Till last year, Yale and MIT in the US and Canada World Youth were sending 38 interns annually to iVolunteer, a not-for-profit agency in the social sector. This year, all three institutions have dropped out of the programme offered by the Indian NGO to overseas institutions.
The universities were paying a fee of $500 an intern, for programmes lasting from 15 days till 10 weeks. This is the first such blow, an effect of the recession and the Mumbai terror attacks combined. “We had never expected the drop of these groups and were not prepared for the loss,” says Jamal Mohammad, who coordinates the volunteering programme for overseas institutions.
“We have changed our strategy. We recently published at alternative job and volunteering sites. We are also using search engine optimisation to get more traffic from those looking for volunteering in India. Also, we are writing to different international volunteering promotion organisations with businesses in India, to outsource the latter to us.”
iVolunteer had programmes with half a dozen Indian companies; it is unsure if any would continue this year. Many companies talking to them last year are now backing out, saying they don’t have a budget now for corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Other non-profits are facing similar problems. Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra(SSK), an NGO parenting grassroot groups in different parts of Uttar Pradesh with funds and training, is now half its former size, abandoning numerous dependents. Relying mostly on Dutch and Canadian agencies, it saw its funds come down from Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 1.25 crore last year. This year, it is reduced to less than Rs 1 crore, much of it from government grants.
SSK has begun talking to industry, but many enthusiastic a year earlier are now saying they are unsure of their budgets for development work, says director Ashok Bhai. Worst hit are NGOs dependent on bilateral aid and international NGOs. While bilateral agencies have withdrawn from India, NGOs like Oxfam, Action Aid and the German TDH have reduced their beneficiaries here, as they are unable to raise funds abroad.
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SSK has been a victim of both trends. Cord Aid Netherlands, Oxfam Viv and SIDA have stopped aiding it. It has now tied up with the local water department and is negotiating with other government departments. Operations have been scaled down from eight districts to three and it is totally revising its strategy and work portfolio.
The NGO had built 130 social groups in various villages. Abhay Singh, who runs a small NGO called Dudhi Gram Vikas Sabha, was one beneficiary. Today he is penniless, as the funds have stopped. All he has is a bike given by SSK.
Working on a plan to make the 12 lakh tribals in Sonbhadra district earn through a market linkage programme for forest produce, he needs sponsors. “I am talking to Nabard,” says Singh, who failed to get any response from big industries in the district like Hindalco, Kanoria Chemicals, Northern Coal Fields and NTPC.
However Rati Misra, who heads Resource Alliance in India and whose major task is to build the capacity of NGOs to mobilise resources, says those in Asia are still to be affected. She says: “At our head office in London, we are conducting an NGO Recession Watch, where we are monitoring 101 offices of 12 NGOs across the globe. We find that in Asia there has not been any significant downturn yet on account of the recession.
Those organisations that had invested in their fund-raising and relationship building and have a diversified resource base have, in fact, increased the funds they were raising, as has been witnessed both by Helpage India and Oxfam India.” But she agrees corporates have become more cautious and some sectors have been hit more by the recession.
The Alliance is now offering more platforms for capacity building in fund raising. It is organising an International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation in Bangalore in June. Infosys is supporting the workshop, providing the venue and other logistic support, an example of partnership even in times of recession, says Misra.
NGOs dependent on government grants and with small budgets are finding the going less tough than those dependent on funds from overseas.
ASA (Action for Social Development), a decade-old NGO in Madhya Pradesh funded by the government, has expansion plans for this year and intends to cover three districts in the state and two in Bihar. It partners the state in implementing watershed programmes, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, says its director, Ashish Mondal. “We may now trim plans a bit, depending on the flow,” says Mondal. “Instead of five blocks in a district, we may do just one.”
People are taking their own time to respond to our projects, he says, referring to companies which were earlier funding projects as part of their CSR.
Mondol adds: “Companies are not making any long-term commitments and there is a great deal of caution wherever we approach.”