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Sunday, December 25, 2011

New portal to promote US Giving to Indian NGOs

GuideStar India and the U.S. Department of State held a “Philanthropy in India Roundtable” on December 21 in Mumbai. Over 40 leaders from the Indian philanthropy sector discussed the creation of a new online portal that will assist private donors seeking to support Indian NGOs.
Mitul Desai, U.S. State Department Senior Advisor 
to South and Central Asia Assistant Secretary Robert O. Blake, 
Opening the Philanthropy in India Roundtable on December 21, 2011


GuideStar India is an existing portal of fully searchable information on over 1400 registered NGOs in India, and will serve as the platform for the new portal which is designed to connect private U.S. donors with Indian NGOs and organizations. The group agreed that such a portal should also help address two critical needs:
(1) empowering and educating donors by introducing more information and transparency into the sector; and (2) strengthening capacity-building amongst Indian NGOs.

Consul General Peter Haas and others listening to 
GuideStar India CEO, Pushpa Aman Singh speaking at the Roundtable


The new portal will aggregate NGO certifications provided by independent third parties and present the information in a format easily searchable and accessible by potential donors. Neither GuideStar nor the U.S. Government will rate or certify NGOs. The portal will empower donors and allow them to make better informed decisions. Indian NGOs, intermediaries, facilitators, foundations and other organizations and individuals involved in philanthropy in India will benefit through enhanced visibility.


The roundtable participants provided input on the design of the portal to GuideStar representatives. The diverse group of leaders gathered at the roundtable reflected the shared desire of the private sector, civil society and the U.S. State Department to explore new and creative ways to support Indian NGOs.

4 comments:

  1. This is very good news. Are you working at all with
    http://ngosindia.com/
    I refer to this web site regularly for information about NGOs in India.

    Is there any effort to create a portal for people in India to volunteer for local NGOs? This is a frequently asked question on YahooAnswers and various other online communities - people in India wanting to do unpaid work, as volunteers or as interns, for NGOs, but having no idea how to get started. It's such a common question - and I'm so frustrated that all searched on Google for the words "volunteer" and "India" are focused on Westerners coming to India, rather than Indians volunteering themselves - that I blogged about it:
    http://coyoteblog.posterous.com/volunteerism-ngo-resources-in-india-for-india

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  2. Great Work. Guide Star India is really reaching new horizons. Keep up the good work.
    All the Best

    Santosh Panigrahi

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  3. Thank you, Santoshji! We hope all our initiatives help you and other NGOs do their work better.

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  4. Nice work ...
    Hopefully this well open up more reliable channels for philanthropy.
    All the very best.

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