Overview:
Mumbai-headquartered, education focused, non-profit, Teach for India (TFI) is popular across India for providing exceptional quality, performance driven education to students enrolled with underserved state-run or private schools. The trained 'TFI Fellows' (teachers) are recognized for their smart, participatory approach, and innovative ways of conducting classes; fostering the child's holistic development.

Between FY10-FY14, TFI has grown 6x in terms of the number of schools covered across 5 cities; the number of children impacted shot up by 12x with nearly 10x increase in the number of TFI Fellows. Besides this, TFI has demonstrated remarkable change in a child's academic performance; setting higher performance benchmarks relative to non-TFI supported students.

Sector and Positioning:
TFI's well-defined model helps to source, train and nurture TFI Fellows to become a catalyst of change while they are placed as teachers in schools for two full years with an objective to eradicate education inequality in India. This method clearly differentiates TFI from other NGOs working in the education space. TFI's strong base has helped them spread its reach faster than anticipated. With the support from State Government, over 20+ MNCs, 2,000+ Individual Donors, and 150 staff, TFI is well positioned to bring about radical change in the Indian education system.

Outcome:
While TFI has not seen any SSC (10th grade) pass-out batches as yet, it must be noted that 20,000+ TFI students have outperformed non-TFI students by almost 95% in subjects like English and Math across different grades. Besides this, TFI now has an alumni network of 417 graduated Fellows working in diverse fields. Interestingly, about 60% of Fellows graduating each year, choose to pursue teaching over other career options, by either remaining associated with TFI or working independently.

Financial Performance:
Impressive 3-Year income CAGR (102% for FY10-FY14); low fund raising costs (2% average for FY11-14) and over 85% spend on beneficiaries, coupled with visible change in children’s holistic development make TFI a compelling organization in the education space.

Corporate Governance and Reporting Standards:
TFI is governed by 11 highly regarded individuals from the non-profit and corporate world. All members are active and are involved in fundraising. An active and strong board is one of TFI’s biggest plus points. In FY13, TFI went virtual by availing services from Salesforce.com to centralise their reporting system on a real-time basis. TFI maintains a very high level of transparency by publishing detailed financials and annual reports.

Major Challenges / Improvement Areas:
TFI recognizes the dire need for quality education in the rural and semi-urban areas but due to lack of understanding and various other issues, TFI is unable to scale their operations immediately to these areas.

TFI is working towards addressing a major concern in the education space, viz., education inequity! It aims to bridge the gap between the quality of education offered to underprivileged children in government schools and low-income private schools. Moreover, TFI wants to replicate this model across the country by training the youth to become future leaders and helping reform the education sector in India.

TFI hires graduates and professionals as TFI Fellows who undergo six weeks of training. TFI works with state government bodies to identify schools with teacher vacancies which are then filled up by placing TFI Fellows. They are then placed for a 2-year full time teaching position with well-defined accountability for their classrooms. TFI takes responsibility for these children from Grade II to Grade X. TFI's curriculum is designed to a) bridge the academic gap, b) inculcate right values, and c) provide industry exposure through field visits. TFI Board sanctions an annual budget of Rs500,000 per class and the Fellow is responsible to prepare an annual plan and deploy the funds suitably for the benefit of the class. Each Fellow is paid a stipend of Rs17,500 p.m.

TFI is among the very few education-focused organisations having executed long term MoUs (minimum 5 years) with State-run schools to educate their students.

The model followed by TFI has been inspired by Teach for America and the India chapter is spearheaded by Shaheen Mistri. TFI began working towards this noble ambition in 2008 and in 2009 placed their first group of trained teachers called ‘Fellows’ in low-income government and private schools in Pune and Mumbai. They now (2015) have 910 ‘Fellows’ spread across 7 cities - Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru.

• Expansion in Rural India: At present, TFI operates from seven metro cities. TFI has a high standard for its Fellows - only 8% of those who apply get selected. Due to a dearth of skilled and efficient personnel, TFI is reluctant to spread its reach in rural India at the moment.