Donors race to aid India during COVID-19 surge
The catastrophic wave of Covid-19 in India has prompted donors to send millions of dollars to the country, which Tuesday crossed the grim mark of more than 20 million cases of the killer disease
May 5, 2021, 5:30 PM
7 min read
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articleFamily members perform last rites of a person who died of COVID-19 as funeral pyres of other victims burn at an open crematorium set up at a granite quarry on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India, Wednesday, May 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
The catastrophic wave of Covid-19 in India has prompted donors to send millions of dollars to the country, which Tuesday crossed the grim mark of more than 20 million cases of the killer disease.
“The situation is desperate,” says Ashish Shah, senior director for philanthropy and community engagement at Indiaspora, a global network of people of Indian origin who work for social change. “We need to get the funds and deploy them because after a month, it’ll be too late.”
During the last week of April, Indiaspora reactivated its ChaloGive website. “Chalo” means “let’s go” in Hindi. In April of 2020, donors gave nearly $1.2 million through the site to several organizations vetted by Indiaspora. The group had planned to have a giving month later this year, but decided to do it sooner because of the deteriorating situation in India.
Over the past two months, Indiaspora members heard directly from family and friends in India about the unfolding humanitarian crisis. The organization started receiving unsolicited donations as the situation became more dire. To respond quickly, Indiaspora relaunched the site early. Within two days, more than $1 million in donations rolled in.
The site allows donors to give to a slate of nonprofits working to construct makeshift hospitals and health centers, provide food and direct services, or give cash grants to individuals. Shah says the vast majority of donors have chosen an option provided by Indiaspora to spread their gift out among all three areas.
“We knew that the community was ready,” Shah says. “We knew that there was no time to wait till later in the year.”
Large institutional grant makers, family foundations, and rich donors have expressed an interest in providing emergency relief to India over the past week, says Regine Webster, vice president at the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. Webster expects initial findings on the volume of COVID-related giving to organizations working in India to be available this week.
Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, added a $10 million match to his previous commitment to GiveIndia to procure much-needed oxygen equipment and encourage others to give. The Rockefeller Foundation last week approved $3.5 million in grants to help expand coronavirus testing and tracing and support emergency medical relief. That figure is on top of the $10 million Rockefeller previously committed in pandemic response in India.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation has seen a growing interest among its donors to support pandemic relief in India. Last fall, the Indian government placed restrictions on international giving to organizations in the country. Since then, the community foundation has directed interested donors to organizations that have successfully navigated the rules and delivered assistance where it is needed, according to Chau Vuong, a spokeswoman for the grant maker. She cited CARE and the American India Foundation as examples. In late April, a donor, whom Vuong declined to identify, gave $3 million to the American India Foundation.
Smaller donors have also been active. Texas philanthropists Raj and Aradhana Asava on April 29 offered to match up to $25,000 in donations to support pandemic relief in their native India. So far, the couple, who have long given to programs in India but more recently emphasized the need to support U.S. food banks, have raised about $10,000.
”(We’re) very confident we will blow past the goal,” Raj Asava wrote in an email.
