A Simple Guide to Making an Effective Playbook

Gargi Anand and Smita Kumar lay out how to document and share solutions using playbooks for the development sector

Dec 15, 2025

Our world faces grave threats, such as climate change, resource depletion, pollution, and water and food insecurity. However, the manifestation of these problems, their causes, and solutions are often unique and local. India has thousands of civil society organisations (CSOs) working on numerous problems and they have, over decades, developed solutions that are deeply contextual.

The challenge lies in how these solutions are offered – as complete, end-to-end packages. However, different communities have different needs so a one-size-fits-all approach limits the transfer of knowledge and restricts communities to the solutions
promoted by the CSO, rather than what might be most relevant to them.

This is where the playbooks come in – they document, unbundle, and disseminate knowledge in a way that makes it transferable, adaptable, and scalable across regions.

Gargi Anand and Smita Kumar take you through how to document and share solutions within the development sector in this toolkit. 

 

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Axis Bank Foundation

Authored by Gargi Anand, Smita Kumar

Editorial review by Ananya Revanna

Designed by Ramya Krishnan

 

Follow us to stay updated about our work