The Founder’s Saga: Holding It All Together When Everything Pulls You Apart

Leadership Blogs - by Anamika Srivastava - Founder & CEO - Development Consortium

Editorial Note: “There were months when salaries were paid from my own savings.” This is not a headline you usually see from a nonprofit CEO. In The Founder’s Saga, our CEO Anamika Srivastava shares the untold side of building Development Consortium - 3 AM fundraising anxiety, hard decisions, leading through fog, and learning to bend without breaking. This is Part 2 of a threefold reflection on what it truly takes to build and evolve an institution.

When Purpose Meets Pressure

If the early years of the Development Consortium were about passion and purpose, the years that followed were about demand, grit and endurance.

People often look at nonprofit founders with admiration, the awards, the impact stories, and the photographs with communities and donors. What they rarely see is the sleepless nights, the financial anxiety, and the silent burden of keeping an entire ecosystem together…yet keeping their calm.

The reality is, leadership in the development sector is not a straight road. It’s a storm. You navigate it sometimes with confidence, often with fear, and occasionally with the unsettling feeling that the road ahead leads nowhere.

There were periods when the work demanded more than my body or mind could give. I was working full-time because the home had to run too. Days blurred into endless meetings, concept notes, proposals, reports, and field visits squeezed into whatever time remained.

My team looked to me for direction. Funders expected clarity, presence, and perfection. Partners wanted results. And somewhere in between, I had to hold my emotions, my energy, and my sanity together.

The Weight of Fundraising

Fundraising is not just about convincing donors. It is about convincing yourself every single day if your cause is still worth fighting for.

Especially when proposals go unanswered.When rejections pile up.When your work is labelled “not innovative enough.”

There were months when salaries were paid from our own resources, not because we lacked commitment or effort, but because the system simply did not move fast enough. I would wake up often at 3 AM calculating numbers in my head….

Can we pay the team this month? 

Will the project close or continue? 

Should I dip into reserved savings again?

Each “no” from a potential funder felt deeply personal. But every “yes” however small, felt like the world shifted a little closer to justice.

I learned to celebrate the micro-wins: a meeting that went well, a partner on-boarded, a donor who responded kindly, and team members who stayed despite uncertainty. 

Because those moments kept the fire alive, they reminded me why we began and why we stayed…and have come this far.

Leading Through the Fog

Leadership, I realised, is not always about having the answers; it is about finding them while staying steady when everyone else feels lost.

As DC grew, the pressure grew too: bigger projects, more reporting, more audits, more compliance. I had to evolve from being a “doer” to being a “leader”, guiding, delegating, and trusting. And that transition was anything but easy.

There were tough decisions, difficult conversations, letting go of people who couldn’t align with our values, saying no to partnerships that compromised our ethics, and standing up to power when it was uncomfortable and lonely. 

Each decision took a little piece of me.

But I learned that leadership is not about being liked. It’s about being fair, objective, consistent, and deeply human even when it hurts.

Leading through fog means moving ahead without full visibility, yet choosing to switch on the lights anyway so others can see what you stand for.

The Team: My Anchor and My Mirror

No organisation survives without its people. 

My team became both my anchor and my mirror, reflecting the culture I created.

There were days of laughter and shared chai-samosa breaks, and there were days of burnout and tears. 

As a leader, I carried every emotion in the room. When someone struggled, I felt I had failed them. When someone left, it felt personal.

But over time, I understood that leadership is about trust, not control. 

People will come and go. What must remain steady is the vision, the values, and the purpose that keep us breathing.

The Emotional Cost of Doing Good

Social impact work is emotional labour. You witness injustice, pain, and poverty, and yet you must remain functional enough to write reports, negotiate budgets, and present outcomes with composure.

There were moments when the stories from the field would break me. And yet, I had to show up the next day at work, composed and professional, because that’s what leadership demanded. 

In those moments, I learned to pause, to breathe, to step back, to remind myself that even leaders are allowed to feel vulnerable. Compassion for others must start with self-compassion.

Resilience, Redefined

Today, almost two decades in, I know this much:

Leadership is not about being unbreakable. It is about learning how to bend without snapping. About unlearning, relearning, and forgiving yourself and others.

Every challenge, whether financial, emotional, or organisational, taught me something invaluable. I learned to let go of control, to trust the process, and to make peace with imperfection.

Through it all, one belief never changed: we are stronger….because together we can.

The Founder’s Saga is not a tale of glory. It is a story of grit, grace, and growing through chaos. Because the work we do is demanding, yes, but it is also profoundly human.

And at the end of every long day, when the noise settles, I return to the reason I began this journey in the first place:

To drive change that truly matters.