You cannot walk or drive more than a few metres in any Indian city without encountering mounds of rubbish. Even in our villages, you will find garbage billowing around fields, piling up along roads or even lining the forest floor. At many beaches, you are as likely to find your toes tickled by strands of plastic as by little fish.
It is no longer possible to look away.
India’s waste problem is gigantic, and with its economy growing steadily, it will be compounded manifold. Yet, our waste stream management has not even got off the ground.
Type: Article
How India’s richest 1% can effect change
The super-rich must not just be super-generous but also be seen to be super-generous, to inspire more people to give.
TurningPoint: India is giving more at this stage of its economy than many other countries.
When a few people get super-wealthy very rapidly, societies sit up and take notice. When some of them talk publicly about what wealth means to them, it starts off a healthy discussion on the role and responsibility of private wealth in a deeply unequal society.
IDR | Crowdfunding: What can philanthropists do to support it?
By Gautam John
There are many opportunities for funders to help their grantees experiment with this new channel of fundraising. Here are some ways they can support nonprofits in building this capability.
Philanthropists and funding organisations grapple with various kinds of risks when considering grant making opportunities. Some are failure risks of theories of change, some of organisational capability and some of sustainability.
As grant makers and partners in change, it is imperative to proactively identify and mitigate these risks. Over this year we, at Nilekani Philanthropies, engaged in interviews and research that highlighted unique ways in which crowdfunding could change and expand the way we imagine our nonprofit engagements.
Why should philanthropists be thinking about crowdfunding?
While the primary case often made is to think of crowdfunding as a way to de-risk traditional funding models, there are other benefits and upsides that we identified.
It can be a crucial way to facilitate deeper engagement between nonprofits and the wider public–to create new ways of bringing people in and build networks and communities of support.
It can create new ways of bringing people to the sector.
Digital networks have the potential to keep us disconnected from the lives and experiences of others. This deprives us of the empathy, vibrancy and ideas that flow from the diversity of communities beyond our own.
Crowdfunding engagements offer an opportunity to change that; to get involved and to acknowledge our interdependencies.
What can philanthropists do?
We believe there are clear opportunities for philanthropy to support and incubate crowdfunding platforms at a strategic level, and as a tactic within grantee organisations.
Offer matching funds
There is tremendous signalling value in philanthropy showing belief in the model and it can do so in multiple ways. It can be via for-profit investments in crowdfunding platforms, or through offering matched funds to grantees or to crowdfunding platforms to drive individual giving. These can be done either through the lens of sector portfolios or events such as #GivingTuesdayIndia.
Support storytelling and communications costs
It is important to keep in mind that organisations that are effective at crowdfunding are those that can tell their stories using both data and empathy.
As a primary step, grant makers must recognise the importance of this from multiple perspectives: it is vital for organisations to be able to tell their own stories of change; it is important to the narrative around civil society; and it is critical from the perspective of reaching out to wider audiences and engaging the communities so built.
Encourage grantees to experiment by underwriting implementation costs
Philanthropic commitment to the nonprofits they support must extend beyond the immediate grant period; they must be partners for the long term.
One way to do so is by creating capacity for sustainability within their portfolios. Grants as the primary solution to funding needs are not sustainable and organisations need to communicate their cause and impact to the public at large.
Grants as the primary solution to funding needs are not sustainable.
Grant makers can nudge nonprofits to experiment with such models by moving a small percentage of their philanthropic funding to matching grants against monies raised through crowdfunding and by underwriting the costs of implementation and execution.
Think beyond the immediate portfolio
Donors have an interest in the civil society ecosystem beyond just their immediate portfolio. Creating capacity within their portfolios to tell their stories of change and impact allows for new conversations and connections within the ecosystem and outside of it. This is vital if we want to move the needle on India’s societal challenges.
There is an opportunity to create a new energy around India’s vibrant civil society that includes a much wider section of citizens in change, and also has the potential to create new pathways to sustainability.
Want Empowered Women? Start Thinking About how to Help Young Men.
We need to turn to the 200 million young men of India with as much urgency and focus as we spend on the millions of young women in the country. Every day, we hear of horrible atrocities that have taken place against girls and women in India. This is despite the fact that as a country, we can boast of having some of the most progressive policies and civic movements. It is despite the fact that we have the world’s largest pool of elected women representatives – adding up to more than one million across all tiers of government. It is despite the fact that tens of millions of women belong to self help groups that are working to empower them. And, it is despite the fact that as a society, we are becoming more and more aware of our inherent gender bias and gender based problems.
1st-generation entrepreneurs – Premji, Nilekani, NRN – make Bengaluru India’s philanthropy capital
With four Bengalureans being the only Indian signatories to Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge, the IT city could very well be the philanthropy capital of the country. Representatives of India Inc here adopt fresh approaches to humanitarianism — from closely-monitored capacity building in existing nonprofits to promoting tech-led scalable market solutions for development issues. Additionally, younger good samaritans are creating a new culture of giving that is inspired by, yet distinctive, from what their role models initiated.
Infosys co-founder and non-executive chairman of the tech giant Infosys Nandan Nilekani and wife Rohini just pledged half of their wealth to charity
That’s 50 per cent of $1.7 billion.
Infosys co-founder and non-executive chairman of the tech giant, Nandan Nilekani, signed the Giving Pledge with his wife, Rohini. The couple committed to giving away 50 per cent of their total wealth – which Forbes estimates to be ₹110 lakh crore ($1.7 billion) – over the weekend. Bill and Melinda Gates, who founded the pledge along with Warren Buffett in 2010, were also present at the event. The Nilekanis’ signing on makes them the fourth (and fifth) Indians to be amongst 171 unimaginably wealthy signatories from around the world, who have pledged at least half of their net worth to philanthropic causes.
Nilekanis pledge half of wealth for philanthropy
BENGALURU: Infosys co-founder and tech billionaire Nandan Nilekani and his wife Rohini Nilekani have joined ‘The Giving Pledge’, an elite network of the world’s wealthiest individuals committing half their wealth to philanthropy. The Giving Pledge website uploaded Nilekanis’ letter signing up for the cause.
Nilekanis pledge half their wealth for philanthropy
Infosys co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani and his wife Rohini Nilekani have decided to pledge half of their wealth for philanthropy. With this, the Nilekani has become the fourth Indian and second tech magnate from Bengaluru to join The Giving Pledge, the philanthropy movement started by US billionaires Bill Gates, his wife Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett in August 2010.
Infosys Co-Founder Nandan Nilekani, Wife Rohini Donate 50 Per Cent Of Their Wealth
Wealth comes with huge responsibility and is best deployed for the larger public interest,” said Infosys co founder Nandan Nilekani quoting a line from the Giving Pledge letter, which had announced that he and his wife, the author and philanthropist Rohini, would be donating 50 per cent of their wealth under the movement initiated by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and wife Melinda.
Nilekanis donate half of wealth to philanthropy
Infosys co-founder and Non-Executive Chairman Nandan Nilekani and his wife Rohini Nilekani have pledged to donate half of their wealth to philanthropy. The Nilekanis had announced their decision to donate their wealth through a letter on November 8 that was put up on the website of ‘The Giving Pledge’. The Giving Pledge is a campaign founded in 2010 by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, his wife Melinda Gates, along with American business magnate and investor Warren Buffett that invites the billionaires to donate a majority of their wealth to philanthropy.