The majority of BALMs funding comes from the Navajbai Ratan Tata Trust (NRTT), a sister Trust of Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT), which supported BALM in the initial years.

SRTT is one of the oldest philanthropic institutions in India and has played a pioneering role in changing the traditional ideas of charity and introducing the concept of philanthropy. SRTT was established in 1919 by Sir Ratan Tata.

At present, SRTT focuses on 5 core areas for programme grants:

• Rural livelihoods & communities
• Education
• Health
• Enhancing civil society and governance
• Arts & culture

For individual grants, SRTT focuses on:

• Meeting medical expenses during critical illnesses
• Educational needs for higher education within India, and assistance for education-related travel overseas.
• Promoting sports and encouraging young sporting talents

Over the period 2001-09, the disbursals of the Trust have risen from Rs. 210.43 million during 2001-02 to Rs. 1,533.64 million during 2008-09. The grants were made across all five thematic areas. While programme grants grew from Rs. 230 million in 2002-03 to Rs. 1,268 million in 2008-09, Endowments saw an increase from Rs. 7 million to Rs. 55 million. Individual grants also grew from Rs. 71 million to Rs. 181 million.

The SRTT and The Banyan began their collaboration in 1998 soon after The Banyan had gained some experience in working with homeless women with mental illness, and faced first hand, the various nuances in caring for this marginalised group. The enormity of the problem was evident in the steep rise of the number of referrals as was the need for a rounded, socio medical model of treatment with focus on institutionalisation and rehabilitation.  

The SRTT, at that point, supported The Banyan by helping it upscale its operations based on its initial outcomes and forecast of trends. This was at a stage when funding in the mental health sector was not seen as an essential investment in health budgets of both government and private trusts. The SRTT was the first organisational funder that came forward to engage in The Banyan’s work. 

With this support from the Trust, The Banyan fine tuned its interventions with focus on extension of services for people with mental illness belonging to the lower socio economic groups and reintegration of such persons into mainstream society. Towards this The Banyan created a cost effective, yet multi disciplinarian team that led the rehabilitative initiatives. Basic awareness creation on mental illness in the form of mass sensitisation campaigns was also part of The Banyan's agenda in an attempt to both mitigate stigma and battle the stereotype of a typical person with mental illness as non productive.

This led to the next phase of funding and collaboration that began with a review of The Banyan's work undertaken by NIMHANS. While detailed research indicated a 40 - 50% success rate in rehabilitation (insight building, skills training, reintegration and community sensitisation), a large part of the "failure" was attributed to overall deficiency in the mental health plan and implementation and lack of local networks that ensured a sustained state of wellness. Most of the rehabilitated clients had no source of immediate access and hence slipped the safety net of care second time round. To add to this problem, was the fact that most of these persons hailed from BPL families and rural areas; limited in its health initiatives. 

This was also the period during which The Banyan moved into its own premises and expanded its operations by both engaging more professional staff and increasing the number of out and in patients. Vocational Training and Social Skills Training was made top priority based on a trend that suggested that the productive clients with high insight and social and economic independence were those who could sustain a state of wellness. The focus on rehabilitation and formation of networks to ensure adequate follow up was a lot sharper with the thrust on mainstreaming like never before. Efforts to convert Adaikalam from a person driven initiative to a process and system driven one were also initiated during this period.

The third stage of funding was towards strategic initiatives of The Banyan focused on the learnings of the previous grant periods. The Banyan initiated several new programmes, including the Community Mental Health Project, the Disability Allowance, Community Living for long term residents and mainstreaming of processes in Adaikalam.

The focus from this phase onwards has been on strategic interventions that help achieve greater impact through the experiences and learnings of The Banyan. To study these experiences in a scientific manner, the concept of a resource centre that would document, research and disseminate was created. This later evolved into The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM) whose focus has grown from being a resource centre of The Banyan to a separate Trust that spearheads stakeholder increase in the mental health sector through research, training and workshops.

Since 2007, the support from SRTT has been crucial in establishing BALM as an organization and in advising in the direction and the strategies of BALMs future. The team at SRTT has been ever supportive and encouraging.

From 2009 – 2012, NRTT will contribute Rs. 15,5 Lakh per year to BALM.