Our Fund Raising Philosophy

To Make A Difference aka TMAD is created on midnight of Feb 28, 2005 and early hours of Mar 1, 2005, as a yahoo group by me. In the initial stages, our friends in TeluguPeople.com and my classmates (school to PG) are members. Later on it has grown gradually to what it is today.

Our NGO is formally registered on Sep 22, 2007 and we got 80G approval from 1st of April, 2008. We do not believe in keeping a reserve in our account. We raise fund on case/activity basis. Initially we kept a monthly membership contribution as 100 rs. and now as 200 rs. but it is never made mandatory. So whoever wants to give, they donate whatever amount they can. Most of our funding comes from regular donors who are our friends and some who are observing us and our work for many years. Our USP (if we can say so) is that we do diligent review, collect documents, visit the needy family in person and to the extent possible transfer money to institutions (either School or Hospital or Medical Shop or Provision Shop) rather than giving to beneficiary. In some of the instances where we cannot transfer to school or hospital, our volunteer will personally go and pay in cash and get us the receipts. We transfer money to our volunteers.

Coming to our philosophy of fund raising, we believe in ‘in-person’ donations rather than through bigger events. There are two reasons for this decision. The first one is to follow the footsteps of Sri Acharya Ekkirala Bharadwaja (http://www.saibharadwaja.org/). When he raised fund for Shirdi Sai Baba Temple of Vidyanagar, Nellore Dt., he used to visit each and every household of villages in and around. When someone questioned him on why he is doing so instead of going to Millionaires or moderately rich people, he responded that any amount that is given with devotion and willingness is required for the temple. Also they are kind of Baba’s sparrows whom He is pulling towards Himself with this activity. Another point is that the effort the volunteers put in, in collection of money, will help them in developing positive thoughts and it is also a service. This is kind of got instilled in me.

The second reason is ours is not a full fledged NGO in the sense there are no employees or paid volunteers. All of us spend our own money, time and effort. The no. of volunteers who can spare time is very less. In order to organize a big fund raising event it takes consistent effort for many days and require lot of coordination. Somehow I do not like the idea of selling tickets and using it as fund. We are against the idea of selling anything.

Another option we have is to knock corporate CSR, a fairly recent phenomenon. We kept on doing things and posting data. But we never kind of spent time on presenting data in a dashboard or various reports. In fact, we rarely used banners for any of our activity. We rarely gave details to press. Due to our activities for many years and the other forum that I created (Birds of same Feathers), some reporters know about us well and requested us to share our story. We politely declined many times. The reason again is that we feel whatever we do is our responsibility and it is not something to brag about. (Personally I do not even consider it as a responsibility but like any other hobby by doing which I feel happy and get satisfaction. Another view is there are many people who are doing field level remarkable work and whatever we are doing is minimal). With this, we do not have much of photos or press coverage or presentable data (as required by corporates). We didn’t even take bytes from the beneficiaries.

Lastly, as it would be conflict of interest, most of us cannot submit our NGO details in the respective companies where we worked. Very recently, we got registered in Oracle CSR through one of our active members. Slowly we will approach other CSRs as well. We are also trying to give to press, use banners, take photos and collect bytes from beneficiaries. Also we are in the process of updating our Web site and trying to automate the documentation. So in the process of transformation, currently. Hopefully by next year, we will be in much better shape.

Note: As we are a 80G certified NGO, we need to get our accounts audited and submit report to government, which we do.