Philanthropy & CSR: Funding by individual philanthropists increased by 42 percent from INR 21,000 crore in financial year (FY) 2019 to INR 30,000 crore in FY 2020. According to the India Philanthropy Report 2021, co-created by Bain & Company and Dasra, the bulk of this increase came from family philanthropists whose contributions nearly tripled over the year to INR 12,000 crore in 2020.
In FY 2020, private-sector funding—which stems from four sources including foreign, corporate, retail, and high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) or families—totalled INR 64,000 crore, and 20 percent of this came from family philanthropy. Nearly 47 percent of family giving went to education and 27 percent went to healthcare, while rural development received just four percent.
Foreign funding—especially post amendments to the Foreign Contribution Rules Act (FCRA) in 2020—has shown no growth at INR 16,000 crore; its share of overall funding falling from 31 percent in FY19 to 25 percent in FY20. In the case of corporate social responsibility (CSR), at INR 18,000 crore, the share of domestic companies in total private philanthropy declined by a percentage point to 28 percent.
The report also points out that the corpus available for CSR is likely to decline by five percent following a reduction in profits earned by corporates due to COVID-19. What will compound this situation is the shift in CSR money moving away from traditional nonprofits to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES) Fund. Between 2014 and 2019 CSR giving had grown by 17 percent.
Read this study that offers big philanthropy a framework to understand the risks and unintended consequences of their funding decisions.
