About Us

Niti Foundation is a Nepali not-for-profit public interest organization

Set up in 2010, Niti Foundation (‘Niti’) is a Nepali non-profit organization engaged in strengthening Nepal’s policy process through collaborative research, innovative policy adoption, and enhanced policy choice. Niti’s long-term objectives are:

  • To identify, support, and convene present and future leaders in public policy reform;
  • To support networking and coalition building for public policy reform; and
  • To promote Nepali organizations and individuals that work on public policy reform.

Niti’s approach contributes to the larger discourse on innovative methods to achieve ‘more public’ policy with just and fair outcomes, in a funding environment that is increasingly characterized by donors who wish to engage more effectively in supporting policy reform. It currently provides support for Nepal’s policymakers, analysts, and public intellectuals to support and conduct research, advocacy, and action on salient policy issues. It also enables access to resources and platforms for policy discourse, and space for policy debate and contestation in the country.

Niti believes that local actors should be at the forefront of the policymaking process from agenda setting to policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. This locally-rooted process ensures wider ownership among policy actors and implementers, thereby improving their effective implementation and accountability. However, when the policymaking process is led by external partners including donor organizations, as often happens in an aid dependent country like Nepal, the need for public interlocution and intermediation of development partners with the context and Nepali public policy actors becomes apparent.

Niti’s strategic advisory services provide politics savvy, policy intelligent, and practical advice that is broadly available to those supporting an accountable, representative, and implementable public policy process in Nepal. Niti also provides Nepali-led interlocution and intermediation to contextualize local policy settings with relevant data and evidence for informed policymaking, facilitating an environment of trust and long-term strategic relations among donors and local policy actors.