Charity vs Social Lending

Hello all..

I was looking at more options on how and where we all as team can contribute. There seem to be too many directions we can take and none less significant than the other.

I talked about Micro Financing in my last post and was researching more on what that channel brings us and if it were to be an effective tool.

That led me to "Charity vs Social Lending".

'Social Lending' concept is fundamentally against our wishful thinking of NOT making money out of a noble cause. But it did bring in few interesting angles to look at - Accountability and - Responsibility of the tasks/actions we intend to perform; how will this sustain over the long term. ( Please read my Matt Damon post few weeks back on what he does on these issues)

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/new-micro-lending-model-by-a-former-infosys-employee/1/16820.html

Its been difficult for us lately to identify the right recipients. Ideally we want to become an organization (or  look for one mean while) where you can interact with the person you want to work with and help them direct.
There are few organizations (http://www.kiva.org/) which does that but unfortunately our RBI has some stringent rules where in India is not listed as country they can support.

I ran into http://www.micrograam.com/ which provides us the same interface as we talked about earlier but at a fee. We can waive our profits for the loans we give but there still would be some money these NGO's will make on the interests paid back from the recipients.

Thought i will share this with you and see how you all feel about it. We need to diversify our efforts as well until we find something close to heart and are very comfortable doing it all the time.

More later.

Interesting article opening up few more ideas!

"Your life should be about finding the intersection of the world's greatest need and your greatest passion"

Hello all..


Hopefully you guys had time to think more about how we want to proceed with "Our-Share". I couldn't spend as much as i wanted to.


I was searching through the web to identify on what all kinds of NGO's we have out there in India and how can we establish an official charity down the lane when we all decide on it.


During this process, i recalled watching a program over a year ago about Matt Damon and his efforts to provide clean water and sanitation (water.org) for the under privileged in places like Africa and India.


I came across a latest article on Fast Company and its very informative and opened up few new ideas ( Micro Financing, how its helps sustain the initial effort from an aid agency) something i am very interested to learn more about for future.

Please take few mins to read through it
"http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/157/can-this-man-save-this-girl"


Another FYI links about NGO's listings in India
http://www.ngoinindia.org/


Will keep you updated on anything i new i can find and please you do the same to share any new ideas we all can assimilate and then try to implement


Regards,
@panthula

Howdy my friends..

Hi Friends..

Been a while we talked and looked into our "Our Share" effort. I understand we have a meeting coming up some time next week to look into options on how we can contribute effectively with minimal resources we have.

Sad but this True, I haven't come up with anything concrete to share YET. You may ask why write this blog now

I was watching CNN "Nepal's Stolen Children" tonight and it reminded be of our shared vision and what we all set to achieve and we still are figuring it out. We all don't want this blog to be idle for too long to exchange ideas; any ideas.

I understand all of us have busy and hectic schedules, to get out of that monotonous routine, i plan to write something every week (as minor as it may be) other than my personal life and work but more of what i learned over that time and what is going through my head.

I know for a fact you my friends have good to great ideas as i see them through your emails on a regular basis. Lets put them in words in this format so we collect them, as diverse as they might seem today, they still are ours and i firmly believe, they will lead us to what we set to achieve in this "Our Share" effort.

BTW: @panthula is my twitter account and i plan to tweet fun to crazy news/bits/links i come across to my friends.

Regards,
Sandeep

P.S:  'AUTONOMY', 'MASTERY' & 'PURPOSE' are three motivational elements for an individuals "DRIVE" - Daniel Pink

Data; Mindset - How and where do they intersect

Hey Guys.


I recently found and interesting article about how data can be used for betterment and how mindset needs to be changed to effectively use it.


(http://thinkquarterly.co.uk/#articles there's a downloadable copy as well)


I understand this blog might not be the best location for the content i am posting but figured on a bigger picture this has relevance to what we are trying to achieve and a different perspective of things wouldn't hurt us if we agree or disagree with it.


Regards
-ESPY

Account Log Update

Here is an update to the account log. (see attached image)
We still have to find out a resource or a way for our contribution. Like I mentioned before, here are few ideas -

1) donate lump-sum to an already established charity organization for them to expand their footprint

2) monthly contributions to established charity organizations - may be identify a few

3) we wait until we have enough money to start our own organization - this could be one long-term plan

Please let me know your thoughts.

Guys, since we have been collecting money for a couple of months now, I think it's time we have an action plan. Here is my 2 cents.. Please edit the same post with a different color and put your initials under each bullet if you have any comments/corrections.

• Our monthly contributions sum up to approximately $350.
• We will put Dec, Jan and Feb funds in our emergency fund.
• Come March 1st, we will have about a grand in our Emergency fund.
• We will start our chaity services from March'11.
• To start with, we will use $275 for charity and rest (??) will go towards emergency fund.
• AB to talk to uncle and let us know about our options - what are our choices and what we can do with $275.

Account Log

While we are waiting to create our Expense log, I quickly created an excel sheet to keep track of the money. Row 1 has our Initials and Column 1 has Months. Column 3 is to tell to which person's a/c money was transferred. The way I read it is, SP contributed $100 in Dec and transferred the money to UM's a/c. Until we figure out a better way, please copy paste the table below into paint, edit the amount or/and the intials of the person you are transferring to and paste it back, when there is a change.

Funds



UM	$400
AB	$60
SP
BA
TA
Total	$460

Welcome and Thank you!

As you guys have stated in your posts, what a great way to start the new year. I am so happy and thankful for having like-minded friends, so good to see the excitement in coming forward and joining hands to help the needy. I wish us all good luck!

Looking forward to see some great work this year and in years to come.

Mission-Vision-Values

My 2 cents..

· Mission

o “Our-Share” is a non-profit group aiming to serve the children in need for basic schooling and fees for higher education schooling (and housing?), elders with finances to address their medical needs.

o Volunteers will be used to serve the purpose and run the organization on ground level to reach out to the people in need.

o We aim to improve the quality of life for the young and elderly who are most vulnerable at their respective phases in their lifes.

· Vision

o To create an environment in local communities all over INDIA and around the world where every child gets the basic education they need and all individuals irrespective of their social & economic status can get the medical attention/services they need

· Values

o Our purpose is to improve the quality of the children’s life who will shape the future for the betterment and also not to forget the generous past that put us on the map and need our help.

o We all are committed with a purpose and promise to serve our goals with passion and empathy.

These don’t have to be the headers of the page but need to be listed somewhere on blog to refer when we need them ( I will work on the location)

Also, lets add/edit anything specific we need in the MISSION section. That will be our guiding light to refer back on to track when we start sway away due to external influences..

Welcome!!

Awesome.. looks great. Welcome aboard everyone...and a Happy New Year.

What a great way to start this year with a good thought of extending our support as much as we can. I am all excited on our new venture. I wish all of us a very good luck and wish success in our endeavor. I truly hope by this time next year "Our Share" will abide by its mission to contribute as much as possible to help the needy.

Best wishes all.

Welcome to OUR-SHARE

Happy New Year Everyone..

Hope you guys are settling back at work. I personally am very excited about this mini venture we all took up on starting this new year. I would like to thank UDM for the initiation and the rest of you to successfully support this endeavor.

I am in process of setting the blog to make sure it is more in-tune to what we want to do and how we all want get things to be done.Please login in to your accounts (separate email invite sent out to personal address) and check for any connectivity issues.

This is an collective effort and we all would certainly gain from each others perspective to align our goals and focus more on the mission.

tons of work to do.. all and any ideas are welcome.. we want this to be a good sounding board and capture all and any ideas that come like a flash in the pan for a minute or so before we start to forget them..

i am positive you all are excited or even more than i am ..

My favorite line of the day
"Attitude is Important; So a pick a good one!!"