Friday, 14 November 2014


The divine and sacrosanct way of doing a no profit business is followed by the NGOs/NPOs. The NGOs start off with the motive of welfare to the society unlike the very ubiquitous motive of any business organization – profit. Now the point to ponder about is when the intention is crystal clear and sacrosanct what are the factors that restrict the functioning of any NGO? The money for obvious reasons but there are many other factors.

The substantial reason for any NGO to become dysfunctional or cash strapped is definitely lack of visibility. Since the NGOs are non-profit organizations, they can hardly afford to market themselves. Every means of marketing comes at a hefty price and even if an NGO had that hefty amount it would prefer spending it for some welfare activity rather than marketing itself. Thanks to the advent of technology the NGOs are gaining visibility to a great extent due to several social media marketing places like social networking sites, e-commerce websites, video sharing websites etc. But all these come at a price that is sometimes beyond the affordable range.

Any NGO till recently would initially form up a group which would then scourge for funds by door to door marketing of their initiative. The conversion rate (number of people getting convinced/number of people marketed for) is substantially low. Ultimately the results wouldn’t be satisfactory and hence resulting in the closure of few NGOs due to lack of funds.

To get these NGOs into the limelight it is very important that people are made cognizant of the initiative before even thinking of drawing funds from them. Crowdfunding comes as an all-in-one solution for them. On these crowdfunding websites the NGOs can raise their voice and make themselves visible and audible to the world around. When it is funding it is all about connecting or more precisely conveying the intention clearly. Once this happens the NGOs get the desired visibility at minimum marketing cost. The takeaway here is that marketing is being done without any time lag. Once the content is online the funds start pouring in.

One organization that has been able to raise funds to crowdfunding is Stop Acid Attacks (SAA). SAA is an organization that actively campaigns against acid attack violence. They also help to provide medical aid and care to acid attack survivors. SAA is currently running a fundraiser on FundDreamsIndia.com through will they have been able to raise around Rs.300,000 to date. As the word is spreading, more people are expected to contribute to the cause. Utilizing these funds, they have started a café in Agra- “Sheroes” which is run by acid attack survivors. The money collected through the café would again we spent in survivors’ welfare. 


By being visible to the people, organizations are actually connecting to prospective employees even. There can be like-minded people who would not only wish to fund but also work for the NGO and that turns out to be the cherry on the cake. By doing this the hassle to go around begging for funds and the time consuming activity of interacting and explaining the intent of the NGO to every person is drastically cut down.