Keep Tabs On Charity…..Madhu T
Before dropping off that cheque in the donation box,check out how much of your money will reach the beneficiaries
CHARITY was never so easy.Pay a few rupees extra in a coffee shop or while shopping for clothes,shoes and so on and feel free to assume that the money will reach a charity that will feed hungry mouths or take care of the needy ones in forgotten parts of the country.What more can a booming India,whose wallets are overflowing with obscene salaries and perks,ask for In fact,people are now asking a lot more.According to financial experts,people are not happy writing a cheque for a charity anymore during Diwali.They want to know a lot more about the money trail.They want to know more about the organisation which is into charity,about the beneficiaries and,more importantly,how much of their money reaches the beneficiaries.
Most of the time when you give money to a charity,you dont know where your money is going or how it is spent.In that sense,definitely there is a growing trend that people want to know more about how their money is used and they want to be more involved in the process, says Kartik Jhaveri,director,Transcend Consulting,a wealth management firm.
Yes,people want to know a little more about how their money is spent.Earlier,they were happy cutting cheques to a popular charitable organisation, says a wealth manager with a foreign bank.With umpteen number of charities competing to get peoples attention,they just want to make sure that they are picking the right one. However,Gaurav Mashruwala,a certified financial planner (CFP),feels people still dont care much if the amount involved is small.They wont bother if the brochures are attractive and its marketed well.They will only have problems with genuine organisations which use recycled paper or sends mail by ordinary post, points out Mashruwala.
Call it conscience or guilt pangs,India is opening its purse strings like never before.And people are scanning the media and internet to choose the right organisation to give away their money during Mothers Day,Fathers Day,anniversaries,birthdays,various festivals and so on.
When we conducted a survey,we found that a majority of people are really concerned about how their money is used and they wanted a feedback from the concerned NGO, says Tarika Vaswani,manager,internet giving,Give India,a donation platform,with a list of over 200 NGOs catering to disparate fields such as child education to rural healthcare,that enables online donations.
Only a small percentage of people were actually concerned about the tax benefits, she adds.
Over 200 NGOs and countless options to donate were what attracted Smriti (name changed curiously,none of the philanthropists will go on record about their favourite charity;they also prefer to be anonymous) to Give Indias website.I was getting sick of just buying a few cards on festivals to donate something to needy people.When I saw options like I can give a wheelchair to a disabled person or sponsor the special education of a child… I really felt liberated, she says.Though she declined to give details of the causes she supports,she says she is very particular about the feedback from the organisations about how the money was spent.That is something Give India is very particular about.
For example,you are gifting something on your brothers birthday.We will give you tax details and take your brothers contact details from you.In six months,we will send a feedback to both of you about how the money was spent, says Vaswani.
Another philanthropist who regularly follows avenues to help causes says he started getting personally involved in the causes because he found the five star culture of certain organisations unbearable.You just look at their financial details and you will find that they are spending 60-70 % on salaries and administrative costs.This means that only a small percentage of the donation will actually reach the needy person, he points out.That is what forced him to look for genuine organisations working for genuine causes.They are small.Their posts come by ordinary mail and the paper is often reused.They wont have the finesse of some of these spunky,new-age philanthropy,but they do some genuine work, he adds.His faith in such small organisations increased when he had a chance to volunteer (another fad which is catching up among yuppies) with them.
How do ordinary people find these genuine organisations They are not looking to donate all the time.When an occasion presents itself,they just want to make a meaningful gesture.We just follow the media for genuine needy causes.We make enquiries to find out the people behind them and make a small donation.If we are impressed with the feedback,we may just personally visit the place, he says.Gaurav Mahruwala says the first thing one has to do before making a huge donation is to check the balance sheet of the NGO to make sure you are not contributing to their five-star activities.
Take some time off and visit the organisation to find out what is going on the ground.Ideally,you should participate in some of their programmes to get a sense of their activities, he says.As for people doing their bit to the social enterprise without much concern,Mashruwala asks them to go on with their business of writing cheques as usual.
The personal touch is something,says Jhaveri,that drives people to take up community causes.More and more people are contributing to community-based charities.This ensures that they know the end users, he says.
According to some activists,people are also more interested in witnessing the small change they can make to other peoples life.There are many net-based entities,modelled on the lines of kiva.org,which lends money to needy people.You can give money to a cobbler who will scale up his operations.Several organisations such as Dhanax,Rangde,Spandana are doing good work here, says a person who has worked with NGOs in the past.
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