Alyssa: Hi, welcome to another episode of Funding the Future, the stories behind the missions. Today I'm very excited to be joined by Nisha D'Souza from EcoNiche, joining us all the way from India. Nisha's a highly skilled conservationist working in marine and coastal restoration and wears many hats at the for-purpose consultancy that she founded in 2019, EcoNiche. Thanks so much for joining me, Nisha.
Nisha: Thanks for having me, Alyssa. I'm excited to be here.
Alyssa: I was also thinking, I know you travel a lot for work. Just out of curiosity, what's the last place you traveled to?
Nisha: The last place I traveled to for work was the Sundarbans, which is the largest mangrove ecosystem in the world. It's shared between India and Bangladesh. We have some partners there who are working on some really cool restoration work.
Alyssa: Very cool. I knew it would be somewhere interesting. Well, to get us started, could you give us a quick snapshot of EcoNiche? Your mission, who are you supporting and how did you get started?
Nisha: A few years ago, when I was starting my career, I was working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, under an initiative called Mangroves for the Future. We had over six years, 35 projects that we were working under. I would visit these projects all across India for monitoring and evaluation visits.
Nisha: One of the things that really struck me was that a lot of the staff in our partner organisations, mid-sized and small organisations working on the front lines of conservation, were spending at least 50% of their time on developing proposals, developing funder reports, or curating funder visits. So much of it was project-driven and funder-driven. It seemed so silly to me that this time could have been spent on conservation work on the ground.
Nisha: So I started EcoNiche in 2019. We envisioned creating conservation that lasts, impacts that last. Our mission was to strengthen conservation organisations by helping them develop strategies and practical tools and systems that make impact more measurable, more scalable, more fundable.
Nisha: In practice, we are a full-service strategy organisation development partner. We support everything from program and project design all the way to developing monitoring, evaluation and learning frameworks. We also build digital MIS systems where organisations can collect their data across projects. And we do a lot of capacity and skill building as well as developing partnerships and collaborations. We largely work in the marine and coastal sector, but we also work with terrestrial conservation.
Alyssa: That's super cool. It's interesting, I feel like a lot of the orgs I've come across are often in the family or social welfare sector. So it's nice to get a different perspective, but I'm sure the challenges in the not-for-profit sector are similar in some ways.
Nisha: Very similar. And also because it is very intertwined. Conservation is multidisciplinary. We recently worked with a child rights organisation looking at securing basic environmental rights for youth across South Asia. It's very interconnected. The organisations go through similar things regardless of the sector.
Alyssa: What inspires you the most about your work in conservation and with communities in India?
Nisha: One of the projects we worked on was an integrated mangrove aquaculture system in Andhra Pradesh. We were looking at how we could mimic the mangrove forest structure and use that to grow mud crabs and fish at a very small scale, family-based ponds. Our partner had been approached by a tribal community, a nomadic tribal community who didn't own land, but they wanted to settle down because they wanted their kids to go to school and have a more secure livelihood.
Nisha: What really struck me was that one of the major things they wanted to gain from the project was to be included in the population census of India. Being nomadic, the surveys were just missing them every time. Five years post the project, they were included in the population census, which was amazing.
Nisha: I think it's moments like these where an ecological intervention can restore a sense of identity and belonging and help people connect with each other and with the land. I see this everywhere, the power of people networks, people showing up for each other, people adapting together. Even with all the pressures on the environment and on communities living and depending on these ecosystems, they don't just fight for nature, they're also fighting for each other. I think conservation can really have the power to bring all of these things together and create real impact.
Alyssa: That's really fascinating. And so through the partnership, you were able to help them achieve that?
Nisha: With the implementing partners. We just supported in raising the funds and helping them with the monitoring of the impacts. But yeah.
Alyssa: That shows the power of good evaluation and monitoring. I know I'm quite guilty in grant applications, there's always a question about evaluation and monitoring, but often it gets skipped over or it's the last thing you write.
Nisha: Especially if you are reporting on impact. You need the data and information, evaluation is where you figure out the trends and the patterns. And then you learn from that. Not a lot of consideration is given to evaluation, but it should be.
Alyssa: What's another cool outcome that you've recently achieved?
Nisha: An initiative that I work for, which is Tata Chemicals' Initiative for Seascapes, does a lot of work in marine and coastal conservation. We're working with a local partner in the state of Tamil Nadu where there are salt pans given on lease to various stakeholders. But there was a patch of salt pans that hadn't been used for several decades. We saw the potential of converting them back into wetland habitat, particularly for migratory birds, because historically along the migratory pathways, there were a lot of birds coming to this area.
Nisha: We funded that project and now we're getting thousands of birds, from Arctic terns to birds doing incredible migrations. Communities are actually working with some youth to be bird guides because they're getting a lot of photographers coming in. Income is being generated from conserving biodiversity. It's an incredible story.
Alyssa: That's amazing. Are there any key turning points in the history of your organisation?
Nisha: We don't have much of a history, we're still quite young, six years old. But the first thing that really hit us was 2020 when COVID hit. Overnight, we lost funding. Many of our partners on the ground who were doing the action work saw a lot of their funding dry up. It really tested our resilience and my resolve, whether to keep EcoNiche running or not.
Nisha: But it also shaped who we are today because it built a very strong belief in the importance of building steady unrestricted revenue streams. We started looking at how to build corpus funding so that organisations can stand on their own, afford the staff they need, have systems in place, and then get funding for projects.
Nisha: Another really big challenge was navigating India's rapidly evolving regulatory environment. The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, the FCRA, which regulates how organisations get foreign funding, the rules became much stricter and a lot of our partners were unable to renew their FCRA. It really affected the funding of different organisations.
Nisha: EcoNiche has a very small core team, and with each assignment we bring in other consultants and specialists. We sit at the intersection of conservation science, organisation development, and digital transformation. Finding people who have these skills and also believe in the mission takes time. But today we have a great core team, very energised by impact and committed to co-creating change with our partners.
Nisha: One of the challenges we've seen is communication. The conservation solutions our partners come up with don't sell themselves. Communicating the urgency of funding these solutions and encouraging funders to take that risk has been really tough. I'm often reminded of this book, Made to Stick, and this idea of the nature versus nurture debate applied to ideas. Are some ideas born good or are they made good? Communicating these ideas has been one of our biggest challenges.
Alyssa: I'd imagine you're working across not only domestic funding but international as well?
Nisha: There's government funding, private sector funding, philanthropic funding, and international development agencies. It's a huge range. It's all well and good to say you have to design your communications around who the funder is and what their mission is, but it's so much easier said than done. It requires dedication from someone dedicated to doing just that because it's a job in itself.
Alyssa: And I'd imagine communicating something like the Sundarbans to a foreign audience who may not be familiar, and then proving on an international scale why it's worth funding that particular location, would be incredibly difficult.
Nisha: Exactly. We're now trying increasingly to communicate through stories from the field. But we've been finding that they're sometimes completely unrelatable. The Sundarbans is a good example. It is a very unique ecosystem. Even other mangroves across India are not the same.
Alyssa: Are you doing the majority of the grant applications yourselves or is it co-created with partners?
Nisha: Everything we do is co-creation. We have a network of community partners. If there's a particular grant they want to apply for, they come to us for help. We don't have any independent projects of our own. We work with our partners on all of it. Our team is multidisciplinary: conservation, social development, management and leadership, and a technologist who does all the digital platforms. So depending on what the proposal needs, we all support each other.
Alyssa: What's the hardest part about raising funds for conservation projects in India?
Nisha: Increasingly trend-driven conservation is being prioritised. There's this tendency to chase quick fixes. There was a whole movement that said if you plant trees, you're helping to solve climate change. If you plant mangroves, you're going to sequester carbon. Convincing people that there's so much more to it and you need to really think about what goes into restoration of a mangrove ecosystem, it's not just about putting seeds in the ground.
Nisha: A lot of our work is gently pushing back against this thinking. We need evidence-based, community-centric solutions. Projects that prioritise biodiversity and livelihoods and community resilience. It cannot just be about putting a million seeds in the ground.
Nisha: There's also this empathy erosion. For every one or two steps that we take forward, we take a step backwards. Even the wetlands we transformed for the migratory birds, there's already a proposed development next to it. That's the third time it's come up. Do we just give up? You do get an empathy erosion and fighting that is tough. But our community partners are what keep us going, and we hope that our approach is grounded in empathy.
Alyssa: Are you working with multiple language groups across your partners?
Nisha: Yeah, because every state in India has its own language and then there's regional and local languages. We often work with translators. With the organisation partners, either English or Hindi works, but a lot can get lost in translation.
Alyssa: Have you ever undertaken a project that you realised wasn't the right fit?
Nisha: When I first started EcoNiche, this was a recurrent challenge. I had to take what I could get to keep myself going. There were a fair few projects that I didn't feel good about or didn't feel created any impact towards EcoNiche's mission.
Nisha: There was one particular project that was a turning point. The partner was an American organisation working in India. I realised I was just a glorified assistant to this one person. Even though the money was good, I stepped back and explained this was not what they had promised the work would be. It made me feel very vulnerable to say no, to back out of a contract after it had been signed and a few months of work. But it was also very empowering. I realised I had the choice to say no. It was scary, but now we're in a much better position to decide on projects. We do it as a team.
Alyssa: When money was tight, were there any creative ways you adapted?
Nisha: I can't say there were any creative ways. I just slogged through it, with the hope that there would be a better outcome eventually.
Alyssa: Do you have an example of a creative funding success? A project you had to pitch in a certain way?
Nisha: There was one very chaotic proposal. It's now one of our most longstanding meaningful partnerships with an organisation called NEWS, Nature Environment Wildlife Society. We were pitching for a project funded by an international foundation. It was extremely chaotic because when the proposal came through, it was the night before my wedding.
Alyssa: Of course!
Nisha: Luckily the whole team was there because they were all there for the wedding. So we were able to sit down and hash out the proposal and send it. As you can imagine, it was in between deciding on decor and floral arrangements. It was definitely chaotic but it was one that we truly believed we needed to do.
Nisha: Thanks to NEWS and the foundation, we got the project. It helped establish what we do as an organisation and who we are. We were doing an entire five-year strategy redefinition for this organisation. They've been working for more than 30 years across multiple states in India. They needed new systems because as they scaled, certain systems like data collection, their M&E frameworks, were not keeping pace with growth. They needed a digital platform to manage all this data. Over the last two years working with them, it has been truly transformational.
Alyssa: And you did it right before your wedding day! Isn't it funny, sometimes you can spend weeks on an application or you can spend one night, and sometimes it's the rush ones you're most proud of.
Nisha: But also I think the fact that we were there as a team really helped accelerate the process. EcoNiche are all based in different places, we don't have a physical office, and often we're doing things online. But being there together, I think really helped.
Alyssa: So that brings us to the million dollar question. If EcoNiche was offered $1 million in untethered funds tomorrow, what would you do with it?
Nisha: That's why I spoke about corpus funding earlier. I think I would invest a significant portion into our corpus so that we could support our team to then provide free services to organisations, to set up their systems, build platforms where they could store and analyse their data, and hopefully help them accelerate their conservation impact, for free.
Nisha: Working on the interest of these corpus funds, we could sustain EcoNiche. And just build a future where we and our partner organisations aren't depending on chance to get funds, but on strong organisations that are fully equipped to protect nature.
Alyssa: That's really cool because your partners are the ones on the ground. Being able to upskill them directly, the sky's the limit once they have those foundational skills.
Nisha: And also hopefully fund some of their work eventually, if we can.
Alyssa: What are two of the biggest barriers you have to achieving your mission?
Nisha: The empathy erosion, the communication challenges, the regulatory environment. All of these things that keep cropping up again and again. Things that are out of our immediate control. But hopefully we've learned from them and can adapt as they keep cropping up. This is agenda-driven conservation where we have to keep pushing back.
Alyssa: Have you had any grant or tender fails that you've really learnt from?
Nisha: During COVID, together with a partner called Good Ocean, we started a seaweed farm. We were trying to look at whether we could farm native seaweed, because a fair bit of seaweed farming in India is of a non-native species that's been creating havoc with coral reefs. This was one of the first projects that EcoNiche actually invested in ourselves.
Nisha: To most it would look like the project wasn't successful because after two seasons we stopped the farm, we weren't getting a lot of yield. But it taught us a lot about the importance of site selection, community engagement, and monitoring impacts regularly so you can adapt to challenges in a timely manner. It changed our perception of failure. We didn't meet our objectives, but we learned a lot which we took to other projects. We do want to look at seaweed in the future, so hopefully this sets a strong foundation.
Alyssa: Unfortunately that's one of the best ways to learn, isn't it? The hard way. Are there any time-saving hacks or practical lessons you'd share with a not-for-profit audience?
Nisha: The biggest one for me: don't assume you know anything. Especially at the beginning, if we were going into the Sundarbans, we think we know what mangroves are, we think we know what the soil should be doing, how hydrological systems should work. But no, you go in with an open mind. Collect the data, talk to the communities, understand the lived experiences. So much of how you design conservation solutions depends on this information. If you go in with a perception, it's just a waste of resources and money because it's likely to fail.
Nisha: Second, never work in isolation. Work as a team. In conservation it's so multidisciplinary, you need everyone's voices to be included, heard, and understood. Collaboration isn't just a value you say your organisation has, it has to be done efficiently. These two things alone can save so much time and effort trying to fix things later.
Alyssa: So rather than purely time-saving, it's more don't rush, don't try and cut corners.
Nisha: Do the work well, take the time to do it.
Alyssa: What role do you see technology or AI playing in the future of your work?
Nisha: We do use AI a little bit to help with structuring project proposals, but there's something I learned from our colleagues at Technology for Wildlife: technology isn't inherently bad or good, it's the way in which you use it.
Nisha: In conservation, tech can be transformative when it's used in a contextual, ethical way, and when it's integrated with and complements local knowledge rather than replacing it. One of our projects with Tech for Wildlife and Farmers for Forests was the Reimagine Coasts Initiative. Farmers wanted to look at growing mangroves on saline-affected farmland. A lot of this land isn't easily accessible, so we used high-resolution imagery and drones to assess the land and decide whether it was suitable. It saved a lot of time and resources compared to visiting those difficult-to-access sites. In helping set up and monitor conservation projects, tech can be really invaluable. But it depends on how you use it and whether you're using it ethically.
Alyssa: What gives you hope about the future of impact-driven work?
Nisha: People. Just seeing our partners show up day in and day out to do the work, to get new projects going, to support the communities they're engaged with. There have been instances along the East Coast of India where storms have completely washed away mangrove nurseries, months of effort literally washed away. But they'll show up again to do the work.
Nisha: I'm also seeing a lot more focus on impact over activity, which is an important step in holding conservation stakeholders accountable. Initially when people were reporting an activity, people were just accepting that the work had been done. That doesn't translate into impact. This increased reporting on impact, I find very hopeful. And we're seeing systemic shifts, Indian philanthropies and foundations giving more adaptable and flexible funding, allowing people to do the work.
Alyssa: Okay, rapid fire round. One word to describe fundraising or tender writing?
Nisha: Wanted.
Alyssa: What's the most underrated skill in not-for-profit work?
Nisha: Communications, definitely.
Alyssa: And who is your not-for-profit hero?
Nisha: Sylvia Earle. She's a pioneering marine conservationist and such an inspirational woman. I was really privileged to meet her at one of the IUCN World Conservation Congresses. She's of the same generation as Jane Goodall and David Attenborough and E.O. Wilson. And she said, "Our time is coming. It's now up to you guys." It was in part scary and also motivating.
Alyssa: Well thank you so much for your time, Nisha. It's been awesome chatting and learning more about EcoNiche and all that you've navigated.
Nisha: Thank you for spotlighting us.
Alyssa: This podcast is powered by GrantDrafter, helping organisations like EcoNiche to draft their next grant in five minutes or less. For those listening, we hope you're feeling inspired to get out there and maximise your impact.