Rethinking What Impact Means : NSFI’s Shift To ActImpact

For more than fifteen years now, the National Skills Foundation of India (NSFI) has carved out a space for itself in the skilling and rural development ecosystem in India. The organisation was born at a moment when the country was reaping the benefits of its demographic dividend. Over the years, it has impacted over 600,000 individuals across 27 Indian states and seven countries. The organisation reflected a collective social belief that skills training would be the primary component, translating into employment and mobility. But as the landscape evolved, so did the more profound realisation that skilling along was never the end goal.

“Impact, for us, was never about how many people we trained,” says Mr. Sai Krishna Nanduri, CEO of NSFI. “It was about whether those skills actually translated into livelihoods, dignity, and long-term change.”

It was in 2014-15 that marked a turning point for the entire organisation. As the national priorities saw a shift through initiatives like the reorientation of the Ministry of Skill Development outwardly incorporating entrepreneurship and self-employment in its agenda. NSFI also found itself on the path of reorientation. NSFI has already empowered 95,000+ farmers, including 22,000 women farmers, and strengthened 164 Farmer-Producer Organizations (FPOs). The goal, aspirations, and the impact of the organisation started moving beyond just skill development. Paving its way into designing interventions that addressed larger causes of employment, self-employment, and income generation, especially in the sectors where traditional skilling models were failing to deliver desired results.

“In agriculture, for example, skilling by itself was not helping,” Mr. Nanduri explains. “It’s seasonal, often low-paying, and deeply dependent on factors outside an individual’s control. If we wanted real impact, we had to think beyond training to action on the ground.”

By 2015, NSFI had already been investing in the implementation of programs focused on self-employment, non-farm livelihoods, and integrated development models. Initiatives such as 11 Green Colleges across five states, designed to bridge education with sustainability and livelihoods, and programmes that have trained over 3,000 youth in employability and entrepreneurship, while reflecting this broader understanding of development. Its public identity until now hasn't been able to fully encompass the dynamic nature of the organisational practices. This is where NSFI’s rebrand to ActImpact factors in. The attempt with this shift of the brand name while legally keeping NSFI as an entity intact is to close the gap. To visibilise what the organisation has, in effect, already become.

With ActImpact in place, the idea is of a well-thought-out and deliberate rejection of the ecosystem’s obsession with just outputs, where individual voices, dreams, and aspirations aren’t fully seen through and don’t find the space. “The development sector in our country often mistakes activity for impact,” says Mr. Nanduri. “We often count people trained, workshops conducted, funds disbursed, but rarely ask whether intermediate outcomes are actually and tangibly leading to an end result that communities care about.”

The framework and function of ActImpact draw from outcomes as well as an impact-oriented thought process, but with a much more profound ethical lens. Success is no longer defined by just logframes, but by showcasing the accountability to the communities themselves. “We have to be answerable to the people we work for,” Mr. Nanduri notes. “If something isn’t working, we need to have the flexibility to course correct and not hide behind indicators.”

While agriculture continues to be of paramount importance, the organisation has been working across non-farm livelihoods, renewable energy, climate-smart interventions, and enabling ecosystems for income generation. Crucially, recognising that, to a larger extent, livelihoods cannot be separated from health, education, or behavioural constraints. It becomes important to note that impact is always limited by a plethora of factors; if we ignore those, we are setting ourselves up to fail.

The rebrand also reflects on the broader bottlenecks in the development sector space. After two decades of extensive experience in the sector, Mr. Nanduri is candid about what he sees as the hard truth, revealing how we are overly input-oriented, creating funnels instead of identifying critical leverage points that lead to a shift in outcomes. Pointing towards the issue with unidimensional thinking in a deeply interconnected reality. “There is no single solution to complex problems. We need multi-partner, collaborative approaches that are realistic, dynamic, and adaptive.”

The shift to the brand, then, is not just about a new name. It is a statement of intent moving from institution building to action, from activity to accountability, from fragmented interventions to catalytic change. In a sector overflowing with good intentions, ActImpact is staking its aspirations and claims on something much harder and far more necessary in the current times: impact that can be seen, measured, and tangible on the ground.

The above information is the author's own; Outlook India is not involved in the creation of this article.