Opinion: A Survey Of 200 Indian NGOs And 10 Big Takeaways
NDTV
'Feeding America', one of the largest charities in the US, raised over $ 4 billion in 2022. India's largest similar organisation supplying meals raised about $ 0.07 billion. Keeping aside the comparison with a much larger economy and charity, consider the size of the need in India. There is so much more that non-profits can achieve, and help accelerate India's progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 agenda - if they are enabled to grow and achieve their potential impact.
What's holding back Indian non-profits? We have several million of them - NITI Aayog's Darpan portal shows over 1.75 lakh registered NGOs, and estimates elsewhere range up to 3 million. They come in myriad avatars - societies, trusts, Section 8 companies and more, governed by different laws at the Centre and state levels. There is no single government agency or regulator that governs them all, and monitors the health of the sector. We sorely lack credible and updated data on the size, funding patterns, sectoral trends, growth or anything else that can aid thoughtful decision making from philanthropy or policy makers for helping the sector work at its best.
As the first step towards addressing this glaring gap, we tried to map the top 200 non-profits in India by their annual budget, the only objective and verified (signed by the auditors) parameter we have publicly available (through the annual reports) to assess the size of the organisation.
