How a Bengaluru NGO raised Rs 220 crore for fight against coronavirus

How GiveIndia's campaign to raise Rs 220 crore for Covid relief gathered a momentum of its own pulling in many much-maligned segments of society

On the weekend of March 24th, as Covid-19 became a reality, the GiveIndia team started a crowdfunding campaign on its website that went viral. It had become evident that the sudden lockdown had left many migrants and workers from the rural areas stranded in various cities across the country. Many had lost their jobs (construction activity had halted) and few had savings to sustain themselves in the weeks to follow. Starvation deaths - usually heard of in remote Jharkhand, MP and UP - in the NCR, Mumbai and other metros could not be ruled out unless someone stepped in.

Almost as soon as GiveIndia set an ambitious target of Rs 500 crore to raise for Covid relief, the PM CARES fund was announced on 28th March. In lieu of that, the team realised that it probably needed to lower its ambitions and raise close to half that amount since many corporates and HNIs would respond directly to the PM’s plea.

But pleas for help continued to pour in from every nook and cranny of the country. In early April, a senior civil service officer from Bihar called to say that a group of migrants from his state were stranded in Mumbai with no food or means to travel and had run out of all provisions. The Hamsafar trust that works with the LGBTQ community and sex workers needed to help out its members who made a living from begging and sex work. The Karnataka Blind Women’s cricket team was stranded and in severe economic distress and approached Samarthan, an NGO that reached out to GiveIndia. Mohammed Arshad and his family were evicted from their rented accomodation and living under the Sewa Nagar flyover with no food or provisions after the lockdown, until the Center for Equity Studies stepped in. The stories go on and on.

It became evident to Atul Satija, founder 2.0 and CEO, GiveIndia that while the government could do the major relief - and it appeared to be trying to do what it could to the best of its abilities - there were many glaring small but equally urgent gaps that were emerging, Too many were falling through these cracks and a countrywide initiative was the need of the moment. 

“We also realised the need was insanely large”, says Atul. He says out of every 100 people in India, almost 90-92 are in the informal sector and this came to a grinding halt : be it maids, drivers, car cleaners to many self employed categories like plumbers, electricians, tailors. Cash relief and dry rations were needed. Second, there was a shortage of PPE kits so help was required to provide these to frontline workers. 

Within a few days, GiveIndia’s campaign caught the attention of many celebrities and in three days, the campaign raised Rs 1 crore. The board also decided to approach corporates, CSR funds and contributions from HNIs, a departure from the it’s usual mode of “everyday giving”. This meant a larger pool could be tapped.

To monitor and ensure that funds raised are deployed as best possible, GiveIndia decided to set up a formal structure for the relief fund. An 16 member advisory board (most of whom donated and gave their time) with Arun Seth, former chairman of British Telecom, Kiran Shaw Mazumdar, Devi Shetty, Sanjiv Mehta, Binny Bansal, V. Vaidyanathan among other equally well known industry representatives was set up and a three member steering committee - Govind Iyer, Egon Zehnder partner and board member of GiveIndia, Ingrid Srinath, director at Ashoka university and Shailesh Haribhakti, independent director and chartered accountant were requested to fast track and clear proposals for funding relief that would be vetted and tabled by the GiveIndia team.

A two pronged strategy was adopted with GiveIndia’s Bangalore team acting as a bridge. Trust and transparency were key in an exercise like this and of this magnitude. So on one hand, the team aggressively examined and vet the requests that were pouring in (to ensure the need was genuine) and on the other hand, the advisory board and steering committee members did its best to bring in funds through companies, foundations, CSR funds, HNIs. The Gates foundation wrote the initial cheque and the fund got going.

Yet Satija found that they could not work as fast as the needs were arising. To add extra pairs of hands, some employees of Nudge India (the other hat Satija wears) were pulled into the relief effort. Nine graduates from ISB, Hyderabad who had just finished their course bit were yet to find full employment pitched in pro-bono. 

Google Pay and Phone Pay were pulled into the crowdfunding exercise and once it scaled - more thanks to endorsements from the of late much-maligned Bollywood stars than anything else - GiveIndia did a I for India campaign in partnership with Facebook. This real-time fundraiser concert raised around Rs 52 crore through a two hour show, one of the largest live crowdfunding exercises globally. This fund raiser brought in donors from every corner including big contributions from Vinod Khosla, Indra Nooyi and Sundar Pichai. Ajay Piramal, Anu Aga, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Binny Bansal, Amit Chandra were some of the big Indian donors. The Google Pay leadership team (five individuals from the team contributed Rs 5 crore), Google.org, the Nilekanis all contributed generously. Another much maligned category - the media - also pitched in. NDTV ran a Caring For India campaign as did Zee TV. Sunfeast India Runners (Sunfeast and  ITC) organised a run to raise funds which included a lot of donations from employees of the companies as well. “In a way, the entire fund raising straddled almost every segment of society and lakhs of people got pulled in willy-nilly”, he adds.

The money was used for cash relief (individuals received between Rs 3000-7000 in hands) for 5 lakh families, cooked meals and dry ration kits were offered through NGOs and the third and deepest work was the healthcare work which started distributing PPE kits.  Flipkart and Walmart helped distribute these to various state governments, government hospitals and even to health workers and traffic workers. In Mumbai, mobile screening vans were set up in slums and low income community areas with the help of GiveIndia funds for initial screening of symptoms and to identify Covid spreaders. Over 600 Covid positive patients were identified through this screening, which helped contain the spread. 

By the end of it all, a total of Rs 220 crore was raised through all the efforts and GiveIndia reached out to over 1,200 nonprofits to identify the neediest and  help disburse the funds. Of the total it reached out to, 250 partners worked on the eventual relief effort in partnership with GiveIndia. Satija says that GiveIndia was well placed to partner with the NGOs as it already works with almost 250 NGO in partnerships, has done its due diligence and is familiar with their ethos, culture and efficiency. 

A total of 3.5 lakh individuals contributed, 50 plus corporates and 15-odd foundations and while the amount may be a tiny fraction of what PM CARES managed to garner, from a civil society point of view, this was the largest effort and contribution. Close to Rs 45-50 crore was spent on cash relief, over 40 lakh cooked meals and over 8 lakh dry ration kits were distributed, making the total amount spent on this a similar amount on food and dry rations and slightly more on the health vertical. In kind, PPE kits added up to another Rs 30-35 crore.

Even as this story went to press, the relief work was still on. Rs 190 crore of the Rs 220 crore raised had been disbursed. Satija says that the only regret he has is not being able to do enough, quickly enough. “The need was so large and unprecedented that we were always a step behind despite running full steam”, says he. 

While the crisis is undoubtedly not something one wants to see repeated in history, the coming together of civil society and seeing contributions by so many individuals - big or small - has been heartwarming for him and his team : an effort worth repeating. That civil society can play a very constructive role if it so chooses has been amply demonstrated in the last eight months, Covid notwithstanding.