Category Archives: Thought Process

Venturing into social media

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Having been involved in SIFI since its genesis a few months ago, I have had the first hand experience of witnessing its progress. Our model is simple – to collect funds from individuals, pool it and direct it to NGOs in need of funds.

During the course of these months, the team has been confronted by many questions – why not approach corporate organizations or companies for money who may contribute as a part of their CSR initiative? Is SIFI going to direct the collected funds only to NGOs or also to individuals who are in need of funds? How does SIFI ensure the credibility of NGOs and ensure that the money goes towards the best cause that yields maximum positive social impact? However, one of the biggest questions that have been debated by the team – social media : to do or not to do?

In the initial stages, the progress was slow as the team used personal contacts to get funds in. But soon almost everyone on our close network was aware of SIFI and a few contributed to the cause. Given the question of growth and sustainability, it became imperative to reach out to a larger market. That’s when the debate of venturing into social media arose for the first time. The team was divided on opinion.

As the youngest in the 7 member team, I was eager to use social media such as Facebook to publicise our cause. I believed that, with this, things start rolling and results are achieved faster. After many rounds of thought provoking and challenging questions thrown at me, we negotiated and decided to use it for the short term. And thus, our Facebook page for Vision Ventilator was born.

As a tweak from the original features of a Facebook Page, this page will exist only until 31stMarch 2012 – the deadline for SIFI to raise INR 2,50,000 to donate a ventilator to the Chengelpet Government Hospital. Being admin of the page is both challenging and overwhelming. I learn a lot by searching for content for regular updates on the page – about world affairs, people’s attitudes, resource management etc. It is satisfying to note that in 10 days nearly 65 people have liked the page, with just as many talking about it. However, it gets tougher from here on as it must stand the test of time. It must fulfill the purpose of spreading awareness of SIFI and its activities and enable raising funds.

The ideological shift in allowing flexibility to create and manage SIFI’s social media relations has paved way for all of us to be more open to change. Ideas that were previously not taken too seriously like printing tee shirts, banners in events etc are resurfacing. A measured outcome is the impending photo-walk as a fundraising event for Vision Ventilator.

Personally, I find it enjoyable to be the face of SIFI – posting and updating details of our activities and connecting with a bunch of people who relate with and support our cause. It gives me a purpose to wake up everyday and a reason to look forward to being proactive and passionate about everything I do.

Swetha Viswanathan

India Urban Conference

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I was privileged to attend the India Urban Conference in the Infosys Campus at Mysore, Karnataka, India. The theme for the conference was ‘Evidence & Experience’. It was required that every anchor organization conducted sessions on their sector of expertise.

Let us begin with some facts here, by 2030, 60% of the World’s population is projected to be in Urban areas. In India, estimates suggest we would have over 40% of the population in urban areas. Find below a snap-shot taken from a McKinsey report on Urban settlement.

Cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore & Pune will be economically bigger than countries like Malaysia, Portugal, Columbia etc. Read McK report here.

{Interesting fact: India will have 68 cities with a population of more than a million by 2030, 63 cities have been recommended in the “multi-brand” FDI retail Bill. Contrary to the government’s claim of ‘JUST’ 63 cities }

The anchors were Pratham (Education), Janaagraha (Governance), IIHS(settlements), PHFI (Health), Arghyam (Water), IFMR (Finance), Dronah (Culture), IUSF/SPA (Planning)

As the sessions happened in-parallel, i was able to attend Deep-Dives (as it was called) of Pratham & IFMR.

DAY 1 : Thursday Nov 17th, 2011 – Field Visit
Pratham kicked off with field-visit to one of the urban settlements in Mysore. We conducted a survey in Kurubarahalli, Siddhartha Layout. Door-to-Door through the help of mobile phones. It was great to interact with the kids when you don’t speak their native language.
Door to Door in Kurubarahalli layout

Learnings

  • The smallest block in Urban India is no longer a ‘Ward’.
  • ‘Low-cost Private schools’ are no better
  • Urban areas with income diversity are tough to work with

DAY 2 : Friday Nov 18th, 2011 – Pratham on Education

In a session moderated by Mr.Subir Shukla (blog), we discussed on ‘what the learning outcomes are’ in the context of RTE. 3R’s are the all to learning? In school days I never valued ‘Moral education’ classes because there was no focus on outcomes.Apart from measuring ‘Letter, Para, Division’, what other things should we measure?

Subir Shukla moderating the session by Pratham

The final session for the day was ‘Sharing Data: Strategies and platform for Data Access’.  I was pleased to meet one of my seniors from NIT Calicut working on Accountability Initiative.

Have you ever wondered what CESS is? Read their Gov Budget spending on SSA here.

It is really interesting to see government data being projected in a ‘BETTER’ form as compared to the DISE data which is horrendous.

Learnings

  •  Data is never ready. Present the data you have
  • Keep it simple.
  • Story should go along with the data. Easy to understand.

BUT, there is plenty of data to show that the situation is bad. So, a lot of implementers do not fancy ‘Data’ folks especially in development.

DAY 3 : Saturday Nov 19th, 2011 – IFMR on Finance

IFMR sessions were REALLY interesting. In one of the sessions by Mr.Harvey Koh,who specializes on Impact measurement, I learnt how the Monitor Group is working on disbursing loans to people with salaries of Rs.10,000-15,000.

The final session which I attended, was by Mr.Vikram Kapur an IAS officer from Tamil Nadu, India. He spoke about financing local/municipal government through a Municipal bond market. He presented a concept of moving away from grant by Central to State or State to Local government to ‘Public Funds’.

Ensures

  •  Completion of the project on tim
  • Governments need not wait for ‘Grants’ for every project.

Look through this entire presentation here The default rate has been ‘NIL’ in his experience. NIL!!

What are you trying to say?

Rural development planning in India is extremely strong compared to Urban development. In my visits, I have found staying in villages more comfortable. Though the quality of education & health should improve, I find governance largely better in villages than it is in cities.

The lowest percentage of voting from any ward in the last Tamil Nadu State Assembly Elections was from T.Nagar, Chennai at 63%. Chennai polled at a measly 66% compared to Karur at over 85%.  Most of us treat cities like villages and adopt a wrong model for development. NGO’s & government alike.

SIFI is an organization based out of Chennai.  It is important for us to understand the approach NGO’s take in their respective area of work. Increasingly, we would try short-listing NGO’s that specialize in Urban Development especially working with Citizens & communities as Tamil Nadu & India become more urbanized than ever.

How does SIFI as a team work?

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How does SIFI as a team work? A lot of people, including my parents and relatives, have asked me this question. So here’s an approximate answer to your question people.

I hate to call SIFI a volunteer driven NGO at this point of time. But at the same time, we are not a full time NGO either. So how is that we work? get work done? and what is that we do as a team??

SIFI is a six member team presently (yes! click here) of which five of us reside very much in Chennai, India. Though primarily our work is around getting in new donors and in turn ching ching ($), there are lot many activities that happen in the back end – such as…

  • identifying list of potential NGOs
  • field visits of these NGOs + reporting
  • liaising with our beneficiary NGOs – keeping track of their progress and our money spent on them
  • reaching back to donors on how their money has been spent
  • preparing and sending out newsletters
  • brainstorming on marketing ideas
  • calling up and reaching out to potential donors
  • many admin works – printing receipts for money received, mailing to donors etc.
  • meeting new team members (in-progress)

Considering the massive amount of work involved, and the fact that we are not full time, we decided that the best way to get all work done is to have WORK-MEETINGS (Venky coined this term!) –  sit at one place on a sunday (once a week / fortnight), get work done + lunch + gossips: – yes, sounds very much like a corporate office set up, but just that we have a lot of fun when we work, we don’t have strict work-space and we work only for 3 hrs a week! :D and obviously, we get our work done!

We tried this model on Sunday… Not sure if it is sustainable but sure it works and (worked), and now I sign off with the dream and hope that we are able to do this full time tomorrow with an established (but darn cool) office! yay! 

- Sriram Sabhapathy; December 09, 2011

On why we do, what we do, the way we do….

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I have never known how it feels to go to bed hungry. I have always gone to the best doctors at the slightest trace of common cold. Having been showered with quality education, well-informed friends & well-off parents, I was better equipped to harness the available resources. I am sure it is applicable for most of us reading this blog.

I have always attended Independence Day celebrations since I was a kid. I love the tricolour going up and saluting it. But, I willfully accept that our country needs to get better, at least now. Our country still has large sections of people who are left out of the system. In Tamizh, it is described beautifully by the word ‘Odukkapattavargal’.

In the last year, I have visited Adi-Dravida-Welfare villages which lie largely untouched, villages, where communities are still played against each other. I regularly witness Dalit communities being sidelined not by politicians or the government but by common people, hospitals over-crowded with patients, who have illnesses which need better treatment, children not having a good atmosphere neither to revise their lessons nor to play football with their friends. I remember how emotional I became during a presentation in Bangalore, where I was told about Maha-Dalits in Bihar. They live on dead bodies &  Dalits shy away from them.

Although, SIFI’s inspiration is largely sentimental, we understand that being efficient & doing ‘good’ need to go hand-in-hand. Our vision is to create impact that is long-lasting & self-sustaining.

I believe temporary-change is worse than no-change. Usually, in villages, children drop-out in 10th standard. By getting them to 11th or 12th, where she/he drops-out again, is a worse-of scenario. An extra year has just resulted in opportunity cost for her rather than creating any significant change in her life. In corporate lingo, ‘strive to take things to its logical conclusion’ or ‘complete the cycle’. Long-lasting impact means, to be there until measurable & permanent changes are created.

Self-sustaining systems ensure long-lasting results. With a regular initial investment from SIFI, if these organizations can slowly bring down their dependency on external funding, they would be called self-sustaining. If you are accountable to your own growth & performance, it leads to better results.

Thus, we strongly believe in quantifying results & focusing on metrics. Organizations tracking their output tend to perform better than others who do not, given similar cash-flows & sector of operation. Not only will we help to pick an organization over another, but SIFI also aims to shape Indian social philanthropy scene where funding is not data-driven.

To summarize, SIFI has a passion to create social impact. All else is done for that.

It has been a very serious read so far, so let me provide you a final summary. We carry the essence of a Shankar movie, which is very good at heart, but we are also a Francis Ford Coppola movie with attention to minute detailing, giving the desired effect on people.

SIFI

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The Social Investment Foundation of India (SIFI) was registered as a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) registered as a Trust under the Indian Trusts Act 1882.

SIFI’s vision is to establish a system for efficient flow of funds, resources and information; governed by a positive value system that promotes responsible citizenship and socioeconomic development.

SIFI primarily caters to the needs of NGOs working at grass roots level through three ways – funding, awareness and advisory. By partnering with NGOs and networking with people across the city, SIFI attempts to fund these NGOs by accepting donations from individuals and organizations.

Please feel free to share your thoughts. We require your support through funding and volunteering. If you want to be a part of SIFI, do mail us at mailsifi@gmail.com.