Joy of Giving week: Getting started

Visiting organisations is the best way to get a feel of the work they do. Image: Shutterstock

The Joy of Giving week started on October 2, and will go on till October 8. In this daily blog series, we will take you through seven habits of effective givers, one habit at a time, to help develop a culture of giving.

Here’s how a typical conversation of a friend paralysed into philanthropic inaction, goes with me

Friend: I don’t yet know what cause I want to give for
Me: That’s okay. Which one would you like to start with?
Friend: I don’t know… how do I decide?
Me: What do you feel strongly about?
Friend: Not sure, maybe children’s education? Or the environment?
Me: So give Rs 5,000 each to the two causes and see?
Friend: But why both? What if one of them gets wasted?
Me: Indeed, what if it gets wasted? You will lose Rs 5,000. Is that reason to stop you from giving Rs 5,000 every month for the rest of your life? And what if it doesn’t get wasted and turns out to be the cause you want to associate with for the rest of your life?
Friend: Okay, but which NGOs should I give to for children’s education?
Me: Name any two NGOs and pick any one of them
Friend: What if it is not the best NGO?
Me: What if?
Friend: But this way I will spend my entire life in only learning. Can’t you just tell me where to give?
Me: Sure I can. Or you can use websites like GiveIndia.org, CAFIndia.org to pick credible non-profits and you can then choose to support one.
Friend: Okay, that sounds like something I can do.
Me: Do it!

I have been giving my time, money and skills for over 20 years now and I can say that even today, I keep learning every day, keep getting better at it. Most of my philanthropist friends would share the same sentiment, and I am pretty sure Bill Gates and Azim Premji feel likewise too. In short, no one has it all figured out, so the fact that you haven’t started yet, needn’t stop you from doing it.

Unlike business, where there is one common denominator of “return on investment” across all the sectors, when it comes to social change, impact is at best, subjective. Who decides whether helping one child get a liver transplant is more important than providing cataract surgeries to 200 elderly people? You’ll find that there is no one right answer to these questions, and eventually, you will have to find out what is your right answer to all the questions you encounter.

And the best way to find answers is to get started.

Depending on how much time you have on your hands (time is always the bigger constraint than money), here are a few things you could do to start donating:

1. Ask friends and relatives if they know and/ or would recommend any specific NGO/ project or initiative - This is always a great way to get started because your friends/ relatives would have done some due diligence before connecting you to an organisation. Asking for leads on social media will allow friends to tag experts and quickly get you three-four good leads to pursue.

2. Research online Browse through websites like GuidestarIndia.org, GiveIndia.org, CAFIndia.org for more information about a few organisations in the areas of your interest. GiveIndia and CAFIndia also allow you to donate online to these organisations.

3. Visit NGOs near your home (you can find them through a simple Google Search or searching directories like Justdial.com, Sulekha.com or other Yellow Pages). Visiting organisations is the best way to get a “feel” for the work they do, the people, the culture, and to therefore get a sense of whether it is an organisation or cause you’d like to get involved with.

4. Volunteer for a few opportunities, either at organisations you have identified, or simply with a group of friends. For example, if there’s a bunch of kids at a traffic light near your house or office, go across and chat with them and find out what they need. You might be able to then connect them to an organisation that can help them, or get together a few colleagues and organise food, material or other support for them.

What you get started with doesn’t actually matter that much. Experience will quickly tell you whether you are enjoying the experience or “it is not for you”. It will help you figure out what is missing, what you are looking for, and thus drive you towards your eventual passion. Remember the 'Newton Raphson Method' you learnt in high school, or 'Twenty questions'? Both teach us the same lesson - that getting started, and then refining your way along is the key to finding your answer.

Above all, getting started will surprise you in many ways. The sheer joy of getting involved, of visiting organisations or interacting with beneficiaries and volunteering will see you gradually expand your time commitment to whatever you eventually decide to do. The trade-offs of time (watching one movie versus helping a bunch of students understand plant anatomy or verb conjugation or helping an NGO create financial reports for its donors) and money (a night out for drinks and dinner versus restoring eyesight to a cataract affected elderly person or midday meals for three children for a year) become apparent. Most people who get started on the volunteering journey eventually find themselves spending at least 10 hours a week supporting the causes they care about.

Which is why, if you can volunteer time, it will be way more impactful than just giving money - even if it is just two hours a week to begin with. Just get started and see how it not only brings great joy to you and the people you help, but also transforms your life completely.

Down the road, you will often encounter situations where you get “stuck”- the organisation you are supporting doesn’t welcome your help or is not being responsive. The campaign you worked for has “fizzled out”. In such situations, go back to this basic principle - “get started to get unstuck” - simply list the options you have (E.g., finding another organisation and starting afresh, doing more due diligence and changing the criteria based on which you will decide what to get involved in), pick one and get going.

Eli Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference”. And when it comes to philanthropy, the opposite of doing good is not doing bad - it is inertia. Doing something, anything, is invariably better than doing nothing as long as you are committed to learning from your experiences.

Daan Utsav, the Joy of Giving week begins on October 2, till October 8. Over the next week, we’ll delve into each of these habits and help you with tips and methods to become an effective giver.

The author set up GiveIndia in 2000, to create a "giving culture" in India and, in 2009, he, along with several other volunteers, conceptualised and launched DaanUtsav, a festival that aims to bring India together to celebrate giving.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.