GiveIndia, a Bengaluru-based non-profit organisation that has garnered ₹250 crore in philanthropic funds through its online donations platform, consumer and workplace giving partnerships, expects to exit FY21 with ₹300 crore. This is nearly a 5X growth from FY2020. It also plans to double its headcount by March, a top executive told BusinessLine .

“The pandemic has whetted India’s appetite for giving. We found that 85 per cent of the 450 people whom we surveyed said, they plan to increase their giving, 74 per cent said they are more inclined to contribute to local communities; only under 12 per cent said they would reduce their donations in these difficult times,” said Ashok Kumar ER, President, GiveIndia. “To match the charitable aspirations of everyday givers, we are also growing here, currently there are 78 of us and we are planing to scale to 100 by March-end,” he added.

Last year, GiveIndia supported 56 lakh Indians in response to the Covid crisis with a fund raised of ₹220 crore, which was contributed to India Covid Response Fund. Of this, ₹190 crore has already been disbursed. Its suite of products and solutions enables all givers – individuals and organisations, to donate conveniently to any cause directly on the platform, at their workplace, or through one of GiveIndia’s partners. It’s a community of 3.5 million donors and 150+ partners have supported 1,800+ verified non-profits, impacting over 8 million lives in India.

Pointing out that India could do much better when it comes to giving, Kumar said, “Individual contributions on the GiveIndia platform average between ₹500 and ₹1,500. However, there are cases like Indra Nooyi and Sundar Pichai, who have contributed ₹5 crore each in their individual capacity. Institutions typically contribute between ₹50 lakh and ₹10 crore as part of their CSR funds.”

The non-profit organisation is targeting to scale its 3.5 lakh donor base to 1 million in the next three years. “Besides Covid-related donations, we plan to grow our gross donation value by 50-100 per cent in FY 2022,” said Kumar.

On how GiveIndia can achieve this growth, he elaborated, “Earlier companies that failed to expend CSR funds could carry it forward to subsequent financial years with suitable explanations in the board report, which allowed organisations to take time in constituting a CSR Committee and choosing projects and implementation partners. Going forward, companies will be obligated to transfer the unspent CSR funds to either government funds mentioned in Schedule VII of Companies Act 2013, or to a separate bank account. Defaulting companies will be penalised with twice the sum required to be transferred or ₹1 crore whichever is less, as per the 2020 amendment. With this, we expect a big boost in CSR funding for the social sector through trusted partners like GiveIndia.”

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