The Cost of Trust: What EdelGive Foundation Learned from Funding 100 NGOs

EdelGive Foundation's CEO, Ms. Naghma Mulla, spoke with Devex a few weeks ago, and one question from that conversation has stayed with us: if philanthropy moves hundreds of billions of dollars every year, why do grassroots organisations still struggle to access the support they need? Ms. Mulla's answer is simpler than most explanations we've heard — philanthropy doesn't have a money problem, it has a velocity problem. Too many nonprofits spend their best hours chasing grants and satisfying reporting requirements instead of doing the work they exist to do. We've felt that gap in our own work more times than we can count. 

EdelGive Foundation was founded in 2008 on the idea that giving could carry the same discipline as investing. That belief shaped our GROW Fund, where 37 funders pooled capital for 100 grassroots NGOs across India and let each one decide what it needed most. In the first quarter, almost all of that money went toward unglamorous things — office repairs, basic furnishings. By the last quarter, the same organisations were hiring CEOs and building long-term strategy. Nearly all reported stronger teams by the end, and about half went on to raise funding entirely on their own — proof of what happens when institutions are strengthened from within, not managed from outside. 

That arc is why we've come to believe strong impact doesn't come from programmes alone — it comes from strong organisations behind them. Good governance, capable teams, financial systems, reliable technology: these aren't overheads to trim, they're what let a nonprofit respond fast when a flood, a funding gap, or a crisis hits without warning. 

Which brings us to the line that hit hardest: trust has to be paid for. Not as a metaphor — as a real, budgeted cost. Reliable reporting, honest field presence, staff who can hold a hard conversation when something goes wrong — none of it is free, and too much of the sector still expects goodwill to substitute for the systems that make accountability possible. 

Naghma is unsentimental about how far the industry has actually moved. A handful of funders doing this well doesn't mean the norm has shifted — old habits, the instinct to control, to know every grantee intimately, still win more often than not. What comes next isn't less accountability, but informed trust: less certainty, more confidence that local organisations understand their own realities better than we ever could from a distance. 

We're sharing this because the conversation named something we've been circling for years, more plainly than we usually manage ourselves. 

Read the full conversation on Devex: https://www.devex.com/news/how-a-philanthropy-asset-manager-convinced-37-funders-to-back-100-ngos-112143