Both re-wilding as well as the creation of a green economy need a deep understanding of ground realities and committed local changemakers to engage with local stakeholders. We forge partnerships and provide direct funding and support to organisations working at different areas of an entire spectrum. If you are an organisation working in this space and would like to partner with us, please write to us at [email protected].
Grants
2024
Ecological Restoration Alliance
Ecological Restoration Alliance India (ERA-India), is an informal partnership of individuals, organisations and groups working together to foster knowledge and practice of ecological restoration of natural ecosystems in India. The goals of the Alliance are to collate and share knowledge, experience, and case studies of ecological restoration of natural ecosystems across India. Through this ERA-India aims to create, expand, inform, and enable civil society, government, and citizenry engaged in appropriate and effective ecological restoration nationwide. ERA-India envisages a future where anyone anywhere in India can restore their native landscapes.
2024
Shivganga Samagra Gramvikas Parishad
Shivganga is an innovative intervention in the Jhabua-Alirajpur region of Madhya Pradesh, focusing on holistic village development through community strengths rather than weaknesses. Founded by Shri Mahesh Sharma, Shivganga Samagra Gramvikas Parishad engages 3000 volunteers to connect over 1,500 villages, nurturing social capital and sustainable growth. By tapping into the wisdom and resilience of the tribal community, Shivganga awakens the inherent Parmarth ka Bhav, responsible for their Swabhiman, making them Swavalambi, leading to Akshay Vikas, the globally talked about, Sustainable Development. Through initiatives such as youth empowerment camps and community-led projects in Water Conservation, Afforestation, Organic Farming, and Healthcare, Shivganga revitalizes traditional practices and empowers communities to thrive in the face of challenges. Recognized for its significant impact, Shivganga continues to lead in community-driven development, envisioning a future where every village serves as a hub for comprehensive learning and progress.
2024
Biodiversity Collaborative
The Biodiversity Collaborative is a network of individuals and organisations engaged in biodiversity science and conservation that have come together to demonstrate, advocate and highlight the linkages between conservation, sustainable use of biodiversity, and human well-being.
2024
Shola Trust
The Shola Trust is a non-profit conservation organisation in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve of South India. Based in Gudalur, at the edge of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, it was set up in 2007 to promote human-inclusive models of nature conservation, inspired by the unique high altitude sholas of the Nilgiris and its people. They are committed to preserving indigenous knowledge, practices, and beliefs relevant to conservation, working closely with local communities to integrate this traditional wisdom into conservation.
2024
Sustainable Futures Collective
The Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC) is an independent research organisation analysing issues at the frontier of addressing climate change, managing the energy transition, and limiting environmental threats in India and globally. We focus on the systemic changes required for India’s transition to a sustainable, just, and resilient economy and society. In these areas, we identify upstream policy levers that, when activated, can drive downstream impact at scale
2024
Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary
Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary (GBS) is a community-based conservation centre in Wayanad, Kerala, concerned with plant conservation, habitat restoration, nature education and ecological advocacy. It is a practical hands-on demonstration of best practice in horticultural techniques for plant species conservation, as well as complementary strategies in rewilding that support human community and the rainforest biome. GBS seeks to consolidate its mission in conservation and education through a School of Ecological Nurturance in partnership with Rainmatter Foundation.
2023
Vaagdhara
VAAGDHARA is a civil society organization working with more than 100,000 indigenous farming families of above 1000 villages in adjoining areas of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat. For more than 2 decades, following the Swaraj philosophy, VAAGDHARA has been making efforts on the three major thrusts viz. True Farming (focus on food and farming sovereignty), True Childhood (community-based child protection and child rights initiatives) and True Governance (reaching the most marginalized, ensuring their entitlements and participation in the governance). Being accredited with the Special Consultative Status from UN-ECOSOC, VAAGDHARA also amplify the aspirations and concerns of the indigenous communities on global platforms and strive to bring attention to the invaluable locally available solutions practiced by the indigenous communities, contributing towards attainment of the SDGs.
2023
India climate collaborative
The India Climate Collaborative (ICC) is a first-of-its-kind organisation working to accelerate climate action in India, with a lens towards justice and equity. The ICC identifies and designs for critical sectors that need investment, drives funding towards climate solutions, and enables private and corporate philanthropy to engage more effectively with climate action. The Rainmatter Foundation is supporting ICC to enhance domestic grant funding for climate initiatives in India. This collaboration ensures that the funding is strategically directed toward catalytic, India-centric, and development-aligned priorities.
2023
Shakti Foundation
Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation is an enabler for clean energy and climate solutions in India. It catalyses policy solutions to reduce GHG emissions and tackle climate change in collaboration with policy makers, civil society, academia and industry. The Rainmatter Foundation collaborates with Shakti recognizing the urgent need for innovative solutions to address complex climate mitigation challenges. The aim of this initiative is to collaboratively identify transformative work areas intersecting with local environmental, ecological, and sustainable development needs, while also serving as a bridge between national and state-level policies and community-level actions.
2023
Palluyir Trust
Palluyir Trust for Nature Education and Research works to create diverse nature-education resources, curricula, and interfaces for children and the public across ages and social backgrounds. Currently, the organization is making efforts to have local nature-based learning adopted as a state education policy. Palluyir centers local nature and biodiversity in the process of reimagining learning and living together. It also works to advocate the protection of nature and lend support/solidarity to ecological movements, struggles, and places.
2023
ComMutiny
ComMutiny- The Youth Collective is a community of practice of youth work organisations across the country. ComMutiny incubated the vartaLeap Coalition in 2019 to mainstream youth-centric development across all sectors. Rainmatter Foundation is supporting ComMutiny in the development of ‘nourishing now’ framework, embedding climate change into the vision and strategies of organisations and nurturing young leaders to inspire climate-positive environments.
2023
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)
ATREE is a globally recognised non-profit organisation focused on environmental conservation and sustainable, socially just development. ATREE engages in the generation and dissemination of rigorous interdisciplinary knowledge that informs and is informed by the needs of grassroots communities, policymakers and the wider public. It prioritises capacity-building for producing the next generation of scholars and leaders.
2023
All Living Things Environmental Film Festival (ALT EFF)
It is India’s premiere showcase of today’s climate stories. Through pay-as-you-feel global online streaming & in-person community screenings, our audience witnesses untold stories of regeneration, activism, crisis and hope
2023
Gramvaani
The Rainmatter Foundation is funding Gram Vaani to implement the CoRE stack (Commoning for Resilience and Equality), a digital public good to empower communities to plan and manage their local landscapes and natural resources in a socio-ecological manner. Being built in a collaborative manner in partnership with IIT Delhi and other partners, the CoRE stack also aims to provide foundational support to the Indian ecosystem of development organizations to innovate and scale new participatory technologies that can enable pathways for a climate resilient future with a focus on fairness, inclusivity, and environmental sustainability. Gram Vaani is committed towards taking a community-based approach to technology use and management, and has empowered millions of citizens from rural and low-income communities to claim their rights, share information, and participate towards building a vibrant democracy from the grassroots. (Optional)
2023
Jagriti Seva Sansthan
Jagriti is building an Udyamita ecosystem across 10 districts of Purvanchal (eastern Uttar Pradesh) to inspire communities, incubate entrepreneurial leaders, and innovate new ways through Jagriti Enterprise Centre - Purvanchal (JECP). A hub-and-spoke approach - an incubation and innovation centre as Hub in Deoria, and district network offices, manned by Udyam Corps and Mitra (last-mile connectors) - is at the heart of the JECP. The Foundation has supported JECP to set up a BioRegional Centre that promotes circular economy, biodiversity, and natural assets in the region, incubates sustainability-focused enterprises, and designs large-scale interventions that addresses current or future environmental challenges of the region.
2023
A Rocha India
A Rocha India is a part of the global network of A Rocha organisations, which spans six continents and more than 20 countries. When we first started as a public charity in 2003, our goal was to create research, education, sustainability, and outreach programmes to address important conservation issues in the fragile human-dominated ecosystem known as the Bannerghatta-Hosur landscape. We have played a key role in creating innovative strategies and plans in this operational area to proactively address significant biodiversity and community concerns while promoting the fundamental ethics of conservation (wildlife & community) culture.
2023
Climate RISE Alliance
ClimateRISE Alliance is a collaborative platform that aims to accelerate our journey towards climate resilience for the most vulnerable communities. The Alliance comprises 65 civil society organisations, 10 intermediary groups, and six funders. By leveraging collective insights, the alliance is working to shape an India view of climate, a common vocabulary and enable a multi-stakeholder engagement approach to intersectional climate action in India.
2023
Goonj
The Rainmatter Foundation’s support for Goonj is towards Gram Swabhiman - to foster village empowerment and development by catalysing collective participation, setting positive narratives, building environmental consciousness and capacitating youth to encourage a solution-based approach for complex issues such as environmental resilience. Goonj works on poverty alleviation, rural development, and disaster relief & rehab, by using the cities’ discards as a fuel for wide-spread development work across villages in India addressing issues around water, sanitation, agriculture, education and local infrastructure.
2023
Gram Vikas
The Rainmatter Foundation supports Gram Vikas to develop an intersectional approach to localise climate-resilient actions in 1000 Gram Panchayats in Odisha. The initiative will record the impact of climate change on rural communities and strengthen their abilities to self-assess the changes, and accordingly take action. It will demonstrate climate-sensitive value chain measures in agriculture and non-farm production systems, develop Village Climate Action Plans as part of poverty reduction efforts, build evidence for use by other stakeholders, engage governments to adopt best practices into their programmes, and inform policies.
2022
IndusTree
Industree Foundation works with creative producers, mostly women, from marginalised communities in India and other parts of the globe. The Foundation has supported the organisation to enable the development of value chains (know-how and capacity to use natural material to developing market connects) for natural resources such as bamboo and natural fibres and engage with a few states to enable friendly policies around such livelihood options.
2022
Himalaya Unnati Mission
The Foundation is supporting a programme office for the Himalaya Unnati Mission (HUM), which is an initiative to preserve, protect and resurrect the biological, economic and cultural heritage of the Himalayan states in India.
2022
Civis
Civis makes it easy for ordinary man to participate in the law-making and public consultation process. They do this by making proposed Bills and other pieces of legislation available on an online platform and making this easy-to-read, easy-to-understand and easy-to-give-feedback-on. The Rainmatter Foundation has supported Civis for a limited grant to create, publish and disseminate a primer i.e. a how-to guide, on environmental public consultation.
2022
India Development Review (IDR)
IDR bridges a critical information, knowledge and sense-making gap in the development sector, occupying a unique and niche position in the space. It counts among its readers sector professionals, funders, policy-makers, mainstream media and students. The Foundation decided to support IDR to adopt a climate lens to all its reporting, to build consensus on climate vocabulary among funders and host convenings of diverse stakeholders.
2022
Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT)
SWMRT is a collective of solid-waste management (SWM) practitioners working since 2009 for the adoption of sustainable waste management practices by citizens and municipalities, to improve public health, clean air and water, safe food, healthy soil and inclusive livelihoods. The Rainmatter Foundation has offered institutional support to SWMRT to build internal capacity and to help create similar organisations in other towns and cities for advocacy and training.
2022
Lipok
Lipok Social Foundation (LSF) works for improved and sustainable livelihoods of farmers in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. With Rainmatter Foundation’s support, the organisation is piloting a project involving communities in five Gram Panchayats (village clusters) of Aurangabad district to identify and support potential enterprises emanating from their basket of needs; basked of needs is a loose framework to know and visibilise a cluster’s imports in an attempt to understand how many of these imports can be replaced by locally produced goods.
2022
T4G Labs
T4G Labs brings technological expertise and frugal tools to help the non-profit sector fill program-delivery gaps, be it for data gathering for projects or program monitoring and management. It is also building a cadre of fellows to multiply this approach. Rainmatter Foundation supports T4G Labs’ core mission and purpose in furthering this work.
2022
Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology
The Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology (Hume) has a unique approach towards making science accessible to local citizens primarily through their weather forecasting and school science program in Wayanad, Kerala. This is one of India’s aspirational districts. Rainmatter Foundation supported Hume to further this work and socialise this approach with other non-profits in the country.
2022
Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India (AKRSPI)
The notion of carbon markets as a way of green finance is rapidly gaining traction around the world. It hopes to ensure that the capital infusion through carbon markets helps smallholder farmers increase incomes while transitioning to more resilient ways of production. C-GEM is a new centre within the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India (AKRSPI) which is working with different carbon funds and project developers to ensure that farmers have an equitable representation in designing the path forward for agriculture-based carbon and other payment-for-ecosystem services markets.
2022
Punarchith
Punarchith is located in Chamarajanagar, which is one of Karnataka’s most environmentally distressed districts. With Rainmatter Foundation’s support, Punarchith is continuing its restoration effort of a degraded plot of land in Nagavalli village. The place, called Angarike Maala, is a kind of a “living lab” for regenerative and traditional experiments be it for crop rotation, slash-and-burn, seed bank, bamboo construction and so on. The team is also engaging with the Solega community of BR Hills to document their language and traditional knowledge.
2022
RCRC
The RCRC network, along with the Ministry of Rural Development, is making a concerted effort for an integrated farming approach in multiple clusters across India. The Rainmatter Foundation feel this will be a valuable experiment at scale, and worth supporting. This effort can help farmers self-assess a bunch of parameters and perhaps better understand the trade-offs, without which it's unlikely that we can arrest ecological degradation or prevent nutritional challenges and curb asset and income losses.
2022
Saahas
Waste management at source is critical to prevent pollution and deterioration of soil and water. The Foundation has supported Saahas to initially handhold and transition eight gram panchayats in Karnataka into model gram panchayats where waste will be segregated at source and recovered at material recovery facilities (MRFs) for sustainable solid waste management practices. The program is to be scaled to 100 gram panchayats in the two districts of Yadgir and Kalburgi alongwith relevant training and workshops.
2022
PARI
Much of India is rural, and the rural seldom finds a place in mainstream media. PARI's coverage of rural India is an invaluable treasure. The Foundation's grant to PARI will enable the team to bolster their climate coverage of parts of India that are largely ignored by mainstream media.
2022
CSTEP
The Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) is a team of systems thinkers that research connected problems from a science and evidence lens, and inform policy about the same. Their modelling tools and approaches effectively enable decision making. The Rainmatter Foundation is in sync with their new focus on intersectionality across sectors for better policy inputs to address climate-related issues.
2022
Tech4Good Community
The Tech4Good Community runs a maturity model based program for non-profit organisations to embrace technological tools. The Foundation's support to Tech4Good Community is to bring in this tech readiness to the organisations we work with as well as to the larger non-profit community.
2022
Veditum
Sand is among the most mined minerals on the planet. Rampant sand mining from riverbeds alters a river's ecology. While sand-mining is a regulated activity, on-ground, this is a thriving illegal trade. Illegal sand mining is an invisible problem since no data on sand-mining exists in India. The Foundation is supporting Veditum to build an open platform which will crowd-source information on sand-mining from primary sources in an attempt to quantify and visibilise this problem.
2022
Biome Environmental Trust
Rainmatter decided to support the Biome Trust chiefly to create an outreach and communications program to advocate the organisation's work in visibilising the problem of depleting groundwater and recharging aquifers, such as their Million Wells campaign for Bangalore.
2022
Wassan
WASSAN’s farmer network, especially for rainfed regions, is among the largest in the country. The Rainmatter Foundation’s support is to provide an ecosystem of support to make it easy for farmers to shift to regenerative practices as well as to arrive at an assessment methodology for place-based indicators, a seed exchange platform, a bio-resource centre (BRC) and work on a hub-and-spoke model for farm tools and millet machines.
2022
Buzz Women
The creation of agency and the desire to take charge of one's own future is a critical piece of the climate puzzle. Buzz Women has been creating changemakers in over 5,000 villages in rural Karnataka. By supporting Buzz Women, the Foundation hopes to increase the awareness of both the sense of the house as well as of solutions that can help these changemakers drive climate adaptation and mitigation efforts in their respective communities.
2022
SlamOutLoud
What is water? What is air? Are they connected? Are they important? How does one talk to kids about the elements, about nature? Slam Out Loud builds open source climate learning resources for children, and with Rainmatter Foundation's support, trains educators in engaging kids with the environment.
2021
Nrityagram
Rainmatter Foundation did a small grant for Nrityagram for their plan to demonstrate the baby steps that communities and campuses such as theirs can do to practically lower their water, food and energy footprints in their location. The intent is to show what a place of interest with high footfalls can do to spread awareness.
2021
Socratus
Can key influencers come together to look at certain problems from a longer term perspective? Can they work towards a shared vision and goals irrespective of their immediate, possibly divergent, needs? Socratus is the midwife of collective wisdom that attempts to solve wicked societal problems, and climate change is certainly one such wicked problem. The Rainmatter Foundation decided this is an important area for support.
2021
Janaagraha
What does Urban Ecology even mean today? Do our cities acknowledge the role of ecology in their functioning, or the responsibility they carry towards it? Do we account for water, soil and biodiversity that matter to our existence as we set goals for our cities? How do citizens get involved, participate in both taking on responsibility and asking for accountability around this? In light of the climate crisis, the Foundation decided to support Janaagraha to take on these questions for policy inputs and urban planning.
2021
Sauramandala Foundation
If we have to address the climate crisis, we need, at scale, changemaking through place-based fellowships that take on myriad local problems and start to address them in sync with local governments, entrepreneurs, self-help groups (SHGs) and CSO partners. Sauramandala's model to create this and help other organisations with the same, appealed to the Foundation to step in and support.
2021
Sarjapura Curries
Suresh is an artist who set-up the Sarjapura Curries farm as an art installation that acknowledges and works with nature, improves the land it exists on and helps spread the message about our food diversity (both farmed and wild) amid many stakeholders in the community. The Rainmatter Foundation’s support will help with this small but really important initiative to demonstrate and strengthen this critical message.
2021
Fields of View
Public policy is often thought of as complicated and complex. Fields of View uses games and simulations to make sense of policies and their impact both to policy makers and to the common person. Rainmatter has supported Fields of View to enable non-profits to make sense of systems thinking in the public sphere and enable changemakers to understand abstract ideas in actionable ways.
2021
Uttarayan
Ever heard of elephants raiding crops in farmlands? These kinds of human-animal interactions tend to be a costly affair for both creatures. Rainmatter Foundation funded Uttarayan Wildlife to rope in farming communities to together restore degraded elephant corridors in southwest Bengal. We hope this effort is beneficial not only for the farmers but also for the elephants.
2021
Technology for Wildlife Foundation
A small, focused team that brings technology to the conservation space, Technology for Wildlife Foundation has collaborated with numerous organisations and worked on many projects to enable a better understanding and tracking of the landscapes, do independent Environment Impact Assessments (EIAs), and more. The Foundation wanted to support this critical work and provided core organisational support.
2021
Dakshin Foundation
India’s long coastline tends to be a blindspot for policy and problem solving. Dakshin's Sea Change programme takes a holistic view of the coastline and assesses community needs from economic and ecological lens, and works with locals to meet the same. The Foundation is glad to support this focused approach and hopeful that these efforts will enable better resilience for a coastline that is under threat in so many ways.
2021
WELL Lab
A lot of scientific research and knowledge as well as practitioner-led solutions tend to not be publicly accessible. The Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs (formerly known as the Centre for Social and Environment Innovation at ATREE) has taken on the challenge of making such knowledge available and actionable at scale, and also take the idea of hypothesis-led scalable pilots to governments and civil society organisations. The Foundation realised that this is a major gap that needs to be filled and extended support.
2021
Media Grantees
Successful ideas need to inhabit the mainstream conscious if they are to gain widespread acceptance. To this end, we support journalism, storytelling and messaging for various stakeholders in the mainstream.
2021
Palar Guttahalli Eco-restoration Program
The Palar River catchment areas have become arid and deforested, and the support to the Rotary Club has been planned as a participatory effort with the local community for restoration of the degraded land and management of the commons.
2021
Waste Warriors
Waste Warriors is involved in waste management efforts in parts of the Himalayas, an extremely eco-sensitive zone. The pristine environment is under pressure from increasing anthropogenic activities such as tourism. The Rainmatter Foundation is Waste Warriors for their waste management initiatives, awareness building and inputs for local waste management policies.
2021
Farmers for Forests
Preserving old-growth and native trees is one of the best ways to build-in environment resilience. Can private land-owners and farmers be persuaded not to chop trees on their lands for money or for firewood, and instead nurture them if they were paid to do so? Farmers For Forests is pioneering the payments-for-ecosystem-services concept in India, and the Foundation's support is enabling them to try this with land-owners in Gadchiroli and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.
2021
SayTrees
SayTrees has a solid record for not only planting trees, but also getting various stakeholders involved in this. The Rainmatter Foundation’s support will enable the team to scale their efforts into agroforestry and landscape restoration at landscape- and collectivised-farm levels. This is a large push towards what is a major answer for both climate adaptation as well as mitigation.
2021
ReapBenefit
Reap Benefit is engaged in local problem solving for civic issues through its Solve Ninja program, which enables young people with tools, knowledge and networks. Rainmatter's funding was to enable a climate lens to this problem solving approach, creating playbooks and expanding their work to newer parts of the country through collaborations and partnerships.
2021
Nature Conservation Foundation
The Nature Conservation Foundation has among the best known conservation and restoration researchers and practitioners. They are engaged in multiple distinct landscapes across India where the teams build evidence, practice with the community and also help citizens connect deeper with local biodiversity. NCF trains many to become naturalists and also anchors a community of restoration specialists. The Rainmatter Foundation decided to do core organisational support for three years, and also explore how their work could better inform mainstream restoration efforts in both wild and community-owned spaces.
2021
Vidhi - Center for Legal Policy
The law is where a lot of the detail lies. Whether for conservation or protection of our commons, it is important to understand how the laws around them are strengthened or weakened over time, and work to improve them. Vidhi Legal works in this space, both with the government and also in the larger interest of the common good, commenting and highlighting gaps and needs. During the course of Rainmatter Foundation’s journey, we realised this is an important area to support. We have also run a few sessions to help improve awareness around the policy and legal aspects of these issues.
2020
Ecologically Sustainable Median Planting @ Center for Environment Concerns
Dr. K S Gopal is a pioneer who is driving an experiment for the ecologically sound planting of flora on a couple of kilometers of medians on main roads in Bengaluru. The aim is to support an ecosystem for birds and bees, use 50% less water, drastically bring down truck and road closure time, reduce costs for de-weeding, create biologically-rich healthy soils.
2020
Wild Shaale @ Centre for Wildlife Studies
The Centre for Wildlife Studies has a long history of working in the buffer zones of some of the major forests across peninsular India, and innovating to help reduce the fallout of human-wildlife interactions in these zones, improve education and attitudes around the forest and wildlife, and research on and bring to the fore the connection between the pressure on the wild and zoonotic diseases. We decided to support CWS through a flexible, core grant.
2020
The 1000 Tree Project @ SwaYYam
A 100+ acre farmers’ collective at the edge of the Bandipur forest aims to transform a degraded landscape into a fertile terrain with sustainable water resource management. In addition, the initiative will strengthen and secure the livelihoods of farmers through an agroforestry approach.
Fellowships
2022
P Srinivas / Soil Vaasu
This is a fellowship for Soil Vasu to evolve a methodology by which farmers can test their own soil as well as develop a cadre of soil enthusiasts and volunteers who can be trained as resource persons for soil health at the village level. In the first phase, he will be working with 12 gram panchayats in six districts in Karnataka after which the intent is to evolve a larger program with Rainmatter’s partner organisations to see if there can be 1000 Soil Vasus in different regions.
2020
DP Srivastava
There are tigers in Bhopal's periphery! And not just the first generation ones. DP Srivastava is researching this and helping build evidence around their coexistence in peri-urban landscapes. We thought this was important to add to the attitudes of humans for our ability to once again acknowledge and coexist with the wild.
Investments
While we have been primarily focusing on grants for non-profit organizations chasing impact in the climate space, we have also met several startups trying to ideate and build in this space. You can check out all of our investments here.