TOI:NGOs that sell products have found that nothing loosens pursestrings like fashionable merchandise

CAUSE & EFFECT
Noble by design……Joeanna Rebello Fernandes
NGOs that sell products have found that nothing loosens pursestrings like fashionable merchandise

Think NGO merchandise and cardboard colours float up, pigmenting such obscura as pen stands, coasters and shapeless T-shirts. At a charity bazar, you’d buy out of a sense of guilt and because little children or hapless women stared dolefully at you from stark posters, but you’d rarely buy because the products themselves beckoned. Now you will.

A look at what a few nonprofits are putting out ratifies their changing attitude towards retail. Many have come around to the truth that when it comes to fund-raising, the way to a person’s purse is through his heart — so what if it’s retail and not social reality that tugs harder at his heartstrings? This is why NGOs are contracting professional designers and artists to help re-imagine their inventories, bringing them up to speed with chic.

An example of this bullish turn is the non-profit for children, Akanksha which, on November 14 last year, unveiled the Akanksha Shop at Worli. Graphic art sneakers, carnival wooden benches, trunks, candy-coloured candles — it’s a bag of treats for adult and child alike. The artwork comes from a weekly workshop held for Akanksha’s children whose paintings, collages and sketches are then transmuted into desired merchandise.

Some of this is even by celebrity designers. “We’ve just collaborated with designers Krsna Mehta, James Ferreira, Sujata Kapoor, Rabia Gupta and the brand Tokri for a range designed by them around the art of our children,” says Ruchika Gupta, one of the two managers. “These will chiefly retail through the designers’ own outlets and at their pricing.“

Damini, a women’s collective, has gone down the same road. Two years ago it sought the expertise of Diana Linda, an Italian designer living in Mumbai. Linda conceptualises designs for bags, shoes and jewellery, which the women of Damini realize. Apart from retailing the goods at her shop in Bandra, the products were also sold at a recent exhibition at the Alliance Française to a predominantly young clientele—proof of the range’s appeal.

“It was in the early years, when participating at a Concern India NGO mela, that we realised people were walking past our stall without buying,” recalls Dr Asavari Herwadkar, director of the trust under which Damini functions. It was then that she knew they had to think ‘up-tothe-minute’ to catch the market’s eye. The move to catch up with popular appeal produced some prizes like an embroidered poster that was snatched up by an actor for Rs 3,000. “Our bracelets are
marked between Rs 150 and 200 while our diaries go at Rs 450. We don’t think of our products as ‘NGO’, but simply as products that need to meet market standards,” says Herwadkar.

What an au courant designer brings to a non-profit is not just an appreciation of consumer trends, but also ways of shaping and recasting the traditional skills of economically deprived women and children whose aesthetic references may be at odds with target tastes. Dr Herwadkar makes plain she wouldn’t want people to buy out of charity. In any case, charity can only push purchase so far.

This is why Aseema, a non-profit for children, employs a designer who translates the children’s art into saleable products that are then sold at the Aseema shop. Last year, although the income from its merchandise contributed less than ten per cent to its entire income, Aseema intends to sow and reap morefrom retail. The NGO puts out two new products every month but sales are still only at a trot; Anklesaria believes bulk orders by the corporate sector could make them gallop.

Indeed, non-profits have long looked to corporates for festival gifting in bulk orders. In fact CRY recorded a turnover of over Rs 50 lakh last year, around 70 per cent of which was accounted for by customised orders. “But what would help non-profits is the consistent and reliable patronage of the corporate sector, and not one-off alliances,” says Gaynor Pais, CEO of the non-profit International Resources for Fairer Trade, which has just launched an initiative to convince businesses to extend long-term commitment to non-profits with the Fair Trade certificate and to co-opt NGOs into the Fair Trade family. “If we can convince companies to only buy fair-trade, NGOs will have means to expand their production units, cop a wider retail platform and more visibility in the mainstream,” she says. The end is greater self-reliance, so nonprofits won’t have to pass the bowl around. Some would much rather sell it.

* SOLES WITH SOUL Akanksha makes graphic art sneakers, trunks and candy-coloured candles