This page covers EGII's institutional audiences, the case for India, the policy context, and the current status of the initiative.
Throughout this website, "institutional philanthropy" refers primarily to CSR teams, corporate foundations, family foundations, and family offices. These are the decision-makers whose allocation choices, if better informed by evidence, could increase the social impact of India's philanthropic capital.
Foundations seeking evidence on which interventions are worth backing, beyond basic compliance.
Corporate professionals needing practical evidence on cost-effectiveness within their regulatory constraints.
High-net-worth families formalising philanthropic strategies who want rigour in their charitable allocation.
Grantmaking structures seeking comparative evidence on intervention effectiveness.
EGII's primary audience is institutional funders. But its research is strengthened through collaboration with a wider set of contributors.
Contribute evidence, critique, and methodological expertise that strengthen EGII's research outputs.
Share practical experience about institutional funding decisions and help validate EGII's research products.
Relevant public policy developments - such as amendments to the CSR regulatory framework - may inform EGII's research, though government is not EGII's primary audience.
The case for evidence infrastructure rests on the scale of India's institutional giving ecosystem - and on specific characteristics that make it both important and underserved by independent research.
Annual mandatory CSR alone. Plus corporate foundations, family offices, and grantmaking institutions. One of the world's largest institutional giving ecosystems.
India has rigorous research institutions producing development evidence. The knowledge exists. The infrastructure connecting it to institutional allocation decisions does not.
Family offices are formalising giving strategies. Corporate foundations are building internal capacity. Demand for evidence-based decision-support is growing.
The 2021 CSR amendments introduced mandatory impact assessment. The 2026 SSE amendments create new funding channels with new evidence questions.
If evidence infrastructure can take root in India's institutional giving context, it may inform how analogous institutions develop elsewhere.
Several trends are making evidence infrastructure increasingly relevant to India's institutional philanthropy - creating an opening that did not exist a decade ago.
India's largest companies are building dedicated foundations with professional leadership - creating capacity to use evidence that did not exist a decade ago.
High-net-worth families are moving from informal giving toward structured foundations with explicit strategies and growing appetite for rigorous approaches.
Both regulators and institutional funders are raising expectations for evidence of impact - creating demand for the tools to meet those expectations.
Ten years of mandatory CSR have shifted the conversation from "are we compliant?" toward "are we effective?" - opening space for evidence-based thinking.
The 2026 SSE amendments enable CSR capital to reach nonprofits through new instruments - with new questions about evidence quality.
Decades of rigorous development research have produced a substantial evidence base on intervention effectiveness - available to be synthesised and made accessible.
On May 27, 2026, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs issued G.S.R. 415(E) and G.S.R. 416(E), allowing companies to invest up to 10% of their CSR budgets in zero coupon zero principal instruments through India's Social Stock Exchange.
This is one illustration of how India's regulatory environment is generating new evidence questions for institutional giving. It is part of the context EGII is mapping - not its primary motivation.
EGII began with a simple observation: India has one of the world's largest institutional giving ecosystems, while the global evidence-based philanthropy movement has developed sophisticated approaches to evidence and cost-effectiveness. These two worlds rarely interact. EGII is testing whether they should - and what institution would need to exist to make that interaction systematic and sustained.
Research piece published on the EA Forum - promoted to Frontpage (May 2026).
Working paper in active development.
Early stakeholder conversations informing the working paper and theory of change.
Government amendments G.S.R. 415(E) and 416(E) providing new policy context.
Theory of change and constrained maximisation framework developed.
Corporate pilot - no institution has yet agreed to test the framework.
Registry prototype - the knowledge tool does not yet exist.
Advisory practice - no formal advisory engagements have occurred.
Formal organisation - legal registration is planned but not yet complete.
Proof of concept - the central hypothesis has not yet been tested in practice.
These are responses from early conversations - not endorsements. They should not be read as institutional support for the proposed model.
"Cost-effectiveness comparison tooling for a $4.2bn legally mandated pool is, in principle, exactly the kind of leverage point worth investing thought into."
"The question of how to bring more rigorous cost-effectiveness and evidence-based analysis into mandatory CSR is both timely and highly relevant."