Click and Connect with your favourite cause this holiday season

Have you ever thought about gifting your time or money to help significantly change lives of those around you? This giving season, spend a few minutes on www.guidestarindia.org to get to know about and connect with NGOs in India working on a cause that is dear to you. You can identify NGOs that you would like to visit in your city/ town or find information on charities that you may want to support remotely. You can also share information on their work via your blog, Facebook or Twitter. GuideStar India features 716 NGOs across India. Just click and connect!

Dr Usha Pillai, of the IDEA Foundation  says “Soon after our registration on GuideStar India, we got the opportunity to attend an IT Workshop conducted by the NASSCOM Foundation. Through this workshop we could familiarise ourselves with various online tools to promote our cause. Our presence on the GuideStar India website and a social networking site has in fact helped us to connect with an industry donor, who was looking for a small NGO. Being added to GuideStar India has been of phenomenal long term value to a small NGO like ours within a few months of association."

Pushpa Aman Singh, CEO of GuideStar India says “It is amazing to see how quickly connections happen: I got a call from a person based in Bangalore who wanted his sister, a cosmetic surgeon in Mumbai to connect with a charity working for women around Mumbai so that she could raise awareness about their work at the medical conferences she is invited to address. Within minutes he found a list of suitable organisations on www.guidestarindia.org  and within days his family started work with the IDEA Foundation. With so many NGOs using the internet and email effectively, it is fairly easy for people across the globe to support NGOs in India. We get enquiries from students who seek to volunteer for a few days while on a holiday trip, people who want to intern with charities while on vacation, parents who want to spend time along with their children at an NGO reading stories or playing games or helping them with their daily tasks and there are those who support charities from where they live by spreading awareness and doing fundraisers to helping with online communication.”

Ready to make a meaningful gift this holiday season? Click here and get connected with your favourite cause right away! Do write to us at info@guidestarindia.org and share your joy of giving. We will feature some of the stories on this blog.

Happy holidays and best wishes for the New Year!

Karnataka & Kerala NGOs: Register for FREE IT training workshops, limited seats!





1082 participants have taken advantage of IT training workshops in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Orissa, Gujarat and Delhi. Now it is your turn to attend… Apply NOW!

As the Outreach Partner for these workshops, GuideStar India is pleased to invite you for free high impact IT training workshops titled ‘ConnectIT workshop" in Karnataka.

NGOs can take advantage of free IT training in MS Office & social media worth at least Rs5000. Thanks to NASSCOM Foundation and Microsoft, this programme comes to NGOs free of cost. You can nominate TWO participants, which means a saving of Rs10,000 and your NGO will get the benefit of using IT more effectively.

Where & When are ConnectIT Workshop to be held:

Bangalore  05 – 08 Jan, 2011
Belgaum    18 – 21 Jan, 2011
Hubli         25- 29 Jan, 2011 (26th Jan holiday for Republic Day)
Mangalore  01-04 Feb, 2011

Venue for ConnectIT workshops: will be informed to confirmed participants.

What is the workshop content: Practical training on desktops/ laptops including advanced use of Microsoft Excel, Word, making presentations, newsletters, movie making, animation, sound and video in Power point, use of new media such as blogs, Twitter, Face book, etc. There is a session on how to get featured on GuideStar India. All NGOs that register for ConnectIT workshops will be trained to showcase their work on www.guidestarindia.org. You will also get to enroll for NASSCOM Foundation’s software donation programme BiGTech.

Please refer to the agenda for details.

Participants who attend all 4 days sessions in any one ConnectIT Workshop will receive a Certificate of Participation and a CD based user manual to help them use their learning after this workshop.

Who can participate

NGO leaders and staff who currently use MS Office and are keen to learn to use these and other tools more effectively. These will be conducted in English. Nominate 2 persons, one of who is a key decision maker so that your organisation can implement the learning most appropriately.

Accommodation: Participants have to make their own arrangements for stay and travel.

How to register:

Click http://bit.ly/connectitregn to register online.

Or

If you are not able to fill the online Registration Form, please download the Word document, fill it and email to register@guidestarindia.org. If you face any difficulty, please call Lathika at GuideStar India on 022-26856900/99.

How will you know if your Participation is Confirmed:

You will receive a mail from GuideStar India within 3 days of receiving your registration form. If you do not receive a mail, please feel free to call Lathika at GuideStar India to verify your confirmation status. Confirmation is based on selection criteria and first come first served basis. Entry will be allowed strictly against copy of confirmation mail and photo ID.

You will receive a series of important emails after you register. Please read all our emails carefully as it may contain important information about the ConnectIT Workshop.

If you have any questions regarding participation, please write to register@guidestarindia.org. Please apply at the earliest and await email confirmation of your registration.

Feel free to inform other NGOs from your network to register for the ConnectIT Workshop. You may simply forward the link to this page (http://guidestarindia.org/ITtraining.aspx).

If you do not want to miss this golden opportunity, apply NOW.

Tata Tea Jaago Re! team invites GuideStar India NGOs

Tata Tea Jaago Re! Team invites NGOs to join their portal and get connected with their vast community of 23,000+ users. After identifying GuideStar NGOs that are already registered with Jaago Re!, the Tata Tea Jaago Re! team asked us to send their invitation to the remaining 644 NGOs who are featured on GuideStar India but were yet to join Jaago Re! The initial response from GuideStar India NGOs has been encouraging.

We are happy to announce that even non-GuideStar NGOs could read the details below and write to jaago.re@tatatea.co.in to join their portal.

From: Team Jaago Re!

Tata Tea Jaago Re! is renowned for taking up social issues and enabling citizens to contribute to social change. We have addressed issues of Voting and Corruption in our previous campaigns.

Now, www.jaagore.com is the portal for NGOs from the reputed stable of the Tata Tea Jaago Re! campaign. It is an online conduit between organizations like yours and the citizens of our nation. This portal is a bustling community of over 23,000 users including 130 NGOs.

The motto of this portal is to encourage citizens to get involved with Social Issues and help NGOs, by sparing some of their time. Registered NGOs have put up more than 270 projects that need volunteers and the site has delivered more than 600 volunteers across the country!

Here are few links to Jaagore success stories:

Ankit Nandwani from Pune galvanized his entire college batch to work on Open Space project… http://www.jaagore.com/blog/india%E2%80%94what-does-it-take-trigger-your-conscience  

Shwetha from Bangalore assisted Rang De in Chennai with content editing project sitting at her home… http://www.jaagore.com/blog/awakening-people-%E2%80%94-one-time

Guest blog post from Deepalaya on Education program… http://www.jaagore.com/blog/education-wheels  

Interview with Vijay Anand, Fifth Pillar, on fighting corruption… http://www.jaagore.com/blog/corruption-starts-right-birth-until-death-indian-citizen-vijay-anand-5th-pillar-founder

Five reasons why you must sign up with Jaagore.com:

1. 23,000 and growing community of socially conscious pool of citizens

2. Online presence through Jaagore Blog and reach out to users via Jaagore Facebook/ Twitter platforms

3. Get people interested in your cause and connect to prospective volunteers at zero cost

4. Create and manage individual NGO account, announce new projects & events and showcase your work

5. Post and manage all your volunteer/ resource requirements through your account

The way to participate is real simple – please write back to us and we will get you on board. Come and partner with us in this new Jaago Re! movement!

To register, write to jaago.re@tatatea.co.in TODAY.

If your organization has already registered with Jaagore.com, you need not register again.

Team Jaago Re!

Donor for School Infrastructure in Ahmedabad/ North Gujarat invites proposals

GuideStar India is happy to connect NGOs working in Gujarat with a donor organisation that uses http://www.guidestarindia.org/ to identify suitable partners.

A donor organisation which takes up social projects, especially in the area of Education, is currently in search of NGOs who are running and operating Schools for underprivileged children.  They are willing to build critical civil infrastructure for Schools with own premises/ land in Gujarat (Ahmedabad and North Gujarat) like Classroom, Toilets, Classroom furniture, Filtered Drinking Water System, Deep Tube-wells for Sanitation, Lights & Fans, Science laboratories, Library rooms, Computer rooms and so on.

They do not make monetary grants but carry out the actual construction based on the NGO’s requirements. 

If your organisation runs a school for poor children in your own premises/ land (in Ahmedabad/ North Gujarat) and are looking to create/ upgrade/ expand your infrastructure facilities, please fill their form and send it directly to the donor to ourschoolprojects2010@gmail.com.

If your organisation eventually gets support from this donor, please share your story with us so that we can cover it in our newsletter.

If your NGO is already featured on GuideStar India, do update your content on GuideStar India when you send your application to the donor as they would be viewing your information on http://www.guidestarindia.org/  for short listing proposals.

Alliance Magazine covers the launch of GuideStar India

 “With the launch of GuideStar India on 23 September, India became the fourth country to have a GuideStar database, joining the USA, the UK and Israel. Unlike the US and the UK, where the starting point for GuideStar was existing official documentation, in India the source is non-profit organizations themselves. This is primarily because India lacks a single source of data on its estimated 3 million NPOs: the country has different registration authorities and lacks a unique identification for NPOs. These reasons make a system like GuideStar both difficult to create and critical to the development of the voluntary sector in India.”

Click here for the full article.

Out of the 716 NGOs currently on http://www.guidestarindia.org/, many organisations have recently updated their profiles. GuideStar India will be sharing stories of users connecting with NGOs. We will be announcing requests received from users seeking NGOs to support and also specific requirements and updates put up by NGOs.