GiveIndia.org - Spreading a giving culture

NGO Visit: An interesting time at NAB (National Association for the Blind)

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:36:00 +0000

As part of GiveIndia’s initiative this year, it is now compulsory for all employees to have a quarterly visit to a non-profit/NGO – preferably one that GiveIndia is associated with. The whole point of this was to ensure people (i.e. GiveIndia employees) know that their work is really benefiting someone, and at the same time learn what the NGOs really do at the grass root level.

This article was written by our IT Product Manager, Chaitanya Dhareshwar – as a non-grass root person, this was his first visit to a GiveIndia Certified NGO.

Some background: Tarika is one of GiveIndia’s core team members, and she regularly visits NGOs to take photos/videos of the activities conducted. I chose to go with Tarika since I was not very comfortable approaching NGOs myself. I decided NAB (National Association for the Blind) was the best choice for me – it just ‘made sense’, as I’ve had eyesight problems as long as I’ve known.

So when I got to NAB (at Worli seaface) I was not really sure what to expect - whether it'll be something with blind people all over the place where I'd have to dodge them just to get around (a scene out of the movie Resident Evil played out in my head :)... Anyways I had 30 minutes to wait for our scheduled time (I reached at 9:30 and we were supposed to start our 'visit' @10), and Tarika wasn't there so I figured I'd look at the talking library and identify opportunities to utilize the next quarterly visit in doing some good.

They have this really nice 'studio' there, with one central room where they monitor the readers, and each small audition room with a really high quality microphone, set of Bose headsets, a computer screen (where instructions are displayed) and a large table. I had a voice test done, which basically involves reading a passage out of one of their selected books, and they figured my voice quality was good enough to bottle - so maybe next quarter I'll visit there 2-3 times and read out a whole book. Hopefully it won't be boring (so I won't yawn) and the will actually help someone 'read' their next book.

And then Tarika calls me, turns out I was in the wrong NAB centre all this time. Sigh.

So after getting to the correct NAB centre - the one attached to King George's, we began the actual visit. I was thoroughly impressed by the 'open' landscape and natural beauty of the place. Met the Director, Ms Pallavi Kadam, and had a brief discussion on what the centre attempts to accomplish, and where the donation (for the vocational training DO) is utilized. Also discussed about a call centre being setup and that they require technical assistance with some of it, so another opportunity (for me) to volunteer :)

Through this course, NAB attempts to:

- Create basic self-reliance and self-awareness in visually impaired people they work with (hereafter referred to as VIPs)

- Mobility and interaction training, basically help them move around, utilize regular facilities like train, bus, etc - and interact with people around them both VIPs and commoners

- Get them involved in Games for overall physical health as well as improved confidence in their mobility (including: football, track events, chess, ludo, playing cards, cricket [belled stumps pic attached], you name it they've got it!)

- This bit was the best I think - Self-defence training for the girls, taught by a blind lady, to help them be safe in a man's world!!

- Build a stable earning foundation for them so they don't depend upon others for almost anything

The course itself includes cookery, kitchen work, household work (washing, cleaning), braille, computer use.

Vocational training options include making of agrabattis, paper bags and decorative plastic bags, paper plates, key chains, also physiotherapy and clinical work (like BP checking, ultrasound). Many VIPs here come from rural areas and gain employment through NAB's vocational training in their home village. Over time as business picks up they're able to make a decent living. NAB also offers startup assistance for them, where raw materials are supplied (so they VIPs don't need to run around to the suppliers) for the initial setup.

While there I met one gentleman from the Merchant navy who had recently lost sight in both eyes due to an autoimmune disorder. His own immune system destroyed his optic nerves!! Apparently this had happened twice in the past but he was able to recover from it earlier, but this time the effect was permanent - he's barely able to make out bright blues, but otherwise it's a dark, dark world.

Made me sad to know he may never see again, and very grateful that I have my sight, and on our way out I enjoyed the splendid greenery a lot more.

Celebrating 13 years of Giving

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:21:00 +0000

GiveIndia Board Members and
our CEO addressing at the event

We celebrated our 13^th Anniversary with our key stakeholders – NGOs partners, benevolent donors, committed payroll giving corporates, alliance partners and our distinguished board members on May 30, 2013. Members of our stakeholder communities shared their experiences as we revisited our 13 year journey.

It was an opportunity for us to thank each and every one of you who have been instrumental in this journey. And as our Chairman Mr. N Vaghul said that one thing that binds us all is the “passion of making a difference” and what we have achieved today is a baby step. He mentioned that though GiveIndia is now 13 years old, in terms of growth potential it feels like a baby of 13 months that has a long way to go to fulfill our vision.

Mr. Venkat Krishnan, founded GiveIndia in 2000 when he found a need to connect the people who are willing to give and the people like Mr. Sinha and other NGO’s who required funds to support the work they were doing for the underprivileged. He also mentioned how the commitment of the people working at GiveIndia has inspired him through this journey of 13 years.

Mr. Sudarshan Jain, Mr. Maninder
Juneja & Ms. Gazala Sheikh
representing our Corporate Partners
at the event

This journey of 13 years would not have been possible without the support of our corporate partners. Sharing his views on Payroll Giving Program Mr. Sudarshan Jain, CEO Abbott Healthcare said, “We started working with GiveIndia in 2005 for the Payroll Giving Programme and we find that our employees feel a great sense of pride by making a difference through their contribution. They also feel deeply engaged with programmes such as payroll giving that go beyond their day to day activities.”

Mr. Maninder Juneja, Head Liabilities represented another of our Payroll Giving partners ICICI Bank. Quoting Mr. Juneja on GiveIndia as platform for philanthropic exchange, “We have 6500 employees from ICICI enrolled in our payroll giving programme with GiveIndia. GiveIndia provides us a convenient, credible and transparent platform, leading to no constraints in giving. In fact we have now extended our programme to our customers as well.”

Being associated with GiveIndia since 2008, Ms. Gazala Sheikh, Senior Manager, CSR - HR HDFC Life shared how GiveIndia help set a giving culture at HDFC Life. And how a ‘Credibility Alliance’ seal of approval gives trust and confidence to donate to the NGO.

Mr. J. K. Sinha & Ms. Kiran Modi sharing the
impact created through association with

It was inspiring to listen to Ms. Kiran Modi, Managing Trustee Udayan Care and Mr. Jyoti Sinha, Founder & Chairman Soshit Seva Sangh who represented our 170+ NGOs network to share the impact created through their association with GiveIndia. On behalf of 4.5 Million Musahars community in Bihar Mr. Sinha expressed his gratitude for giving them a future with the constant support and co-operation.

Ms. Ameeta Chatterjee, a GiveIndia Donor talked about how GiveIndia’s team helped identify project to fulfill her philanthropic objectives and was instrumental in adopting a model here in Mumbai. We also had Ms. Pushpa Aman Singh, GiveIndia Alumni share her experiences of the initial days of GiveIndia and how they started off with working 20 hours a day to provide as much help as possible by channelizing funds during the Gujarat Earthquake.

Ms. Ameeta Chatterjee, GiveIndia Donor and
Ms. Pushpa Aman Singh, GiveIndia Alumni sharing
their experiences

Mr. Amit Chandra, Board Member – GiveIndia and Managing Director, Bain Capital ended the evening by paving the way ahead for us in the following words, “It has taken us 13 years to raise 185 crores but I believe there is enough opportunity for us to raise that much in a year. In fact, the HNI team has committed to raising 85 crores for two large scale projects over the next 3 years.”

We are happy to inform you that in the last 13 years, GiveIndia has come a long way in creating the ‘culture of giving’ in India. With 175 NGOs carefully selected from over 5000 organizations, GiveIndia has succeeded in raising over Rs. 185 crores and has touched over a million lives since its inception as India’s first Philanthropy Marketplace. More than 1.2L employees from 115 companies have been impacted through Payroll Giving Program. The First Givers Club has helped more than 40 families decide their philanthropic objectives and channel money towards deserving projects.

We would like to once again thank each and every one of you towards making it happen and look forward to your continued support to achieve our vision.

The remarkable year called 2012!

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 28 May 2013 11:18:00 +0000

There are many reasons why we think our teams are extraordinary (and by the way, they really are extraordinary) but chief among them is their commitment to everyday ordinariness. For us, at GiveIndia, a job is always more than a job, a responsibility translates to living up to measurable impact and recognition is felt only when we hear it from others.

So, in that regard, 2012 was really remarkable on both internal and external fronts. Internally, for the first time in the last 13 years, we crossed the 30 crores landmark in funds raised during a year, bringing over Rs.180 crores of funds channeled towards the relief of poor, since inception. This was only enabled with each of our teams outdoing their performances at ongoing activities and bringing more initiatives to the fore.

Externally, this year brought our teams, multiple rewarding recognitions.GiveIndia.org bagged the “CharityWebsite of the Year – 2012”.

The fourth edition of our signature online fundraising challenge – The India Giving Challenge 2012 – won two significant acknowledgements namely 'Fundraising Campaign of the Year' by the South Asian Fundraising Group, and 'Best Use of Internet in Social &Economic Development'.

y the Internet and Mobile Association of India. Such recognitions reinforced our excitement of looking at opportunities with renewed pursuit as we received the most incredible amount of support from all across the country in winning the Mahindra Rise, Spark the Rise - Round 1, held during the early months of 2013.
Praise, as they say, is time bound – because it comes and goes away or because people may forget about accomplishments the next day – but an impact stays forever and that’s what our teams stand for as enablers of impact and change. Certainly, we have been able to strike much chord through our service in the last 13 years but there’s yet so much scope to do more and in such different ways !

As we look forward to embracing the coming years with renewed focus and energy, we cannot ever forget to thank you – our partners and supporters, well wishers and mentors, and our staff and volunteers – for believing in our delusions and supporting us enough to make them turn into some real impact stories.

To summarize ,

We know we've Come So Far

But we've Got So Far To Go
We know the road seems long
But it won't be long till it's
time to go ...

This is the thirteenth and the last post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of GiveIndia’s journey through the past 13 years. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

2011 : Scaling back yet crossing the finish line !

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:09:00 +0000

2011 was a year of building and scaling back of consolidation of the previous year yet by this time, we crossed Rs 150 crores in funds channeled for the relief of poor since inception!

Instead of focusing on fresh initiatives, we continued to build on our primary areas of strength - payroll giving, online and retail giving, and HNI Giving - by doing things a little differently than before. The result – each of the teams managed to scale up tremendously and enabled greater penetration in their operations!

Our CEO - Dhaval facilitating the one lakth PRG signee Priya
an employee at Infoedge

Payroll Giving added it’s 1,00,000th donor and added 24,000 new employees in a single year, the highest so far in the programme’s nine year history. We also held the second successful First Givers Summit, with key note speaker as Mr. Azim Premji. On the online front, we raised Rs. 3 crores through the third edition of the India Giving Challenge, a milestone achievement of sorts in individual donations online!

Our tie up with PAYBACK

To facilitate more online donations, we tied up with Payback. The association enabled Payback customers to redeem their points for charity. Only our teams could have thought that loyalty points could make for charity too! But on a more serious note, our credibility assurance team conducted 300+ NGO verification visits all across the country. These visits were aimed to do surprise checks on our listed NGOs to assure that funds were beneficiaries. This is our way of ensuring that even after we enlist an NGO, we keep a thorough diligence on the utilization and provide accurate feedback of the utilization to our donors.

A new ray of excitement came through our own internal conceptualization of a new programme – the Monthly Donation Option - MDO. The programme enables a person to select his/her beneficiary before signing up for regular monthly deductions and gets a feedback report every six months. As opposed to other programs, the donor will know exactly who the beneficiary is and which NGO the beneficiary belongs to, before making the decision to contribute. For us, this seemed a more innovative approach to ensure that maximum donations reach the end beneficiaries at a much more frequently and that NGOs get the maximum benefit in a more regular manner.

The MDO, while an enhancement to our Payroll Giving model is a new idea in itself, yet only after 8 years of having experienced the response to the Payroll Giving programme could we arrive at executing it full fledgedly. For us, at GiveIndia, we’re never short of ideas such as these yet we’ve always consciously tried to only acknowledge the ones which we think can be executed well and in timeJ.

This is the twelfth post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of GiveIndia’s journey through the past 13 years. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

Indian Giving League (IGL): The Journey so far……..

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:24:00 +0000

In a cricket frenzy nation like ours, almost anything can be sold in the name of cricket. The best cricketers sell cola, chips, fans and even tell you how to revitalize your body. When we at GiveIndia, came up with the concept of the Indian Giving League (IGL), it was more about using a popular and competitive model like the Indian Premier League (IPL) to encourage people to think more about philanthropy. So, while cricket was certainly involved, so were city loyalties and the pride of giving, both of which became important components of the giving process.

We always expected Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai & Kolkata to rule the roost but we got quite a few surprises on the way. Like when smaller cities like Ghaziabad & Coimbatore outshone the bigger ones. In fact, even Jammu was in the top 10 for quite some time before being pushed down. So, overall the IGL has been quite similar to IPL, with its own share of ups and downs. As far as the IPL goes, Bengaluru was the top team after week 1 but now have slipped to the 4th position, however Mumbai continues to dominate the IGL with Delhi & Bengaluru in 2nd & 3rd slot. Since its commencement on the 3rd of April, the IPL would have raked millions in advertisements and ticket collections; the IGL, on the other hand, with the support of the donors has helped thousands of underprivileged in India. The Rs. 45 lacs that has been raised during the IGL so far has helped provide basic necessities to India’s poor who can now look forward to a better tomorrow.

In the process of running a league which has daily updates, new twists daily, our team has come across a lot of learnings. While people love to compete for the pride of their cities, most donors realize that the cause for competition is much greater. Mumbai might out do a Jammu, Delhi might donate thrice as much as Jaipur but ultimately humanity wins.

Now, as the IPL reaches a more eventful and exciting stage, the IGL is set to experience the same as well. There will be winners in both competitions, who will be rewarded, however, every participant is crucial to making the event a success. So, since you can’t score runs for your team in the IPL, score points for them in the IGL by donating and making a difference!

See where your city stands in the Indian Giving League: http://www.giveindia.org/t-indian-giving-league-2013.aspx

2010 : The Year of the First Givers

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:30:00 +0000

By this time, our focus on individual giving had taken much traction. Online giving had already experienced 98%growth, thanks to the India Giving Challenge, while Payroll Giving too had crossed 30,000 employees !

Launch of First Givers Club

It was not time to consolidate our efforts towards the high net worth segment comprising of individuals who had accomplished most of the ‘desirable things’ and would have thought about sustained giving in a structured manner. We launched the First Givers Club (FGC) to address just this concern area. This launch was our highlight for the year. Each member of this club confirmed a stated intent of donating at least Rs. 5 lacs and volunteer 40 hours of their time per annum to any cause of their choice.

On July 30, 2010, We kicked off the launch of FGC with an annual summit, with over 100 members and featuring speakers such as Dr. Nitin Nohria (Dean, HBS), N. Vaghul (Chairman, GiveIndia), Amit Chandra(MD, Bain Capital India), Kevin Salwen(author, Power of Half), Dr. Nachiket Mor, Nandini Piramal and Vijay Mahajan(Founder, BASIX). The summit focused on who to give, how to give and how much to give, followed by a panel discussion on “Role of Philanthropy in India”.

Another experimentation on similar grounds was the Mumbai Giving Circles, a concept similar to the First Givers Club but targeted at upper middle class donors giving at least Rs.50,000 per annum. 2010 saw six circles being formed in Mumbai and Bangalore.

At the same time, we ensured to not lose track of our on going initiatives aimed at individual giving at large. To do so in a better manner, we launched a Standing Instructions programme through credit cards. As a result of this, any individual could set aside a designated amount to be deduced out of credit card, net banking account or debit card, every month towards a Giving account with GiveIndia. Even today our donors are reaping huge benefits of monthly donations due to our association with HDFC Bank and ICICI Banks in enabling this feature of easy giving J

All this, and we moving ahead, even closer to full self sustainability. A decade was seemingly over indeed but we chose to rather look forward to the beckoning of the future ..

This is the eleventh post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of GiveIndia’s journey through the past 13 years. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

'Heady' year 2009 marked the Joy of Giving Week, the India Giving Challenge, Green Giving & more !

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:31:00 +0000

In the last 13 years, if any year could be named as ‘a heady year’, 2009 would win hands down. In simpler words, if one would visit our office, he/she would clearly feel the wave and the thrust of the multiple initiatives that our teams were conceptualizing, executing and striving to effectively put in place.

For starters, our founder – Venkat – initiated the concept of Joy of Giving Week, a week encouraging giving back in any form : skills, time, money, smiles, happiness, whatever brought joy to the receiving party. His idea, as always, was simple – If we can celebrate festivals such as Holi or Diwali on dedicated days during the year, why not dedicate a week to celebrate giving ?! Clearly, as usual, backed a team of dedicated volunteers, the week saw relentless efforts and massive impact, channeling over Rs. 10 crores through 300+ events in 40 cities all over India.

In the meanwhile, our own Internet team launched India’s first online giving event – the India Giving Challenge. Through the challenge, we asked corporate organizations, NGOs, individual fundraisers and the likes to reach out to their networks - employees, customers, partners, supporters, friends and families and social networks - to donate online towards NGO(s) over iGive pages. Moreover, we gave away matching grants to the NGOs who garnered maximum support in terms of funds raised and number of donors. In the very first year, the event stimulated a community form of fundraising and saw Rs.91 lacs being raised by 5000+ donors !

Green Giving with Make My Trip & Seva Mandir

Another interesting initiative we launched this year was a partnership with Make My Trip, wherein a customer on the MakeMy Trip site could offset the carbon emission resulting from the trip by choosing to donate towards tree plantation through the NGO – Seva Mandir. This was of tremendous success as more than 15,000 donors chose to plant 75,000 trees in just 5 months!

With all this, we definitely felt the vibe of the change our activities were enabling. The giving quotient in general had increased and we were adamant about continuing to do so..

This is the tenth post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of GiveIndia’s journey through the past 13 years. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

Giving Matters at Piramal Enterprises

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:31:00 +0000

This month we are featuring the culture of giving at Piramal Enterprises, through the initiatives and impact of the Piramal Foundation, committed to finding cost-effective, relevant & innovative solutions to our country’s most pressing challenges.

We were fortunate to know more about this and about corporate foundations trying to steer change from Mr. Paresh Parasnis, who is the head of the Piramal Foundation that is responsible for all the CSR activities of Piramal Enterprises.

GiveIndia: What's your role and for how long have you been in the organization?
Paresh: My role as Head of the Piramal Foundation involves overseeing the activities of the Foundation (which span across education, healthcare, clean drinking water and women’s empowerment) and being responsible for the CSR activities of Piramal Enterprises. Having joined the organisation in August 2012, we are working with our various initiatives in developing a three year strategy on the way forward. While the issues are many, we need to ensure that we remain focused and efficient in delivering the best possible outcomes. Also, as we build our mandate, there is a pressing need to ensure that governance practices are firmly embedded in the organisation which ensures rigour in decision making, regularity in monitoring and sustenance in organisational practices. Assessment of outcomes is another area where we need to put in a lot of effort.

GiveIndia: How does the Piramal Foundation try to achieve its mission in light of the group's business values and objectives?
Paresh: The core values of the Piramal Group are focused around Knowledge, Action and Care. The Foundation has, in a sense, embodied these values in the approach that is has taken across all its projects – Piramal Foundation for Education Leadership (PFEL), Health Management & Research Institute (HMRI), Sarvajal and Source For Change.

Care for us denotes trusteeship of the various stakeholders that we work with – employees, customers, the communities that we work with and society at large. Our work in the Foundation involves working with communities which are underserved in respect of the services that we focus on. Our partnership with government agencies and other foundation enables us to identify these communities where the need for these services is the maximum.

We believe that the services that we enable have to be backed by a deep understanding of the domain – Knowledge denotes deep expertise of the subject matter. We have, over the last five years, built up the necessary capabilities in our project teams that bring the required expertise to bear on any problem area. This expertise has been combined with innovative practices to ensure that the solution that we propose is capable of being scaled geographically can stay robust when scaled and is financially efficient for the segment that we hope to serve.

Two facets of the core value – Action - revolve around Entrepreneurship and Integrity. We have a large number of initiatives which are driven by each project team – these are, in turn, based on the specific needs as they arise. The project teams are expected to develop solutions that are most appropriate to the issue at hand without having to validate with any ‘central’ team. Integrity – consistency in thought, speech and action – is manifest in all the work that we do in the Foundation and, in fact, across the Group.

GiveIndia: What are the key initiatives that the Foundation has taken up? Are there any must do activities that your team does every year?
Paresh: At Piramal Foundation, we support various initiatives & collaborations in the areas of Health, Education and Youth Empowerment.

Health Management initiatives referred to as Piramal Swasthya has two major programs. Firstly, Health Management and Research Institute (HMRI), is a large scale initiative in partnership with Government providing healthcare services to disadvantaged people with limited or no access to primary healthcare. HMRI currently has 13 projects in 6 states (Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Karnataka) providing services to about 160 million people across the country. Another small scale “For-Profit” initiative is E-Swasthya which will become self sustaining over a period of time. E-swasthya delivers healthcare to “No doctor Zones”. Harvard Business School is running a case study on this initiative.

In the field of Education, we have another large initiative in collaboration with Government - Piramal Foundation for Education & Leadership (PEFL). At PEFL we believe in inculcating leadership skills and imparting relevant knowledge to head masters of government schools. The program is currently working with 1,000 schools in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra covering approx 1,50,000 students.

We also have other “For Profit” initiatives created in a way that they will become self sustaining over a period of time - Source for Change (Rural BPO) is an initiative for Women’s Empowerment providing quality BPO services to global clients at competitive prices and empowering rural India with employment opportunities. Another initiative that has been covered in a Harvard case study is Piramal Water – Sarvajal that provides affordable and pure drinking water. This initiative is successfully running across 150 towns and villages in Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Apart from these, Mr. Ajay Piramal, Chairman- Piramal Group, is also the Chairman of world’s biggest NGO in education sector- Pratham. We actively support Annamrita- the mid-day meal scheme of ISKCON, covering more than 80,000 school children in Mumbai.

GiveIndia: Till date, over 400 employees from the Piramal group have signed up for the Payroll Giving programme, contributing over 70 lacs of funds. In fact, the group companies do match contributions as well. Do you think Payroll Giving makes for an easier way for employees to engage with the cause of giving?
Paresh: The Payroll Giving programme in the Piramal Group has been a major organised activity to engage employees with the cause of giving. While financial contributions are an easy way to engage, a recent survey that we did amongst employees threw up interesting insights. A large number of employees have shown a desire to know more about the Foundation’s activities and also be involved in contributing through their own efforts to specific needs of each project – these contributions would be structured as Task based activities, Event based activities and Strategic activities.

GiveIndia: What's your take on corporate foundations trying to steer a change as opposed to CSR efforts integrated within or as a corporate function. Do you think they are different? If so, in what regard?
Paresh: Speaking from my experience with Piramal Foundation, I think the basic difference between a corporate foundation and CSR integrated as a corporate function is implementation of a project. Piramal Foundation is a foundation implementing projects for underserved communities, not just a grant making one. Our key focus areas are healthcare, education, youth and women’s empowerment. We have multiple projects running in these areas, a large number of which operate in Public Private Partnership. The Foundation engages with domain experts in the specific areas catered to by all our projects.

As opposed to this approach, in CSR (as a corporate function) the opportunity to implement a project is limited. The employee volunteer ends up working with an organisation/NGO on a specific cause identified by the organisation.

There is whole lot of a difference in the approach we take at Piramal Foundation. There are challenges in our country which need innovative & cost effective solutions As a Foundation we can invest in innovative solutions and then scale them in a partnership mode once the ‘proof of concept’ is established. Generally, in CSR, companies will partner with NGOs with an established track record.

GiveIndia: What's the future of giving at Piramal and how do you see the Piramal Foundation contributing towards this future of giving?
Paresh: At Piramal foundation we classify giving by two parameters – giving financially and giving in kind. Our group companies are associated with GiveIndia and we encourage our employees to give a part from their salaries through the Payroll giving programme. We even match our employee contribution. Looking forward, we are working with the GiveIndia team to reach out to all 10 plant locations in India with the Payroll giving programme.

We also encourage our employees to give in kind through engagement in task based, event based or strategic activities. We are about to launch an Employee Social Impact Strategy to contribute to the cause of their choice by doing what they are best – helping put systems in place, working on fund raising strategy, training for employees of the NGO etc. We will seek participation from senior management to give inputs on at the strategy that can assist the NGO in scaling its operations across geographies.

To us Payroll Giving along with contributing personal time and effort is the way forward.

Let's live over 2008 : The Year of Questions, Answers & Changes

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sat, 11 May 2013 02:30:00 +0000

François de La Rochefoucauld, the noted French author of maxims and memoirs once said “ The only thing constant in life is change” Change comes from asking questions and figuring out the best implementable answers to them.

Happy Times at the GiveIndia office
(File photo from the year 2008)

Seven years in the making and already having received substantial growth, we had to look back and ask ourselves some questions – questions suchas could we put a number to the impact on people’s lives ?
Who decided (and how) whether saving a tree today equaled helping a person with disability walk or not ? Or was it more useful to teach 100 children to read, even if without any understanding of what they read, or was it more useful to ensure that one child gets an education that will allow her to compete with the best in the world?

Our thesis as a “philanthropy exchange” is that thousands of individual donors, exercising their own judgement through the donation choice they make, will collectively take far better decisions than any group of experts in development We therefore, followed a simple approach to measuring our performance : the total volume of funds we channel to various non profits during a year and the number of donors it we were able to reach out to. And in doing so, we needed to ensure that we operate within a maximum cost of 9.1% of the total donations, and assess our viability at all times in order to justify the choices our donors make towards our listed NGOs.

Farmers in flood affected regions were helped

Having said the above, 2008 was a great ‘impact’ year for us as we raised almost Rs. 14 crores towards those affected by the Bihar floods, raised Rs.50 lacs for victims of Mumbai terror attack and started the Read to Lead programme of ICICI Bank, designed to sponsor education of 100,000 children.

A lot of changes were taking place internally as well : Our founder, Venkat Krishnan stepped down to bring in Mr. Ujwal Thakar as the CEO, we took complete control of our backend systems, we were awarded Google Grants which allowed us free advertising to the extent of $10,000, and we launched this blog to officially communicate further with our visitors !

And just like that, another year passed by, leaving us with a heightened sense of joy :-)

This is the ninth post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of GiveIndia’s journey through the past 13 years. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

Remembering 2007 ; when we said "iGive, do You ?"

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Thu, 09 May 2013 02:30:00 +0000

As you know from our last post, by 2006, our focus had shifted towards getting an individual to become a giver. At the start of 2007, we launched iGive, an initiative that empowered an individual to become a fundraiser for cause that s/he was passionate about, using internet as medium. iGive has really been one of our biggest achievements thus far, and in the very first year, we could raise 6.7 lakhs through personal iGive pages and Rs. 55 lakhs through marathon specific iGive pages. This success reinforced our belief that influencing an individual to raise funds reinstated the person to come closer to the cause.

Some words of encouragement from both the donors and the NGOs
made us realize our impact :-)

2007 was also a turning point for Payroll Giving as 22 companies launched the programme during the year. We had never imagined that in just 3 years, we would have been able to engage 23,000+ employees, raising more than 3.5 crores ! This was quite an achievement and definitely a sign that the easiest way for a working professional to give was through payroll.

Given our progress with individuals at large, we wanted to also engage high net worth individuals give in a way that was worth their while. To do so, we introduced a catalog of high value projects which a high value donor or a corporate could pick and get a feedback on the usage of funds. A number of projects were picked up by the marathon donors, fundraisers, and NDTV, among others. It gave us immense satisfaction to see high value donors takes personal interest in their ‘giving process’. The exchange of information and thought between such donors and our projects team helped them discover their ‘giving objective’.

By this time, we had 115 NGOs by our side, covering 14 states. We felt incredibly fulfilled as this made for a great penetration in the area of promoting accountability and transparency – one of the main objectives of GiveIndia. NGOs were certainly realizing the importance of credibility guidelines and were striving to get comply with them in order to get listed with us. This made us feel that NGOs do value their association with us and that we were able to justify their association by helping them raise more funds. Thus our impact for NGOs was slowly reflecting on the other end and we couldn’t have been happier :-).

This is the eighth post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of GiveIndia’s journey through the past 13 years. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

And 2006 was all about engaging individuals through Retail Philanthropy

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 07 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Through our last post, we told you how we deliberated upon shifting focus towards individual giving. Our success at the marathon was clearly a testimony to how much people wanted to give on an individual basis. 2006 was just about that, a year of consolidation on “retail philanthropy”, which helped us maximize efforts to reach out to individual donors.

Total funds channeled by GiveIndia in the year grew to roughly Rs 14 cr from Rs 11.5cr in the previous year and we crossed the 30,000 mark in donors. The Payroll Giving programme also showed a 200+% growth, going from 3,000 employees across 20 companies to 10000 + donors. India's biggest philanthropy event, the Mumbai Marathon clocked Rs 6.8 crores raised for 100 + NGOs, and the 2nd edition of the Hutch Delhi Half Marathon raised Rs 1.21 crores posting a growth of 50% over the first, laying the ground for a large fundraising opportunity for North India based NGOs. While all of this was good and great, we wanted to also explore individual giving among HNIs and corporates.

We showcased a group of 15 NGOs to a small group of HNIs and corporates during our 1^st Engagement Evening. In the run up to the event, groups of individuals pooled in contributions and debated, discussed and voted projects that they would support. In addition to this, a week later, we organized a parallel event in New York at the Board Room of the New York Stock Exchange.

See below the video coverage of our 1st Engagement Evening !

The first “philanthropy marketplaces” meeting, an idea mooted by us, was held in London. Participants from Global Giving.com, eBaY, Giving Works, Donorschoose.org from the USA, PCNC-Philippines, Greater Good-South Africa, Help Argentina & several others came together to brainstorm, share ideas and knowledge and create a fraternity.

.. And all this led to growing excitement in global philanthropy about the role of philanthropy marketplaces and the prospect of working together & learning from each other.

This is the seventh post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of the years gone by. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

Remembering 2005 : The Year of successes and failures

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:30:00 +0000

By 2005, we had crossed the milestone of 100,000 cumulative donations, more than 20,000 individual donors and had touched the lives of at least a million poor people in India. The year also saw us cross Rs. 25 crores in cumulative funds channeled to voluntary organizations. Hence, this year, we wanted to pay conscious efforts towards individual giving, towards finding ways to reach out to the “common man” and make a donor out of an individual.

GiveIndia Team after the
Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2005

We consolidated offices and operations into one city- Mumbai, while simultaneously broadening our global footprint through several new initiatives. Payroll Giving almost touched the Rs.1 crore p.a. mark, signaling its arrival as a serious method of fundraising, notching up over 3,000 monthly payroll givers. Our partnership with Rediff went beyond the tsunami and helped raise a lot of funds for several good causes. Online Giving in the US too grew in leaps and bounds and Give UK started picking up pace as well

The Hutch Delhi Half Marathon was launched and raised Rs. 81 lacs in its maiden edition. The Mumbai event grew to cross over Rs. 3 crores in direct funds channeled and over Rs. 4.5 crores in all! The Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2005 was several times as big as the one in 2004 . Funds raised through the event rocketed to Rs.4 crores, as against an estimated 1 crore in 2004.

This is what propelled us to shift focus
towards the "common man"

And an interesting experiment in placing a GiveIndia executive as the person driving the CSR programme of a company took off, helping ICICI OneSource set up a great partnership with Dr Reddy's Foundation and roll out a batch of underprivileged youth trainees in Bangalore with a 100% placement record!

During this time, the Indo-US HIV AIDS Fund announced by US President George Bush & Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. We were nominated as the agency that would manage the deployment of this fund in India, using our “marketplace model” of allowing donors to choose the projects they would like to support.
At the same time, we also formalized our partnership with GuideStar to launch GuideStarIndia. We signed a relationship with GlobalGiving.com to evaluate their projects in India.

3000 delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos received “gifts” from ICICI Bank. Instead of yet another dinner hosted, the Bank sponsored a child's education on behalf of each of the delegates, through GiveIndia.

We decided to invest a lot more effort, time and resources into building and scaling up the Payroll Giving Programme, the key driver of a “giving culture” in the years to come. As a result of the shift in focus to individual giving, our viability took a slight hit. Hence, in the years to come, we hoped to overcome the challenge by scaling up the level of activity.

This is the sixth post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of the years gone by. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

Remembering 2004 : The Year of Marathon Fundraising!

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Thu, 02 May 2013 02:30:00 +0000

At GiveIndia we decided that 2004 would be the year we would focus on doing what we already did, but BETTER, as opposed to trying more new things to do. A lot of effort went into strengthening internal systems and making them more efficient. This, backed with extraordinary commitment from a small staff of 16 and a super charged volunteer team, allowed us to handle much higher levels of resource mobilisation.

Some of the better things we focused on were to reach out to a bigger audience: over 30,000 donors to channel more donations: Rs. 11.5 crores (2.1 crores in 2003-04), to touch the lives of more underprivileged: more than 100,000 (a few thousands in 2003-04), to make the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2005 bigger: Funds raised rocketed to roughly Rs. 4 crores (1 crore in 2003-04) and to stabilize the fledgling Payroll Giving Programme: 21 companies & over 1500 employees (8 companies & 400 employees in 2003-04)

The year 2004 also saw some new & successful initiatives launched by GiveIndia. Some noteworthy achievements were…

The Standard Chartered Mumbai International Marathon : Perhaps the one single event which gave a big fillip to ‘giving’ was the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, which was held in Feb, 2004. This was the first time an International Marathon was being held in India. It was almost natural that we would be selected to be the Charity Partner for this event because of our uniqueness and strengths – of providing donors with a wide range of causes, our stress on NGOs being transparent and credible, and the fact that we were internet based. However, we chose this to be an inclusive event and allowed even NGOs not listed with us to participate. We assured feedback only for our listed NGOs.

See below a coverage of the marathon

Fundraising for the Tsunami that hit South India: This fueled giving as never seen before in India- galvanizing citizens from all over the world to contributing generously. We partnered with GlobalGiving.org to raise funds for the tsunami affected in India, raising close to US $200,000. More importantly, the Internet as a medium allowed instant reporting of ground situations and their linking to donations. Within 2 days of the disaster, people were able to support specifically identified projects in the areas of health, provision of basic necessities or restoration of livelihoods through boat repairs. Individuals sitting half way around the globe were able to see the impact of their support within a week of making a contribution.

Tsunami Relief and Medical Camp

The GiveIndia Rediff Initiative: We tied up with rediff.com to launch a website http://giveindia.rediff.com and to help those affected by the Tsunami. The response was overwhelming: www. giveindia.rediff.com provided a safe and secure online donation platform to approximately 4-5 million rediff visitors both in India and US and raised 5 lacs from 316 individual donations.

Apart from the above, we announced the first list of 75 NGOs that were certified as 100% compliant with the minimum and the desirable norms of the Credibility Alliance (www.credall.org.in). We also launched the “Gift A Donation” feature, which allowed people to make donations on important occasions as a gift.

For us, 2004 seemed as the sign of times to come in the world of philanthropy. We did raise 9.3 crores and were assured that something in the worth was changing magically and that people were more ready and more willing to give.

This is the fifth post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of the years gone by. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

2003 : Launch of GiveIndia.org & Payroll Giving

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 02:30:00 +0000

A change in logo in 2003

Starting in 2000, as an attempt to raise funds online(and raising Rs.1,31,000 that year), we’d come a long way, bringing in several innovations into the world of philanthropy. Yet, we had the scope to do so much more !

For starters, on Apr 18^th, 2003, we formally launched GiveIndia.org. It was followed by a decent amount of media reportage and a campaign supported by all of India’s leading satellite channels including the Star, Sony and Zee groups. These channels aired over 2000 spots, all pro bono . We couldn’t have asked for a better beginning to 2003.

See below one of the first promos on GiveIndia.org

We also launched our Payroll Giving programme in September, 2003. Who would have thought that within a few months of launch, more than 500 employees across different companies would contribute Rs.1.5 lacs a month to charity ! Group M, India’s largest company was the first company to implement the programme. Others to follow were ICICI Bank, JAM Magazine (where 100% employees signed up on day 1), Indian Banks’ Association and ICICI OneSource.

See below a short video testimonial from Mr. Thomas Puliyel, President, IMRB, on IMRB's joining the Payroll Giving Programme.

Along the way, we also touched a few thousand lives. Like that of little Kritika, the blind daughter of an autorickshaw driver in Mumbai, who received a Braille kit worth Rs. 600 (yes braille kits were extremely expensive at the time), went on to score an 88% in the grade 4 exams. Or the Mahila Vikas Bahat Samiti of Salpuri village in Alwar, Rajasthan, that leveraged a Rs.3000 donation to raise Ra. 75,000 in loans for 14 of its members.

And so the effort went on, as we resolved to put another year of our best efforts. And we hoped hat as time progressed, we will someday fulfil our dream of ensuring that every person gives back to society and that no one will be left out from opportunities to live adequately just because he/she was born in the wrong place

This is the fourth post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of the years gone by. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

The Year 2002: Learning to Grow

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 02:30:00 +0000

For us at GiveIndia, the year 2002 doesn’t seem so long back. We learnt a lot from our experience in the past two years but yet had to ensure mechanisms of self-sustainability.

2003 for us was marked by an expansion in scope of our activities. We introduced 3 new services to NGOs, grant makers and corporations, and incorporated the GIVE Foundation, USA. Operationally, we set up a base in the city of Mumbai for fundraising and website promotion activities, and built a full fledged marketing team.

Some words of encouragement from our earliest partners motivated us:-)

During this period, our fundraising grew only slowly, as we focused a lot of our energies on building a new version of our website that would allow individuals to contribute through a wider range of mechanisms. We continued our efforts in promoting accountability and transparency in the sector through active engagement with the Credibility Alliance, a consortium of nonprofits in India that are working towards setting minimum credibility norms that nonprofit organizations should be able to meet. These Alliance norms have now been disseminated to over 15,000 nonprofits in India, and of the more than 2,000 organizations that have responded, above 95% are in agreement with the proposed norms.

We also had a very successful cricket fundraising event which was organized by cricketers Shishir Hattangadi & Sanjay Manjrekar and was attended by leading players such as Anil Kumble, J Srinath, and Dinesh Mongia. The event was so successful that we were able to raise a whopping Rs. 21 lac (and mind it, this was 2002!)

Even though we have moved on from some of these new services to better models, the learning that we have had resonates in all that we are building today. We really did believe that our story would change the world – one step at a time and 2002 was that milestone year that we will always look back upon to remind ourselves of our beginning and the stepping stones :-).

This is the third post in the series “13 Years of a Giving India”, a reminisce of GiveIndia's journey through the last 13 years. Click here to read previous posts from this series.

Revisiting 2001:The year of systems, processes and feedback !

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:19:00 +0000

George S Patton, the US general famous for his command of the US Army once said “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

The first version of our logo

We, at GiveIndia, have been true followers of this principle. As you must already be aware from the story of our birth, GiveIndia was formedby Venkat after years of forethought and research. So, it was only natural that the first thing the team took to, in the very first year was execution, some hard hitting well strategized and neat execution on processes, practices, systems and feedback.

Some of the primary things that we did were appointing our statutory auditor - Deloitte Haskins & Sells, making timely disbursements to help partnering NGOs track usage of donations and helping them write feedback on the utilization of donations received. The NGOs saw tracking and feedback to be of real value as it made them quantify and qualify the impact of their work.

A testimonial from one of our earliest NGO partners

By now, with had a team of 16 employees and about 30 listed NGOs, we had successfully raised Rs 61 lacs, an amount that was surprisingly over ambitious for our folks, and had spread happiness to the families of over 10,000 people ! This bore testimony to the fact that people in India have always had the will to give but didn’t know where and how to give. In 2001, we also took a fair attempt at professionalizing our board, with a formal induction of Mr.Vaghul, Dr. Tarun Das, Vijay Mahajan, Rama Bijapurkar and Mr. R. N Krishnakumar.

Another interesting aspect of this year was the insights and reactions we were getting from all across, especially from NGOs. On one hand, Rajendrabhai, the CEO from the NGO, Saath once remarked that listing on GIVE Online is the ‘best rating’ they could get ! Several listed NGOs started using systems that we helped them with. We felt encouraged by such feedback and worked closely with NGOs developing financial and accounting systems as a separate activity. On the other hand, of 193 NGOs which wanted to get listed, only 41 fit our listing criteria and we started to wonder – are we too inflexible with our listing criteria? We took in as much feedback as possible with a view to making our selection process more objective and to gain from the wisdom of experts from various sector, we formed an external selection committee in august 2001. By the end of the year, we felt that our understanding of NGOs did improve a lot and the NGOs’ appreciation of our feedback and reporting system added even more to that understanding.

We did have a long way to go, a lot of work to do.... and we were in a hurry to complete this journey !

Payroll Giving reaches Hyderabad !

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 06:35:00 +0000

Since the year 2004, Payroll Giving has actively engaged over 40,000 employees from 100+ companies from across the country. Having attained such growth, our intent has been to get more companies on board, get more employees to give, and increase our outreach by placing teams in greater number of cities !

Varsha, with the HR team during a relaunch activity at TCS

It gives us immense pleasure to share with you that with a new team in place, our outreach has now extended to the city of Hyderabad ! With teams already based out of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, we are very excited to introduce payroll giving to Hyderabad based corporate and sincerely hope that the city attains a similar giving quotient as the rest of the four metros.

To give you a slight update from our Hyderabad teams’ spokesperson – Varsha – at least 50 companies that signed up for Payroll Giving have offices in Hyderabad, and most of these companies have been very welcoming of our sign up drives to help get more employees registered in the programme. Special thanks to Vodafone, Idea Cellular , HDFC Std Life , Zee Network, ICICI Bank, Genpact and TCS for spending time with our teams, extending permissions to conduct relaunches and passionately helping them sign up more employees not only in main offices but also at the branch offices.

Employees at these offices had heard about Payroll Giving from colleagues at other locations and have been extremely delighted to join the programme. A few testimonials from the HR team at TCS sum up this experience.

Sangeetha Verma

"We are very happy to be part of the Give India Initiative. We have coordinated this for all locations at TCS Hyderabad. The GiveIndia team helped us in getting across to all the associates in each of the locations in Hyderabad. The team also supported us by adhering to the schedule and helped us resolve the queries of the associates. Associates also responded enthusiastically to the monthly giving program and we hope to continue the same."

- Sangeetha Verma, Human Resources, TCS Maitree Coordinator

Rohan Chhetri

"Give India is not only a platform to bridge up the gap of money and help, rather it has made us feel to be responsible and inclined towards our society for a better tomorrow for all. As the coordinator for coordinating sessions and motivating GiveIndia campaigns, I feel that this a very good event running through out the year and ensures that every individual of the nation contributes their helping hands. The variety of choice is what invokes me more, as employees get something to do as an individual or as a team. Associates joining in our organization, are very eager to take initiatives for various Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, and we are happy to have GiveIndia with us. Although its a tough task to get sign ups for the campaign, but every one pledges for their contribution in his/her own way.

It's true fact, GiveIndia IS the power to change lives. "

- Rohan Chhetri, Tata Consultancy Services, ILP Coordinator

Join us wishing our Hyderabad Payroll Giving team, all the very best J

Indian Premier League winners don’t always shine in the Indian Giving League

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:16:00 +0000

Come April and our cricket-crazy country is glued to the television sets, cheering for their cities in the IPL. And this time round, the IPL fever has hit us at GiveIndia too. We began comparing how cities in India performed against each other when it came to their giving! Thus was born the Indian Giving League (IGL). In this fun competition, we compare how charitable our cities are, based on donations made by people from each city. Scheduled to coincide with the IPL i.e. from 3rd April to 26th May, at the end of these 7.5 weeks, we will also recognise a winner :).

So, on day one of the tournament, as defending champions KKR started on a high note by beating Delhi Daredevils in the IPL, in the IGL, Bangalore snatched the top spot on our leaderboard. However, it’s been a week into the competition and things appear to be quite different now.

Team Mumbai got the better of Bangalore with some impressive display of giving and was able to maintain their position for the past few days. Similarly, KKR who started very well in IPL is currently nowhere in the top half of the standings. On the other hand, the Delhi Daredevils are at the bottom of the table in the IPL. But unlike their superstars, the generous people of Delhi have helped their team grab the second spot on the IGL leaderboard; closely following Mumbai - the difference between both the cities being just a few thousand rupees worth of donations!

And while Bangalore is leading the IPL standings, and is at a respectable third place in the IGL, it is way behind the top two cities in terms of funds raised. Jaipur is the only team from the IPL not to feature in the IGL leaderboard, as they were recently relegated by Ahmedabad. Credit also goes to the folks from Coimbatore and Jammu, whose large hearts have helped them appear in the IGL leaderboard, though they do not feature in the IPL.

It’s been just a week since we started. There’s a long way to go in both leagues. Only time will tell, if the champions on the field are also champions when it comes to giving. Stay tuned...

Follow the action on the IGL here: http://www.giveindia.org/t-indian-giving-league-2013.aspx
Get regular updates on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GiveIndia

Giving Matters at Vodafone

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 04:35:00 +0000

Laura Turkington

This month, we are pleased to feature giving at Vodafone, as marked by the initiatives and impact of the Vodafone Foundation. Interacting with Laura Turkington, Country Director – Vodafone Foundation, India ,helped us become more informed of such various aspects of giving instituted under the basic principle of combining skills, resources and funding to build a brighter future for people who are currently unable to fulfill their potential.

GiveIndia :What's your role and for how long have you been with the Vodafone Foundation ?
Laura : I’ve been in the foundation for a little over 2 years. I work with a team of four and look after the VF Foundation in India. Vodafone has made a social commitment to invest in the communities in which we operate and the work of the Foundation enables this. We have an extensive programme of activities and partnerships to support this and work with many NGOs across the country. We seek to deliver as per our vision " We want to enable everyone to make the most of their potential"

GiveIndia :How does the Vodafone Foundation try to achieve its mission in light of Vodafone's business values and objectives?
Laura : We recognize the power of mobile technology to address some of India’s most pressing challenges and are using it to encourage innovation, share knowledge and improve lives. Having said that, at each step, we try to leverage the support and expertise of our stakeholders – both internal and external – and engage them to enhance the impact of our projects with NGOs. At the core, we believe that inclusion needs to be not just financial but at levels of skill set, expertise, influence and power.

GiveIndia : The recently concluded World of Difference serves as an example of what you just said. The initiative saw 25 employees going all out to work with grass roots NGOs for 8 weeks and the rest of the Vodafone cheering them up with raising funds of worth 67 lacs ! What, according to you, worked so well to create such impact ?
Laura : Yes, the WoD was a testimony to how we at the Foundation integrate our strengths. Two years back when we started the initiative, the focus was just on volunteering. This year, we thought how can do more - we engage more people and get more people to contribute.
So, this year we started the “Giving Championships” which encouraged a wider level of participation. Whilst our 25 employees were solving real problems at the grassroots with their time and skills, the rest of the 10,000 employees were raising funds to support the partner NGOs. We also opened the opportunity to get our retail customers involved and sold exclusive Zoozoo merchandise in the stores for Magic Bus. For every piece sold, a contribution was made. This resulted in significant funding and awareness amongst the wider public.

GiveIndia : What's your take on corporate foundations trying to steer a change as opposed to CSR efforts integrated within the corporate as an identified function. Do you think that the two are different ? If so, in what regard ?

Laura : I think the two overlap a lot, in terms of pursuing a strong commitment to society. At Vodafone, we have an active CSR agenda which is fully integrated within the business. This works to ensure we are a responsible and committed business across many levels. The Foundation focusses on our philanthrophic engagement. However,I do believe that both work hand in hand to accomplish greater impact to the society as a whole.

GiveIndia : What's the future of giving at Vodafone and how do see the Vodafone Foundation contributing towards it ?
Laura : India in general has a lot of potential to give back and the spirit of the people is incredibly warm and positive. Fundraising in some ways is still a relatively new found concept here as opposed to other forms of giving but I think this will evolve with time.

At Vodafone awe are committed to furthering our social agenda and for the longer term We are only beginning our journey but have quite the way to go and are hopeful that with the right programmes and people we can make a positive impact in our focus areas - women empowerment, education and rural reach. We realize that by combining financial support with our technology, expertise, and outreach,we can drive impact and scale from the outset.

13 years of a Giving India : And thus GiveIndia was born in 2000

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 04:47:00 +0000

There are millions of NGOs in the world and each has its own unique story of birth. Some of the non profits were founded because someone someday got extremely charged up, impassioned by a radical thought of change and decided to take action on bringing thought into practice. Some others were yet founded by careful evaluation, research, and formulation of the right execution pathway, of course backed by that radicalized passion to bring massive change in the society.

The story of GiveIndia belongs to the latter category. Since his childhood, our founder Venkat Krishnan had started to question the inequities of the society in which where one is born makes all the difference in terms of what one is able to do in this country. As he would later express in the book Stay Hungry Stay Foolish “ I could see that there was a guy in my class whose father worked in Dubai. They would eat biscuits for breakfast which is a luxury. And there was another guy in the same class who lives in a slum in Kjuwadi and his father was a garage mechanic. And they would always buy dus paise ka shakkar aur pachhis paise ka tel, that too when a guest came to their house”

Venkat Krishnan, Founder & Director, GiveIndia

As he went through school, college, even as he went to IIMA for his MBA, he kept dabbling with the question “Why is it that just where I am born is going to make all the difference to me in my life” and the same question came back and started nagging him all over again. So, he started spending a lot of time doing research on what could be used to create social change. Finally, after graduating and having worked in the corporate sector for 3 years, he decided to get back to what he always to do all his life, which was to try and make a difference to society.

“ I went to Ahmedabad , set up and ran a school called Eklavya, for 4 years with a couple of my batch mates. One of the things we tried to do was to bring kids from the poorest slums of the city into the school along with and kids from some of the wealthiest families together.”

In the course of setting up a school, he met a lot of interesting people, people who were doing phenomenal work on the ground but more often than not, one might have not heard their names. On the other hand one would have heard of a CRY, a Helpage , or a UNICEF.

“One of the things I realized very early in life when I was looking at non profit organizations, is that you can actually divide them into 3 categories : organizations that know how to brand themselves extremely well, organizations that may not have branded themselves very well but are at least able to tell stories extremely well, and organizations that also do phenomenal work but don’t have skills to tell their stories well to people. So you have this huge base of amazingly committed people all over India doing phenomenal work day in day out . Whether you go to the villages of bihar or you go to the slums of mumbai, delhi or Kolkata, these people are doing phenomenal work but don’t know how to spread their stories around to people. On one hand, there was this concern about what do we do about these people who are doing great work, how do you help them? On the other hand, if you reach out to the common man today in India, most people would be like ‘I wish I could do something but I don’t know whom I can trust. I don’t know whether my money will go to the right place if I decide to give to this org or that org, or which is the org I should work with’. So the idea of GiveIndia was born very simply – can we build a bridge that connects these two sets of people. – people who want to give, who want to make a difference along with people who are doing phenomenal work but don’t know how to reach out to these people”

And thus GiveIndia was born in 2000 as the first “Philanthropy market place”, as the first internet giving site in India and one of the first in the world, and as the first non profit screening and reporting mechanism in India. With GiveIndia’s birth came the challenge of operating at significantly low cost.

As Venkat says “We started off in a very very small way but one of the most interesting experiences in that has been how we have had to at each stage tried to do something at least 20 times better than what a corporate would have to do in order to just survive as an organization. If you are an insurance firm or an FMCG company that sells soap, shampoo or something, if you raise a Rs.100/- and if you spend 30 rupees in selling your soap or shampoo, nobody really complains. On the other hand, If there’s a non-profit organization that has to raise a Rs. 100/- and it spends more than Rs.30/- or Rs.40/- rupees in raising that Rs.100/-, I don’t think people like it. Not many people will continue giving money if they knew that 30# to 40% of their money is getting spent in raising the money. “

But then again, how could we not have conquered the challenges? In its very first year, with a team of 13 employees, GiveIndia raised Rs. 97 lacs, listed 9 NGOs, and handled the Gujarat Earthquake Relief Fund.

Venkat’s views in this post are excerpts from his recent speech at Inspiratie, 2013. Click here to read his first concept note on GiveIndia.

13 years of a Giving India : Giving has truly begun

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:55:00 +0000

Like any other organization, we, at GiveIndia, too have some catch phrases. One of the popular catch phrases is “The Giving has begun” – a by-line used internally to signify massive donations or that our teams are neck deep in managing fundraising challenges.

March has been a donation heavy month, not to forget the achievements it brings – our India Tax Saving Challenge raised over 1 crore in just a month , our online team raised 10 crores during the year, and across teams, we raised 30+ crores of funds this year. While each of these is a milestone in itself and we would love to give you a low down on each of these achievements, we’re even happier to share with you that GiveIndia will soon be turning 13 years old!

Yes, on 28^th April, 2013, we will turn “Thirteen”. Turning 13 is quite the leap for us, especially since we have a fairly new team and we’re setting ourselves for attaining newer milestones. Just like the child who grows from being a baby to a teenager to step into a brand new phase of life, we too are basking in the mystery of this new leap, the surmountable challenges that await us and the fierceness of maturity that comes as part of our contribution in the philanthropic space for more than a decade. While we experience the gamut of such emotions, how can we not take you with us through our journey thus far?!

Hence, starting today, along the course of the coming weeks, we will bring you a series of such stories through which we try to look back upon and redraw the past thirteen years of a Giving India, and simply tell you in the truest sense of the phrase ”How Giving truly began” through our efforts and what that meant for our stakeholder communities. At the very least, we take this moment to thank our several stakeholder communities – our donors, partner NGOs, corporate partners, volunteers, staff and well wishers - for every bit of assistance, compassion and love that has made us reach thus far.

Watch this space for more on this series - "The 13 years of a Giving India".

Flower Shower at CASP :)

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:26:00 +0000

Women beneficiaries at CASP

Kids today are so much more socially aware than we could ever be during our childhood years, and when it comes to extending responsibility, kids of our HNI donors sure do take the cake!

Last month, we shared how Anya Prakash, a 16 year old and daughter of one of our donors, spent half a dayat Salaam Balaak Trust. This month, as the HNI team planned out a flower arrangement activity to engage donors with women beneficiaries at CASP, we again witnessed another spirited 16 year old - Aditi Krishnamurthy - coming forth to extend her sense of responsibility and volunteerism. The purpose of the activity was to showcase the work of CASP as it is one of our listed NGOs, and to have volunteers meet beneficiaries in their natural ecosystem. Aditi, along with the elderly women beneficiaries, disarranged flowers, made flower rangolis and listened to the communal folk songs by the women as the activity took to its end. This little testimonial from her sums up her experience.

Aditi with the women at CASP

“When I received an email regarding Give India's volunteer initiative at a Senior Citizens' Daycare Home in Worli Village, I signed up instantly. That Saturday, I found myself next to a temple with 30 ajis, making rangolis out of flowers on the floor. It was an intriguing and humbling experience. The women seemed to enjoy the activity that had been planned for them, and towards the end of the session sang some traditional ragas for us. We were treated like royalty the entire time, which was eye-opening and to me, sad, because these women who deserve so much respect were showing the same to me, an inexperienced 16 year old, just for spending an hour of my time with them.”

Thanks to our HNI team and the activities it plans, we get to know how socially engaged young individuals get when provided with the right opportunities to give back.

GiveIndia & Deloitte partner with CII to develop sector report on Education

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:40:00 +0000

Dignitaries at the Report Launch

In India today, roughly 96% of all children in the age group of 6 to 14 years are enrolled in school. This leaves only 4% of our children who never start school. Not so bad, right?

This 4% accounts for nearly 8 million children and let’s just say in a country of a few billions, a few millions don’t really count. However, what’s alarming is the state of those 96% privileged children. 61% of children enrolled in class III cannot read class I text. 46% of all children in class V could not read class II text. There are close to 1.4 million teacher posts that are vacant today. There are still 17% of total schools where there is no access to drinking water. Out of those 96%, 57% don’t even complete primary education because of all the things that are wrong, just plain wrong!

Urgent Needs of NGOs in the Education Sector

The core of the issue is that despite the various government schemes, advocacy and awareness programs, India still faces serious challenges in the field of education in the form of lack of teachers or low quality of education, infrastructure or pedagogy or curriculum structure. GiveIndia & Deloitte partnered with Confederation of Indian Industry to release a report on ‘Urgent Needs of NGOsin the Education Sector’. The report was released by Hon. Shashi Tharoor.

The report not only highlights the need for an urgent intervention but also suggests remedial and corrective measures to build a more robust education system in the country. It provides a reference point to government authorities and policy makers with well researched and documented information to plan and implement corrective measures. It also makes available actionable information to various donors and corporate who are looking to support need based education initiatives.

As part of the research, seventeen NGOs enrolled with GiveIndia which work directly with poor beneficiaries were interviewed for the survey. The findings highlight the urgent need for intervention at both policy and society level. The keys findings and recommendations can be accessed at – http://bit.ly/ZZxcq2

We at GiveIndia are striving hard to help our listed NGO partners bridge the gap and work towards reducing the educationaldisparity. Help us spread our impact through your support.

Giving Matters at Make My Trip

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 06:51:00 +0000

Deep Kalra

India’s most sought after travel website, Make My Trip surely excels in giving travelers the best travel deals and options across the world. This month, we find out how the organization also excels in leveraging giving opportunities to engage its internal stakeholders better.

As we interact with Deep Kalra, Founder and CEO, Make My Trip, we learn about the organization's several CSR initiatives that make this very ideology of 'giving back' turn into some real impact.

GiveIndia: What defines the idea of giving back at Make My Trip?

Deep : At MakeMyTrip we encourage employees to give and share – whether through material support (via payroll donation platforms, collection-drives, etc) or through their time. Through the year we conduct a number of Giving initiatives managed by our HR team under the ‘WE’ umbrella. These activities range from cleanliness, blood-donation and tree-plantation drives to mentoring children at Udayan Care – an NGO whose cause we have been associated with since our early days. We believe everyone can give. In fact we take this philosophy even further to our customers! While booking flight tickets on our website, customers automatically receive an estimate of the Carbon footprint of their travel at the last leg of the booking process. The tool determines exactly how many trees need to be planted to off-set this carbon emission. Travelers receive the option of adding the cost of tree plantation to their ticket cost. This is a token amount which is a fraction of their purchase and to date nearly 75,000 travelers have made use of this option resulting in the planting of nearly 400,000 trees in previously arid lands.

GiveIndia: You are an online travel company. Given that employees work round the clock, how easy or difficult does it get to make them move from their desks and get them to participate in CSR activities?

Deep :We are a young organization but when we witness the enthusiastic response that many of our CSR activities receive from the workforce it encourages us to find ways to make these interventions more convenient and as engaging as possible. I would think there are very few people (if any) who out rightly do not want to contribute to the society. More often their decision may stem from the cause or the manner of support requested and we respect their choice. One would find that there are broadly two kinds of behaviour demonstrated with respect to CSR support. One group is the people who want to participate in CSR activities with a front-line approach i.e., they want to be hands-on, and engage in participatory activities. The other set is more comfortable supporting a cause through monetary or material donations. And the interesting thing is these choices are often not governed by their age-group or income-levels. Of course over time, it is more than possible than the patterns switch! I think it is important for organizations to be agile and flexible to the ‘Giving’ patterns and create platforms for both kinds of people. The credit for the success of Giving programs at MakeMyTrip also goes to the zeal and enthusiasm displayed by the WE committee to create adequate awareness and drive participation levels.

GiveIndia: Are there any specific 'must do' activities that you encourage every year?

Deep : All Giving programs at MakeMyTrip are purely voluntary. We do make it rewarding by recognizing Giving efforts and creating visibility for these programs and participants. We also have a payroll donation program where we add to the Employee’s contribution to create a multiplier effect.

GiveIndia: Speaking of Payroll Giving, 500+ employees from Make My Trip have chosen to contributed towards the programme. Do you think Payroll Giving adds a new dimension to the host of socially engaging activities? If so, how is Payroll Giving working out for the employees?

Deep : Payroll Giving is a brilliant platform that allows the giver to choose the causes and organizations they want to contribute towards. It is a flexible tool, so the employee can alter their donations and also plan their interventions in a better manner. Overall, it works very well for people who want to assist with monetary aid but are unsure of validating the credibility of organizations. With GiveIndia, the accountability factor is taken care of and this is the biggest concern for anyone who is donating money to a cause.

GiveIndia: You have also been participating in the India Giving Challenge every year since the past three years now. What, in your opinion, generally works or doesn't work during those six weeks of fundraising?

Deep : We have performed well, but can do better! We promote the Fundraiser Challenge heavily through internal communication channels – I think what happens is that most people who give monetary contributions do so in a planned manner, while the ones who are always ready to support a cause prefer doing so via non-monetary support. So there is some overlap but not as much as we would like.

GiveIndia: What is future of giving at Make My Trip?

Deep : We look forward to evolve in our organizational journey of Collective Giving. Our Corporate Giving initiatives have so far been guided by the themes of inclusiveness and knowledge-sharing, and we intend to add a dimension of Responsible Travel that will involve our employees as well as our customers.

Glad to have you, Ralf !

dhavaludani@gmail.com — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 06:49:00 +0000

We've always believed that people are a strong function of who we are and while we have grown through the years, so has our team. Today, we are happy to share with you, a brief memoir of one such recent addition who joined us as an intern two months back. Ralf Meinhardt hails from Germany and was in India on an exchange study with IIM Bangalore until he read about GiveIndia in the book Stay Hungry Stay Foolish and almost immediately resolved to work with us. His motivation has been nothing short of inspiring. So, when we asked Ralf to share his experience of being in India while working with a non profit, here is what he had to say :

“Last year I studied at IIM Bangalore as an exchange student. During this three month period, I had the opportunity to travel the country, whose beauty I have not expected before. The people I met in rural areas as well as in big cities made my time in India really special. People here are very hospitable and hold open perspectives, regardless of their backgrounds.

Before pursuing the exchange programme at IIMB, I already knew that I wanted to volunteer for an NGO from January till April, but was also thinking about doing so in a new country. Hence, after Bangalore, I decided to come back to India. On my flight back to Germany I read the book “Stay Hungry Stay Foolish” by Rashmi Bansal. The story “The Art of Giving” on GiveIndia founder, Venkat Krishnan, was really impressive. So, after going back to Germany, I applied for volunteering with GiveIndia. I got a fast response and within one week and a Skype call with the CEO, it was a simple “get your visa done and come over!”.

So, now I am working here since more than 1.5 months, at Khetwadi, Mumbai. It’s a place far away from all tourists’ spots in Mumbai – you won’t find tourists here, it’s loud and hectic, and coming from Germany, I had to take care the first few days not to get ridden over by a motorbike. But I got used to it very quick! I like this area, because it’s different and I see new things every day in just one single street. It’s anything but boring.

The GiveIndia office is located in a Municipal School Building. The office is unlike those of the corporate I’d worked for – like people are happy with a laptop and a 3.3 feet desk.

Working here, I learnt that you don’t have to serve your employees with a posh place and office infrastructure to motivate them – they just need to be passionate for their work, and that’s what will count. People here are passionate – even on Saturdays. Most of them come from really professional backgrounds and are working for something different each day. So working here is really productive and efficient, something I hadn’t expected in an NGO set up. Some oversized profit companies could really learn this from GiveIndia´s internal operations.

So it´s half time and I already know that three months are not enough for working here. Why? There are a lot of reasons! I mentioned above about this great hospitality virtue of people in India. Thus far, I haven’t visited a country, where I meet people like that. And here in office too, it´s the same. I felt welcomed from the very first day! I am getting introduced with new Indian dishes every week and have great conversions not only about work with my colleagues but also on experiences. It’s interesting for me to know about India’s challenges and how they could be so different from those in Germany. I tried playing cricket and it is not really that boring – it´s super fun! Furthermore, the work I am doing here fits to what I am doing in my study. I am helping to prepare the budgets for the next fiscal year and run some analysis to understand the donor’s behaviour better. So it is really interesting and I learn a lot from my colleagues. I really enjoy working with GiveIndia and I know for sure that I will come back to here – even if it´s just for visiting. So, having experienced this country and an NGO such as GiveIndia, what I can recommend to everyone is :

- Try something new! Get out of you daily grind. Visit new places and make experiences in new fields.

- (To foreigners) Come to India! Visit a beautiful country and meet awesome people

- Give something back – with your time and your hands! If you have the change to get some hours, days, weeks or month free, volunteer! You will realize soon, that it is not just giving something: I thought I would come to volunteer for a NGO and “give”… I do, but I am getting much more back! “

Ralf will continue to volunteer with us until the mid - April. Apart from being a GiveIndia volunteer, he’s a 26 year old studying Masters in Management with major in Finance and Strategy, at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

Thank you Ralf, for choosing to volunteer with us! Glad to have you J