Own2Feet Association (O2F)

I am Shivani, the co-founder of Own2Feet association, a not-for-profit social enterprise based out of Bengaluru, India. I started my career in 2013 in Market Research industry but soon found my way to the nonprofit sector through volunteering. In 2017, I made the switch full time to the nonprofit sector and have since been working in small nonprofits/social enterprises in Bengaluru. While the emotional fulfillment was a major factor in this decision, but the driving force was my innate "fix-it" personality looking at all the challenges nonprofits are burdened by. Lot of these challenges stay unsolved because most of the talent in the nation is conditioned to chase big titles and salaries, and there aren't enough people willing to be a part of the social problem solving at the expense of their personal gain. (understandably. There are families to be run, children to be raised). I wanted to be part of the solution and to this day, I am driven by the desire to make things easier for nonprofits and people who run them. After working 4 years with nonprofits in various capacities, I started Own2Feet with my partner Kiran Rao in 2021. O2F is dedicated to empowering nonprofits and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives through comprehensive, action-oriented and improvement focused capacity building, impact measurement and research services. Since our inception, we have working intensively with small nonprofits across India to build leadership and organization building capacities of the leaders. Simultaneously we also work with the operations and program team to build organizational capacities with skills and systems for improved efficiency and quality. We also run a free advisory helpline wherein we advise and guide nonprofit founders or sector professionals with their challenges. In the coming years, we want to build training courses and digital tools designed to give assist ngo founders and employees unlock better funding and amplify their impact.