There is something powerful about speaking in one’s own language and the ability of that language to convey our true emotions.
At Give, we were shooting a crowdfunding campaign on video with a nonprofit leader in Tamil Nadu. The initial idea was to have the interview in English. While the leader was talking about her nonprofit, Sharanalayam, and the need for funds, she kept complaining that she was not able to speak candidly in English and switched to Tamil. While speaking in Tamil, she was able to better recount the struggles of her nonprofit, as well as the children they work with, providing an honest, emotion-fueled account of how the nonprofit found these children in railway stations, temples, and dumps.
In the end, what we had was a story told with a lot of heart. The campaign featuring the nonprofit leader moved many people and the campaign received generous donations.
To us at Give, this demonstrated that people connect better when presented with a message in their own language. Encouraged by this success, we are now planning to expand our vernacular fundraising stories from the current 15–20 percent to 35–40 percent across our campaigns.
This is particularly important as digital crowdfunding for nonprofits in India is still considered to be at a nascent stage when compared to countries like the UK, Canada, and the US.
Despite India’s linguistic diversity, online fundraising is still dominated by Hindi and English.
And of the 1 billion internet users in India, a majority belong to Tier-II, Tier-III cities, and rural areas. Nearly 98 percent of them access content in Indic languages, with Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam leading the pack. Even in urban India, over half (57 percent) of internet users prefer to consume content in regional languages over English.
Despite India’s linguistic diversity, online fundraising is still dominated by Hindi and English. This focus is largely strategic. Online donors are typically assumed to be affluent, digitally connected Indians who are willing to support social causes and who overwhelmingly use English. Hindi, in turn, offers access to the country’s largest single-language audience, giving fundraisers scale that no other language can match. Together, these two languages offer the optimal balance: English targets high-earning urban donors, while Hindi unlocks mass reach across India’s heartland. But is this assumption correct? Are online fundraising organisations overlooking a powerful tool with which to engage audiences who speak other languages?
Adding regional identity matters
Another campaign based in Maharashtra highlights how acknowledging regional identity impacts crowdfunding. Manavlok, through its Trupti Kitchen programme, feeds abandoned elderly people in the villages of the drought-hit Marathwada region of Maharashtra. Although leaders spoke in Hindi during the digital campaign, the visuals in the reels and videos were mindful of local context and incorporated the traditional attire of the region. We also used the regional language, Marathi, extensively throughout the videos to create a deeper connection with the audience. The videos with more Marathi elements saw a significantly higher fundraising performance compared to the Hindi-only versions.
This suggests that content in regional languages is more engaging and builds a stronger connection with audiences that speak those languages.
The science of language
Language shapes how we process emotions. When we hear or read something in our mother tongue, it bypasses the translation layer in our brain. The connection is immediate and visceral.
A 2017 study by KPMG India and Google found that nearly 70 percent of Indians consider local language content more reliable than English content. When content appears in someone’s mother tongue, it bypasses scepticism and creates immediate trust. Ninety percent of Indian language users are more likely to respond to advertisements in their local language compared to English.
Since trust is the single biggest driver of donations, content in regional languages offers a powerful way to deepen it. For online fundraisers, the path forward requires strategic shifts grounded in research and technology:
- Lead with content that has been created and produced in local languages, not translated from English.
- Let emotions, idioms, and cultural references flow naturally, with English as supplementary material.
- Campaigns should demonstrate relatable scenarios such as a child in Kerala walking through monsoon rains to school, a farmer in Punjab during harvest season, or a street vendor in Kolkata at dawn.
- It is also important to use geo-targeted messaging that reflects local values. For instance, appeals in Gujarat may draw on ideas of seva and family, and themes of independence may perform better in metros or urban set ups.
Online crowdfunding campaigns need everything to align: the right story, the right voice, the right moment.
While comprehensive data on the success of crowdfunding campaigns in regional languages remains limited, early indicators are promising. Platforms report higher engagement rates for regional language content. For instance, impression and engagement rates for content (reels, statics, carousels) in Tamil, Bengali, or Marathi are higher on Give’s social media handles than in English, and in some cases, Hindi as well. Our donation patterns show that donors in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, as well as rural donors, respond more to appeals in local languages.
It should be noted that online crowdfunding campaigns need everything to align: the right story, the right voice, the right moment, the authenticity, emotional resonance, and even timing. One can have compelling visuals, regional appeal, and a worthy cause, but if even one element is off, the campaign may struggle. So, while building campaigns in regional languages, these considerations should not be overlooked.
A few challenges
Creating content in local languages requires a shift in strategy and resource allocation. Rather than deploying one or two Hindi- or English-speaking staff members across the country to document stories, organisations may have to invest in a network of regional teams that include videographers, interviewers, and content creators fluent in local languages, and who understand cultural nuances.
Even for post-production, resources may have to be set aside for translators and editors who can work across multiple vernacular languages for subtitling, voiceovers, and culturally appropriate adaptations.
Crowdfunding platforms operate to keep their cost-of-fundraising ratios low. Expanding language options or investing in localisation increases operational costs, including translation, platform maintenance, and user support. This creates a practical trade-off: Efforts to widen reach and inclusion often compete with the need to remain cost-efficient.
The road ahead
The future of Indian crowdfunding is multilingual. For those raising funds online, the message is simple. Audit your current fundraising communications. What percentage is in local languages? If the answer is ‘negligible’, you are leaving money, and more importantly, meaningful connections on the table.
—
Know more
- Read this report to know what motivates everyday givers in India.
- Read this e-book for a clear overview of how crowdfunding works and how it has evolved globally.
