Helping the helpers

A company steps forward to help Indian NGOs raise resources and manage funds.

It is not enough to have good intentions and a heart aching to reduce the suffering around you. You need money too. And it is no big deal to just have money. You must know how to manage it, especially if it is money meant for the community.

Or you could end up looking like a crook in a jholawala's clothing. And Indian NGOs are certainly not known to have the best reputation for being either fund raisers or having the skills to manage funds in the best traditions of accountability and transparency.

In response, a top global fund raiser "" UK based Resource Alliance "" has decided to promote the skills of both raising money, and governance among Indian NGOs.

The Alliance, which pretty much castigates the whole Indian NGO sector "" "The non-profit sector in India suffers from low credibility and lack of transparency," proclaims the website (www.resource-alliance.org) "" has also decided to annually award Rs 10 lakh for the best NGO in the country, in partnership with the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation.

Rati Mitra, the Indian representative of the Alliance, which opened its unit in the country a year ago, claims it is the only award of its kind in India.

Indian internal donations, mostly religious, are huge at $ 60 billion "" compared to the $ 6 billion external funds received by the government through multilateral and bilateral channels "" and what goes into the NGO sector from these donations is "next to nothing", says P C Pande, CEO of Voluntary Associations Network of India. Clearly, there is scope for working on training NGOs to tap these funds.