There's a version of this story that sounds inspirational. The one where someone has a calling, quits their job, and builds something beautiful from scratch. This isn't that story.

This is the story of building a nonprofit in the gaps between everything else, on train rides, in lunch breaks, and in those weird hours after dinner where you're too tired to be productive but too stubborn to stop.

The boring truth

I work full-time at AIDER at the moment of writing this. That hasn't changed. I didn't take a sabbatical. I didn't get a grant to "explore my passion." Dharma gets roughly six to eight hours of my week. Sometimes less. Sometimes those hours happen at 11pm on a Tuesday because that's when the spreadsheet finally made sense.

I say this not because it's impressive — it's not — but because I think there's a dishonesty in how people talk about starting things. As if you need to burn the boats first. You don't. You just need to be stubborn about showing up, even when the work is deeply unglamorous.

And let me tell you, the work has been unglamorous.

What building actually looks like

Nobody tells you that starting something of your own involves a surprising amount of reading about organisational law. Or that writing articles of association is less "crafting a vision" and more "what does quorum actually mean and do we need to define it twice."

Our articles of association are about fifteen pages long. They cover everything from how we handle disputes to what happens to our money if we dissolve. I spent weeks on them. Not because I love legal documents, but because if you're asking people to trust you with their donations, the boring structural stuff is where that trust actually lives.

There were nights where the most productive thing I did for Dharma was read Norwegian nonprofit regulations. Not exactly the stuff you put on Instagram.

The team that showed up

The thing about building something slowly is that you find out who's actually in it with you. Not the people who say "that sounds amazing, let me know how I can help" and then you never hear from them again. The people who just... keep showing up.

Bernt-Kristian Nerland is our treasurer. When I say treasurer, I mean the person who makes sure we're not accidentally breaking financial regulations while trying to do good. He's based here in Norway and handles the side of things that would keep me up at night if he wasn't doing it.

Lisa Hücking is our Project and Partnership Coordinator. She's the one who actually manages the relationships with our partners on the ground — the emails, the follow-ups, the "can you clarify paragraph 3 of the agreement" messages that are tedious but essential. Without Lisa, we'd have ideas and no execution.

None of these people are full-time on Dharma. Each one of them does this alongside their own lives, their own jobs, their own commitments. That's not a weakness of our model. I'd argue it's a strength. Nobody here is doing this because they have to. They're doing it because they chose to, and they keep choosing to.

The "slow and nice" thing

People ask me about our growth strategy and I tell them it's "slow and nice." They usually laugh, or they look confused, like I've just told them our business plan is vibes.

But I mean it seriously. We're not trying to scale fast. We're not chasing grant cycles or trying to hit metrics that look good in a pitch deck. We're trying to build something that actually works, for the people we're trying to support, for our partners, and honestly, for us too.

There's a version of Dharma that grows ten times faster if I quit my job, fundraise aggressively, and hire people. There's also a version of that Dharma that burns out in two years because the foundation was never solid.

I'd rather be small and real than big and fragile.

What we actually do

The short version: We work through local partner organizations because we're not arrogant enough to think we know what communities need better than the people already working in them.

The long version is... longer. And it's still evolving. Our model isn't finished. We're learning as we go, adjusting as we learn, and being honest about what we don't know yet. Which is a lot.

Why I'm writing this now

Because we're not in the "idea phase" anymore. Something real is happening. Our first pilot is coming together in Kolkata, India, and I want to tell you about it properly — which I will, in the next post.

But I wanted to write this one first. Because by the time you hear about a project launch or a fundraising campaign, a lot of invisible work has already happened. Months of it. The kind of work that doesn't photograph well and doesn't fit in a caption.

I wanted you to see that part too.

Best
Ronny Wisløff Andersen
Founder

Dharma International is a Norwegian nonprofit supporting women entrepreneurs in developing countries. Learn more at dharma.ngo.