Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Lessons of Financial Orchestration: What fuels movements towards societal change

As someone who studied history academically, I was often asked, “What is the point? How does looking at the past help the present?” For me, history has always been a pragmatic lens to understand patterns, map systems, and learn how human actions drive transformational change. 

This lens led me to ask: What does it take to build massive, audacious movements such as India’s freedom movement? They required significant and diverse financial resources. How did they approach it? How did freedom fighters bring diverse funders, institutions, and capital together around the promise of Swaraj or self-rule?  

Our Journey Partners are reimagining pathways to drive movements for societal change – movements that diverse actors need to bring alive and sustain until systemic issues are solved at scale. But movements require significant financial resources; what can they be and how may one unlock them? Looking back can help answer some of these questions.

Movements require system orchestration, and effective system orchestration needs Financial Orchestration to happen alongside – India’s freedom fighters practised this intuitively.

While traditionally, fundraising happens for projects or programmes with fixed timelines and strict outputs, Financial Orchestration focuses on aligning diverse funding pools to enable change that sustains. Here are a few ways freedom fighters practised Financial Orchestration and some lessons that we can get inspired by:  

Building a shared narrative unites diverse people

A strong and unified narrative can paint the picture of what a different future might hold. This builds conviction and trust such that action can follow. Freedom fighters painted a picture of Swaraj (self-rule) through newspapers, pamphlets, and speeches, communicating that self-rule would restore agency, dignity, and equality for all. They exposed colonial injustices, built a national consciousness, and united people across religions, regions, and communities towards this shared imagination. 

To translate this imagination required bringing diverse actors around a shared way of understanding and talking about freedom. Self-reliance became this unifying narrative. Khadi (hand-spun cloth) and salt became symbols of reviving indigenous industries that were crippled under heavy British taxes, offering weavers, citizens, shop owners, among others, a way to come together, reducing the understanding gaps for everyone. From funders to the average citizen, the messaging was not lost in translation.

Mahatma Gandhi during the Salt March, March 1930.

Financial Orchestration requires a simple, unifying vocabulary that bridges the gap between potential collaborators. What can today’s “khadi” and “salt” be to inspire many to care for issues such as education, health, climate, and more? 

Diverse funding streams create several access points to unlock capital 

In the Indian freedom movement, diverse sources of capital: diaspora, industry, secretive (anonymous donations), and community, all were welcome. It was a fluid structure where many shared the risk of supporting India’s independence movement. Resourcing at scale included raising different types of capital, connecting diverse collaborators, networking, building trust and creating innovative access points that gave all – rich or poor; men, women – a way to participate. 

• In 1921, Mahatma Gandhi launched the Tilak Swaraj Fund to finance the Non-cooperation Movement and raised an ambitious ₹10 million (approximately 27 million USD today) in just 6 months. The contributions came in many forms – jewellery, cash, cloth, and even household items. Innovative ways to contribute were encouraged. In the Muthiya system, predominantly women set aside a handful of grain in every meal that they then collected and sold to contribute towards the fund. Since trading grain was legal, it dodged any British crackdown. 
• Wealthy Indians acted as vital ecosystem connectors, helping freedom fighters connect with funders. Within India, affluent courtesans of North India sold their jewellery to buy weapons, hold rallies, and host secret political meetings. Overseas, foreign funds from the Indian diaspora powered the cause: Madam Cama contributed her inheritance to spread the message of independence, while Shyamji Krishna Varma offered fellowships to students pledged to the movement. 

Image Source: Vikram Sampath, My Name is Gauhar Jaan: The Life and Times of a Musician

Financial Orchestration is more than raising capital; it is about creating our own version of “handful of grain” and creating a pathway that allows many to contribute. 

Nurturing scaffolding sustains the long-term vision:

The freedom movement builders knew that independence was the first step – a sovereign nation required nurturing many pillars years in advance because a newly independent country needed people who could run it and a system that sustained it. Creating systemic change means investing in building blocks long before they yield any overt results, such as:    

• Industrialist Sir Dorabji Tata financed the Indian National Congress and provided scholarships for Indian students to study abroad. At a time when advanced education was gatekept by the British, this investment nurtured the minds needed to build a free India.
• In the early 1920s, GD Birla created the Indian Chamber of Commerce to give Indian enterprise a unified political voice and reduce the commercial monopolies that the British held and supported local businesses. 
• The Bombay Plan, a comprehensive 15-year blueprint for economic development put together by 8 industrialists is another example. Its main focus was poverty alleviation, but it also covered various related aspects such as rapid industrialisation, agricultural development, and social welfare to make that a reality. 

Financial Orchestration entails creating the building blocks needed to sustain a movement well into the future. What would a “15-year blueprint” look like for today, and which actors could help co-create it? 

Orchestrating for the future:

This sliver of the Indian freedom movement is a compelling example of Financial Orchestration in practice, long before the vocabulary existed. More than a record of the past, it can be a strategic playbook for the future. 

Financial Orchestration built around a shared vision, diverse types of capital, and a long-term infrastructure roadmap enables movements to scale and sustain. As change leaders on the journey of exponential change, what would it take to move from traditional fundraising bound by 12-month grant cycles and practise Financial Orchestration instead? History inspires us to think differently, to unlock financial resources in unconventional ways. How can we adapt these lessons to fund the movements of tomorrow?