How GiveIndia harnessed outpouring of compassion in Covid times

Established in 2000, GiveIndia is the largest and the most trusted giving platform in India that aims to alleviate poverty by enabling the world to give. It enables individuals and organisations to raise and donate funds conveniently to any because they care about, with offerings including crowdfunding, corporate giving, cause marketing, and philanthropy consulting. GiveIndia’s community of 2 millio+ donors and 250+ partners have supported 2,200+ verified non-profits, serving 15 million+ people across the country. As India's largest and most trusted giving platform their challenge is to still get more individuals and organisations to give back to the society to raise funds and donate for a cause that will help the society.

While they are taking several initiatives to drive their social programmes, this year the ‘Vaccinate India Programme’ was on top priority. They joined hands with state governments, donors and partner organisations to mobilise excluded communities in rural areas and isolated localities. Collaborating with the local authorities they ensured that the people are educated on the benefits of vaccines which helped them in removing the fear and allowed them to administer the vaccine to a lot of people.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Sumit Tayal, COO, GiveIndia, speaks about their various initiatives and how they overcame several challenges that they faced during the pandemic.

The pandemic disrupted everyone. Amid all this, GiveIndia played a great role in collaborating with several organisations from the medical world to manage and help people. How did you go about planning and executing it flawlessly?

With a 20-year history of partnering with trusted NGOs, GiveIndia was in a unique position to respond with great speed to the health and humanitarian emergency that the coronavirus presented during the first and second waves. To meet the challenge, GiveIndia set up the India COVID Response Fund (ICRF) in consultation with our non-profit partners, health experts and professionals in fund management. To provide complete transparency, we also appointed a Steering Committee to oversee the programme.

We could quickly harness the outpouring of compassion and direct it to the needs on the ground. GiveIndia reacted to the scale of the health emergency with alacrity and put in new processes to meet new demands. To fill the gap in oxygen supply during the second wave, for instance, we were not just allocating funds to our committed network of NGOs, but also directly purchasing cylinders, concentrators, etc., in partnership with other organisations and government agencies. We adapted according to the changing situation with the sole aim of providing support where most needed.

Celebrities play an important role in any social cause. How do you go about roping celebrities for your various initiatives and how does it help for a cause? 

Celebrities have always come together at times of distress to help the people who have been affected. They understand that they can use their presence and voice for doing good. Looking at our work during Covid-19, several celebrities reached out to GiveIndia. What attracts them is the trust and transparency GiveIndia brings to the table and the ease of using the platform. Celebrities bring the network and reach, and we bring in the trust and NGO expertise to make  any celeb-led campaign work. Many celebrities tie-up for causes beyond Covid relief as well. Apart from stars reaching out to GiveIndia, we have partnerships with celebrity engagement platforms such as Fankind and Tring. These platforms connect fans and celebrities for a cause. 

Influencer marketing is rapidly evolving into an essential component in every marketing strategy for business. How much influencer marketing GiveIndia has adopted in promoting various cause-related programs and what's the end result?

We have collaborated with many influencers and celebrities in the recent past for our COVID-19 missions. Given the critical situation and the depth of suffering, most were happy to engage in organic collaborations which also adds to the credibility of the campaigns. It gives us a great boost in spreading our fundraisers to a wider range of audiences.

Today, most brands work with a purpose and they realise the importance of aligning themselves with NGOs. How do you go about collaborating with brands that will help the brands and the NGO in meeting their end objectives?

We first identify socially conscious brands and those that have the potential to be socially aware and then suggest cause areas that would most suit them and their audience. We identify NGOs from our network that deal with particular causes and then work closely with the brand and the NGO. We also factor in the geography of the brand to make the campaign relevant to its customers as well as the NGOs. More often than not, brands prefer to work for causes in the geography that they operate in.

As an NGO with strong and focused social objectives, what are some of the steps that GiveIndia is taking to help in the fight in the post-pandemic period?

India faced an acute shortage of oxygen at the height of the second wave of the pandemic. While we were trying to meet the immediate needs, we also were planning to meet the long-term needs of oxygen, especially in the country's rural districts. In close collaboration with our partners, GiveIndia is enabling hospitals, most of them government-owned in rural districts, to become self-reliant by installing oxygen generation plants (OGPs) on their premises. The OGPs will cut transportation costs, delays in oxygen supply & dependency on refilling of cylinders. We continue to set up ICUs in hospitals and support vaccination drives in rural areas.

As an NGO, what are some of the challenges that you are facing to accomplish your goals? Do you think the government needs to support more social causes for brands and NGOs to do more?

As India’s largest and most trusted giving platform, our biggest challenge is to enable more and more individuals and organisations to give back to society – to raise funds for and donate to any cause they care about. 

We believe that governments and partnerships with them can play an important role. In our experience during Covid-19 relief work, we saw how collaboration between NGOs, state governments, municipal authorities, corporates and philanthropic organisations can help reach the most vulnerable and those in remote places. For instance, as part of our ‘Vaccinate India Programme’, we are collaborating with state governments, donors and partner organisations to mobilise excluded communities in rural areas and isolated localities. We are helping the local authorities educate the people so that they overcome vaccine hesitancy and are also involved in effectively distributing and administering the vaccines.