Assume less, prepare more | Sarita Upadhyay

What should a nonprofit think about when planning for scale? In today’s episode, Sarita Upadhyay reflects on her initial years at Medha, a nonprofit that helps young people transition from the world of education to employment. She talks about the time the team got an opportunity to scale the organisation’s programme. However, decisions based on assumptions, gaps in internal communication, and an overall lack of preparedness resulted in the team at Medha losing out on almost two years of work. Sarita Upadhyay is a seasoned professional with more than 16 years of experience in the social and corporate sectors. As a core team member of Medha, she has helped in building the organisation from the ground up over the last 10 years. Currently, she is leading the strategy team at Medha. Her responsibilities are developing and implementing strategies for influencing the public education system, programme design, strategic partnerships, and execution of large-scale projects. Sarita has an MBA in Human Resources. Read more: Read Sarita’s story on Failure Files. Read more failure stories on Failure Files. Check out some ideas and tools from Fail Forward to help your organisation take risks, learn, adapt, and fail intelligently. Understand why the social sector must recognise and talk about failure. Learn why talking about failure is crucial for growth. Want to share your failure story? Learn more about what we’re looking for here, and share your pitch/story on [email protected] The Failure Files podcast is produced by India Development Review (IDR), an online journal focused on the development sector. IDR publishes cutting-edge ideas, lessons, and insights, written by and for the people working on some of India’s toughest problems. To learn more, visit www.idronline.org