2nd July 2025: The Playbook for Nonprofit Unicorns, an extensive research report released by Change Engine, a first-of-its-kind accelerator for nonprofits, flips the narrative that government is a hurdle. Instead, it reveals that 80% of India’s most successful nonprofits have scaled by working directly with the government. The state is one of the most powerful levers for scale, offering unmatched reach, infrastructure, and authority to drive deep, systemic change. Nonprofit unicorns are organisations that impact a million people or 5% of the target user base meaningfully.
The report challenges popular belief by showing it is much easier to get a breakthrough with the government than assumed. There is a growing interest among ministries in engaging external experts to improve program delivery. 41% of nonprofits in the report secured their first government partnership within a year of reaching out to relevant stakeholders. Moreover, 42% did so through cold outreach — by preparing relevant materials and directly contacting officials to secure meetings.
“The government holds unparalleled power to scale interventions; a single policy reform, a new institution, or a significant budget allocation can move the needle non-incrementally on societal challenges. To become unicorns, nonprofits must proactively partner with the government to create population-level impact,” said Varun Aggarwal, Co-founder, Change Engine.
The study covers 33 nonprofit unicorns filtered from an extensive list of 100 such entities on the basis of the scale and depth of impact. The study found that 55% of nonprofits work across 5 or more states either by improving government programs or by using government infrastructure to deliver their own.
Here are some interesting examples:
- Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy provided technical and drafting assistance to the Ministry of Finance when it constituted a reform committee to improve the bankruptcy code. Since then, it has supported the government in implementing and operationalizing new laws under the aegis of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
- SaveLife Foundation has cut road crash fatalities by 58% on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway through zero-fatality solutions. Now, in partnership with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), they are scaling their approach to 100 highways.
- Rocket Learning delivers early childhood education across 150 districts in 9 states, equipping over 150,000 Anganwadi workers with digital learning content. Their students perform in the top 30% of an average class.
“The message to nonprofit founders is clear. To build scale, they need to think EPIC: build on Evidence, create Public goods, and scale high-impact Interventions for Change. And to scale direct intervention, nonprofits need to partner with the government, engage with communities, or unlock the power of markets,” added co-founder Shubham Bansal.
