Inside India's invite-only club for megadonors

An invite-only family philanthropy network from India pledges to raise $1 billion annually for global development causes when it launches next month and could open the door for the ultra-wealthy to give more as the gulf widens further with the country’s poorest. Venture philanthropy fund Dasra recently unveiled plans to establish GivingPi, “India’s first and exclusive family network focused on growing the philanthropy circle for a transformed India,” it said on a website that went live last week. GivingPi aims to raise $1 billion for social causes annually by 2030. Members will be required to contribute a minimum of $64,000 annually — directly to NGOs, via their foundations, or an intermediary such as a collaborative fund — to accelerate progress on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Helping India achieve the SDGs by 2030 is a top priority for Dasra, founded in 1999 by couple Neera Nundy and Deval Sanghavi, who both previously worked in investment banking in the United States before moving to India to focus on philanthropy. The philanthropic fund facilitates investments in “early-stage nonprofits” and provides advisory services to donors on how best to spend their money. The U.S. Agency for International Development is listed among organizations that have partnered with Dasra. The initiative is also being spearheaded by other prominent Indian philanthropists such as the Premji family, which operates IT tech giant Wipro Limited. The company’s founder Azim Premji, worth an estimated $25.7 billion, also runs his own education-focused foundation. Writer and philanthropist Rohini Nilekani also is a GivingPi member. She began the Arghyam Foundation, which addresses water and sanitation issues, and chaired the organization before stepping down last year. The GivingPi network is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Skoll Foundation, Shibani Gosain, a communications manager for Dasra, told Devex. Dasra has received more than $3 million in grants from the Gates Foundation between 2017 and April of this year. The network’s focus on family philanthropy is driven by an increase in the number of wealthy Indians, she said. “India has a lot of [wealthy] families and, of late, we have first-generation tech entrepreneurs who have made a lot of money and are looking to really invest in causes which were essentially overlooked,” Gosain said, adding that mental health was an area drawing attention from emerging philanthropists. India currently has 113 billionaires and 6,884 “ultra high-net-worth individuals,” according to data provided by GivingPi. The number of high-net-worth people is expected to grow to 12,000 in the next five years. “Unlocking the philanthropic capital of this cohort would put India on a new growth trajectory, resulting in a transformed, inclusive nation,” according to a GivingPi statement. The already immense gap between India’s poor and its top 1% was further widened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed more than 200 million Indians into poverty, according to a joint report from Dasra and Bain & Company consulting firm. A 12% social sector funding increase, largely driven by the government, over the past five years, is not sufficient to address India’s development challenges, the report said. India “needs to funnel approximately 13% of its [gross domestic product] into social causes—the current average is about 7%—to achieve its United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) commitments by 2030,” it notes. The GivingPi network will officially launch on Aug. 6 in New Delhi with a “small dinner,” Gosain said. Ahead of the event, Dasra is “actively reaching out” to philanthropists it has worked with in the past and others to drum up support for the initiative. So far, it has received commitments from roughly 40 donors, Gosain said. The goal is to push that to 75 by Aug. 15, when India celebrates its 75th independence day. Ultimately, the network aims to have at least 5,000 by 2030, according to GivingPi’s website. GivingPi’s launch is “exciting” and could be beneficial in propelling more giving from the Indian diaspora as well, said Manisha Bharti, who heads the U.S. arm of India’s Pratham Education Foundation. “It’s been a long time coming to see our community organize itself,” she said. “What they’re doing is going to mobilize, is going to inspire, is going to create that network where people can learn from one another.” Bharti, who previously served as a consultant for the Gates Foundation in Andhra Pradesh, New Delhi, and Mumbai, said Dasra’s knowledge of India’s “landscape” coupled with the policy and advocacy expertise of the Gates and Skoll Foundations should position the network for success. “Their goals are incredibly ambitious, but it’s less than $1 per person in terms of what they’re looking to raise,” she said. “And I’m just excited to see what it can and will do.”