Please tell me more about the 9.1% that GiveIndia retains.

GiveIndia retains 9.1% in order to meet to provide you with the high quality support you have come to expect when transacting through GiveIndia. By taking this donation, we are reducing our dependence on grants and increasing the chances that we will be around for a lot longer to serve donors, NGOs and beneficiaries.

GiveIndia lets you donate with confidence because we have spent resources on due diligence and on obtaining and processing feedback reports. We're confident that our donors recognize this. We have this donation in place across all of our modes of fundraising. Here are the primary two explained in more detail:

Payroll Giving: Since the inception of the Payroll Giving programme in 2002, participating companies have made this donation of 9.1% to GiveIndia. This has led to the companies taking greater ownership of the programme and to employees feeling that their company is a good corporate citizen.

Regular online donations: Ever since GiveIndia started in 2000, there has been a cost to online donations. Till June 1, 2008 we subsidised these costs with a grant from ICICI Bank. However with our plans to scale up the volumes of online donations in the coming years, we are forced to retain a small part of the donation from our customers. So as of June 1, 2008, we will retain 9.1% of what online donors contribute.

GiveIndia believes that you, the donor, would be much more concerned about our cost of fundraising than a grantmaking organisation, and this concern will force us to be efficient.

Consider 2 examples, Intermediary1 that spends 10% on fundraising and deducts this from the donation, and Intermediary2 that spends 25% on fundraising, but deducts only 5% from the donation, getting the balance 20% from some grantmaking agency.

While Intermediary1 is actually the more efficient organisation, donors may tend to support Intermediary2 because less of their money is spent on fundraising. Grantmaking agencies are typically far less demanding than individual donors and there will be no pressure to reduce fundraising costs much below the 20-25% level.