By Gijs Spoor | Founder
Four years ago, I founded a nonprofit organization calledUnLtd Tamil Nadu with a team of dedicated volunteers. Our aim was to build a cheap, accessible, empowering and replicable support model for early stage changemakers. In a world of failed startups, we wanted to ensure that startup circles become independent and self-sustainable. Today, UnLtd Tamil Nadu finds, funds and supports startupsocial entrepreneurs all over Tamil Nadu, India. We provide fundraising support, hands-on coaching and access to high value connections for one year, for free.
Since 2013, UnLtd Tamil Nadu has helped 32 start-ups in diverse sectors, impacted over 80,000 beneficiaries, and created more than 90 jobs. These numbers are impressive, but they say nothing about the failures we’ve encountered along the way. Two lessons stand out in particular.
So what did we learn?
We learned that we needed to compromise. After our yearly review we learned that our startup founders didn’t feel monthly peer learning sessions added enough value. We are still convinced that with a strong and dedicated core group this form of learning can solve 80% of founders challenges, but without such a group we as incubator need to keep “holding the space” -sending everyone last-minute reminders, and convening the sessions. Less ideal, but more realistic.
Same story with the volunteers: in an ideal world people would study efforts made by their predecessors and build on that, adding only where there is a gap, and leaving the rest. In the real world people need to be told what they can influence and what not. We learned that being 100% open is not practical and influence needs to be earned by taking long term responsibility. Fortunately volunteers understood and appreciated this change in roles.
So we changed the peer learning model, ensuring one of our team would always be present as host / moderator. And we changed the team structure from 80% volunteers to only 30%. But most of all, we learned that we will always be learning. We don’t have everything figured out, and we probably never will. We learned to live with the tension between intentions and reality. It’s frustrating and at times it drives us insane, but it keeps us on our toes. Read More about the lessons learned at our yearly review with our startups. Learn about our strong team of professionals dedicated to social change, and check out an interview with our incubation manager on our blog.
By Daniella | Marketing & Communications
By Gijs Spoor | Lead
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