Over the past 17 years, GiveIndia, one of the country’s leading online donation and fundraising platforms, has collected about ₹300 crore to fund over 200 NGOs and non-profits. This has seen them reach about 4 million beneficiaries in 23 States. On Wednesday, the company announced the launch of a new interface for donors to get involved in causes in a more sustained manner through monthly subscriptions.
Power of technology
Describing it as possibly the world’s first monthly subscription model, GiveIndia CEO Atul Satija, in an interview with The Hindu , said the launch of the new platform was driven by the company’s recent focus on upgrading technology in order to better connect with donors. Mr. Satija says, “In the past few years technology has leapfrogged, especially in the e-commerce space and user behaviour has also changed. Where earlier people were going online for three or four major areas — buying books, matrimony or real estate — the range of experiences available online has diversified.”
He adds, “We feel there was a significant market gap in allowing people to participate in change online. And we are at a point now where a number of friction points have been removed — be it in terms of technology, payment solutions and gateways or consumer behaviour — to take giving online to a larger scale.”
GiveIndia’s investment in technology is reflected in the design of the new platform, which will be the sub-domain of the existing platform. Among the major changes is that for the first time, GiveIndia will award reliability badges, with non-profits being allocated stars from 1 to 5. One of the virtues of the platform, Mr. Satija explains, is the credible link between donor and non-profit. “Give India does a lot of due diligence in keeping the market safe and trustworthy and the idea is for the donors to also be able to differentiate between the non-profits,” he said. The stars will be awarded taking into account a number of factors like frequency of reporting back to donors on how the money is being spent, governance of the NGO and overall systems and processes.
Give Now buttons
Another major technology change is the launch of Give Now buttons that will be incorporated into various news media. “Most of the news you read these days is negative and as a reader you might feel angry about it but also feel there is no way you can participate in bringing about a change. The Give Now button addresses that,” Mr. Satija said. If a reader comes across a story about, say, smog in Delhi, issues of urban infrastructure in Mumbai or gender inequality in another State, a Give Now button may appear at the end of the news story connecting them directly to organisations that work on these causes, all certified and graded by GiveIndia.
The most exciting aspect, from the donor’s point of view, Mr. Satija says, is the monthly giving model. “This would allow donors to support an organisation in a sustained manner over time and be deeply engaged in the change making. This is radical. The world over, the stories you see of the most successful non-profits, are those who have sustained involvement from donors,” he says.
Again, Mr. Satija explains, this is behaviour that already exists between donors and non-profits. “Most big non-profits are based on a sustained giving model. If you look at organisations like Helpage India or CRY then it’s people committing to support a child or an elder person for a period of five or 10 years. So the user behaviour is there but the challenge is to take it online.”
Mr. Satija hopes that the new monthly giving platform can increase the range of donors that come to the platform and participate in a sustained way. It stems from a belief that millions of Indians want to make a habit of giving for good causes but have not yet been connected with the right platforms. “This platform can take the giving pledge to the masses and allow more and more people to participate in change making,” he said.
Over the past months, as GiveIndia, has upgraded technology, Mr. Satija says his team has also discovered that they possess plenty of data on donors’ preferences, biases and giving patterns — from data on the causes that donors from smaller cities are most likely to give to, to preferences based on age and the kinds of mobile devices people use.
‘A more giving nation’
He says, “All this technology and data has not yet been leveraged to make giving online a better experience. We have largely been showcasing success stories of non-profits but not studying who to show the stories to and when and why.” Leveraging this intelligence, he adds, could go some way to make India a more giving nation.
