Indian diaspora in US launches online giving campaign on Gandhi Jayanti

Coinciding with the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian-American non-profit body on Wednesday launched a week-long online campaign to raise funds for various socio-economic work in India. Inspired in part by the success of 'Giving Tuesday' in the US and the week-long 'Daan Utsav' campaign in India that have gained considerable traction, the 'ChaloGive' online campaign, organised by Indiaspora, aims at encouraging higher levels of giving by Indian diaspora.

The campaign will run till October 8. "ChaloGive was a logical next step for Indiaspora in our mission and role as a philanthropic catalyst for the Indian diaspora community," Indiaspora founder M R Rangaswami said.

The grassroots initiative will focus on individual giving by the Indian diaspora to non-profits that are making an impact through its online platform ChaloGive.org. "Our aim is to encourage philanthropic giving at all levels and ChaloGive allows us to engage with the 3 million strong Indian Americans who are looking to give to a cause that they care about," he said.

The idea is to allow the diaspora to learn about different organisations doing meaningful work, streamline the process for them to donate, and help cultivate the spirit of giving, Indiaspora executive director Sanjeev Joshipura said. While it is well documented that Indian-Americans are roughly one per cent of the US population and the highest-earning minority group in the US, a study conducted in 2018 by Indiaspora in collaboration with Dalberg found that the monetary giving potential of Indian-Americans is enormous — at over USD 3 billion dollars annually, Indiaspora said in a press release.

"ChaloGive was created to achieve that promise. Imagine what an impact such a growing and influential demographic can have," Indiaspora Philanthropy Initiatives Manager Gabrielle Trippe said. The study also found that there exists a "passion-donation gap", which means that the community does not necessarily give to those causes which it collectively claims to be most passionate about.

By highlighting over 20 organisations with successful track records in areas of poverty alleviation and empowerment, health, and education, ChaloGive allows the diaspora to find causes that they care about and to give to them. "We want to make the giving experience frictionless in order to effectively engage with online donors so that giving is not only easy but also strategic. The 21 beneficiary organisations for ChaloGive this year are a mix of small, medium-size and large non-profits with proven interventions and an ability to scale," Indiaspora community relations director Ashish Shah said.

'ChaloGive Ambassadors' include Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri and cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar.

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