India has always had a long and rich culture of individual giving, largely to religion and community, and more recently, social development. For a country with potentially a billion givers, the contours of the ‘everyday giving space’ — giving by ordinary citizens contributing time, money, voice, skills and more in India — has remained an unknown.The Everyday Giving in India Report gives an overview of the individual/retail giving market and solution ecosystem in India.

The study is a first attempt at obtaining a deeper look into the everyday giving market and ecosystem in its entirety — estimates of the market size, characteristics of the givers, online and offline giving channels, the NGOs that engage with retail givers, and enablers, their practices, successes and barriers.

Organisations can use the report to understand:

1. The retail fundraising ecosystem, its future potential, and trends to inform the overall fundraising strategy
2. How to leverage existing solutions and services to meet the organisation’s retail fundraising requirements
3. The behaviour and motivations of “everyday givers” to strengthen the existing retail fundraising strategy

This resource is recommended for fundraising professionals or non-profit leaders.

Resource Summary:

Key findings from the report are as below:

• India has a rich tradition of everyday giving and citizen engagement. In 2017, everyday givers contributed ~INR 34k cr (USD 5.1 b) to community, religion, disaster-relief and charitable causes. Over the last decade, citizen engagement and volunteering have grown rapidly in India, bearing potential to increase giving through engagement.
• In contrast to other prominent social economies such as the USA and China, 90% of India’s EG is informal giving to religion and community. Only INR 3.5k cr / USD 528 m (10%) goes to Social Purpose Organisations (SPOs), making it a mere 6% contribution to total philanthropic giving in India.
• Over 80% of EG to SPOs is acquired through offline telemarketing and face-to-face interactions, but online and mixed channels are growing steadily, backed by rapid growth of digital shopping and payments, and millennials wanting to give back.
• Formal EG to SPOs could leapfrog to become a significant contributor to total philanthropic giving in India in the next 3-5 years. Indian residents and diaspora’s growing earning capacity, and response to nascent digital giving innovations in payroll giving, crowdfunding and e-commerce-based giving could be central to this growth.
• India’s everyday givers are motivated by four triggers: convenience, urgency, community and impact. Givers prefer to engage with social causes personally but are impeded in their giving by lack of information on reliable SPOs, relevant avenues for giving, and regulatory barriers.
• Most Indian SPOs tap into retail giving only when other funding streams are inaccessible. Some leverage external opportunities or international expertise while only a few do so because citizen engagement is core to their mission.
• Giving channels embrace the unique challenges of Indian everyday giving for effective solutioning. While online channels are growing at ~30% CAGR, offline channels dominate in the Indian context.
• The support ecosystem of influencers, funders, enablers and regulators play a critical role in creating a tipping point for Indian EG.
• In order to achieve the potential for everyday giving in India and build a sustainable culture of citizen engagement, we believe it is important to (a) recognise that meaningful engagement is critical to increase giving, (b) take into account the Indian realities of EG and design for them, (c) leverage mainstream communities and existing consumer behaviours, and (d) move givers to mindful ways of giving.