the first CEO of the ONGC Foundation, where he spent almost five years, and in July 2024 he started Sewa Bridge, an organisation that sits between those who deliver social change and those who fund it. In this conversation, he shared the story behind Sewa Bridge, the kind of people it hires, and his candid advice for anyone thinking of building a career in the social sector.
A debt to be paid
Kiran's journey into service began early. During his school days, he volunteered with a school-based organisation and attended village experience camps. Out of those experiences came a thought that stayed with him for years: that life should be lived not only for oneself but for others, and that there is a debt to be paid. That realisation led him into a lifetime of volunteering, including serving as founding president of Youth for Seva, which promotes corporate and general volunteering among young people.
The gap that led to Sewa Bridge
At the ONGC Foundation, Kiran saw a pattern. Many grassroots organisations were doing deeply transformative work, driven by passion and focused on change rather than funding. But they were not grant-ready: they lacked the documentation, stories and structures that funders need. At the same time, he kept hearing the same remark in rooms full of CSR committee members and board members: that good NGOs are hard to find.
Both statements, he realised, were true, and they pointed to a gap. Organisations with good paperwork do not always have a ground presence, and those with a strong ground presence often lack the paperwork or the reach to seek funds. His work with Civil 20, the civil society engagement group for the G20, took him across India and put him in touch with several thousand civil society organisations. It strengthened his belief that someone needed to work with those who could not reach funders on their own.
That is how Sewa Bridge got its name. It is a bridge for both sides:
- For NGOs and social sector organisations: building capacity and helping to facilitate funding.
- For donors: an advisory service that aligns their policies and requirements with organisations that can deliver.
Where a rupee goes further
Kiran explained the thinking with the idea of social return on investment (SROI). A lakh rupees spent in a city like Delhi or Mumbai delivers a certain return. The same amount spent in a hard-to-reach part of the Northeast, he said, could deliver a return many times higher, perhaps ten times. Sewa Bridge is therefore focused on organisations far from the usual funding routes, where even small support can change lives.
Who Sewa Bridge looks for
The first requirement, Kiran said, is not a skill but a motivation. Passion for social change is the foundation. If someone is looking at the social sector purely as a career, his advice is that they should not enter it. There should be an inner calling, alongside the practical need to sustain oneself.
Beyond that, the organisation looks for people in three broad areas. Sewa Bridge does not do implementation, which it leaves to its partners.
- Working with NGO partners: from proposal writing to monitoring and evaluation, helping partners build strong frameworks.
- Research, impact and policy: with ESG and CSR expected to blend over time, Kiran expects research and impact to play a key role. He wants people who go beyond counting beneficiaries to asking what the impact really is, and who can help drive policy change.
- Capacity building: trainers who work with grassroots organisations. For donor advisory, the team also needs people with business development skills and a social sector background.
Kiran illustrated why attitude matters with an example from Assam. One partner organisation there had deployed all of its resources to flood relief, while its donor kept asking for a quarterly report. For a team on the ground, with thousands of villages underwater, supporting people matters more than reporting. Sewa Bridge needs people who understand that reality and can balance both sides. Skills can be taught, he said, but the right competency and mindset are more inherent.
Career growth at Sewa Bridge
Sewa Bridge is a young and small organisation, but its plans are ambitious: offices in four or five locations and several new verticals, organised as a matrix with both vertical and horizontal growth. Kiran does not see growth as a problem.
He also described a possible pathway through partnerships. Because many partners are maturing and have come to trust Sewa Bridge, the organisation may hire people, place them with a partner, and, if both sides are comfortable, let them move over to the partner permanently.
The interviewer added that working across hundreds or even thousands of organisations over the years gives a different kind of exposure from working with one, and builds leadership faster.
Advice for those crossing over from corporate life
Kiran was direct: crossing over is not easy. It demands understanding what you are choosing and being willing to sacrifice, including money and comfort. The satisfaction is of a different kind, but it depends on what you are seeking in life.
He described a crossover workshop for about 45 people aged 40 to 50, designed to show what a move into the sector really involves. He pointed to software engineers who have gone into farming, noting that if you sit with them and understand their experience, you learn how hard it is and how satisfying it can be as well.
His caution is about motivation:
I wouldn't want people to get into a crossover when they are frustrated in their jobs.
The move should come from wanting to do something better, not from stress or underperformance in the current role.
Advice for young people
For those starting out, Kiran's view is that the sector is set to grow, whether or not we like it. Development and funding are converging, impact funding and social equity are emerging, and the social stock exchange is getting stronger. There will be room for talent.
But the rewards are different from the corporate world. If someone wants to be a country manager within a few years, he says, this is not the place. Growth in the social sector is measured by how many lives you are able to transform and how many people you touch, even if your work is writing a grant proposal at a desk. He also noted that many people enter through fellowships, some thinking it will make a later job easier, and many stay because they discover it is what they want to do.
His closing message to young people was simple: come, if that is the approach you bring. There is a great deal of need.
Connect with Kiran DM on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kirandm
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