Welcome to the Using Data and Research to Advance Everyday Giving in India (or UDARTA:EG) report, the first report of the GivingTuesday Data Commons, for and by Indian nonprofits.
At GivingTuesday, we’re all about everyday individual and collective giving, because we know that when people engage in acts of generosity, they’re contributing to building the future, leaving their communities better than they found them. We’ve seen how everyday giving serves as a powerful antidote to polarization, creating the social fabric that enables communities to address shared challenges together. And as we navigate unprecedented global challenges requiring broad-based community participation and support, understanding everyday giving is more important than ever.
This is especially critical in India, where the long-term resilience of our social sector depends on expanding beyond traditional institutional donor models. Engaging everyday givers remains challenging work, but we see that when nonprofits successfully engage everyday givers, they don’t just diversify funding, they build constituencies of invested community members who become active contributors to societal solutions. As India’s population seeks meaningful ways to participate in social progress, nonprofits that can effectively engage everyday givers as both donors and volunteers will be better positioned for sustainable impact.
And that’s exactly what we hope the UDARTA:EG report will help you do.
This study represents a truly unprecedented community-driven effort – by the community of Indian social sector actors. It was conceived after consultations with over 50 sector organizations, who collectively identified a key research gap – the need for a better understanding of nonprofit strategy and practice on everyday giving. Over the last two years, this research has been designed and delivered collaboratively by 13 organizations from across the sector, with input and guidance from many more.
Most important, though, is the generosity of over 300 participating nonprofit organizations and social sector experts who have openly shared their insights and learnings for this research. This study would not have been possible without them and their contributions to the collective wisdom and strength of India’s social sector.
We hope you’ll find the insights in this report valuable, and will use these findings to anchor your decision-making about everyday giving, and enhance your community engagement strategies. This action-oriented research offers practical insights that organizations can adapt to build stronger, more sustainable relationships with the communities they serve.
Priyanka Dutt
Chief Advisor India
GivingTuesday
Continue reading for an overview of the findings, followed by the Conclusion, Acknowledgements, and Appendix sections.
Deep dive into the data and insights on how nonprofits raise funds from everyday givers.
Topics include motivations, access channels, engagement and retention strategies, segmentation approaches, and challenges.
Deep dive into the data and insights on how nonprofits engage everyday volunteers.
Topics include motivations, access channels, selection processes, engagement and retention strategies, and challenges.
For a better experience, we recommend viewing this report on a desktop browser rather than a mobile device.
The UDARTA:EG study provides comprehensive insights into how Indian nonprofit organizations (NPOs) engage with everyday giving, including detailed analysis of strategies, challenges, and best practices. The findings have been organized and presented under three main sections:
While we encourage you to read the full report, different audiences may find certain sections more relevant to their work. Our suggestions:
When we think of philanthropic giving in India, images of large donations from wealthy philanthropists or corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives often come to mind. However, there exists a vast and largely untapped source of generosity that flows from ordinary citizens in their daily lives. This is everyday giving (EG).
Everyday giving refers to the contributions individuals make toward the well-being of others and the causes they care about. It encompasses the diverse ways in which community members, friends, and neighbors — individual citizens from all walks of life — give.
It includes both formal giving to nonprofit organizations and charitable institutions, as well as informal giving to individuals, families in need, or mutual aid networks within communities. In the context of giving to nonprofits, everyday giving encompasses:
This broader conception of giving recognizes that generosity can be practiced in small, accessible ways that both individually and collectively make a meaningful difference, enabling individuals from all backgrounds to participate in social change.
In the context of nonprofit organizations and social causes, everyday giving represents the financial and non-financial support that comes from regular people rather than institutional sources – not the funding that comes from CSR programs, philanthropic organizations, government grants, or major gifts from high- and ultra high-net-worth individuals (U/HNIs).
Everyday giving is fundamentally community-driven, personal, and often motivated by connection to a cause or people rather than formal philanthropic strategy. For nonprofits, this represents an opportunity to build broad-based support that is diverse in its forms, sustainable, and rooted in community.
India has deep-rooted cultural traditions of giving. According to the “World Giving Index 2024”1, India is among the top 30 most generous countries in the world and scores above the global average across many indicators of generosity2.
The “How India Gives 2020-2021” report by the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy showed that giving in India is deeply rooted in religious and social customs, with individuals frequently donating money, food, or goods as part of their faith-based practices. The vast majority (84%) of households participate in charitable activities with 70% of these contributions being informal and going to religious institutions and community causes3.
Encouragingly, formal giving is increasing. The rise of digital tools like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and crowdfunding platforms has expanded access to organized giving4. Sattva’s 2019 study, “Everyday Giving in India: Harnessing the Potential of a Billion Givers for Social Impact”, also affirms that digital platforms are facilitating small but recurring donations from individuals5. Though only 10% of the total amount donated by individuals (about INR 3,500 crore) is directed to nonprofits6, contributions from individuals already make up 30% of all non-government philanthropic donations in India7. This remarkable foundation of generosity represents an extraordinary opportunity.
According to the GivingTuesday “State of Generosity 2024” report, “any one type of generous participation can be a gateway to all types of generosity,”8 demonstrating how everyday giving goes beyond gifts of money to include generous gifts of goods, time, skills and voice. Nonprofits have a chance to nurture and amplify this momentum by creating more spaces and pathways through which people can continue to express their generosity, in all its forms.
Existing research on giving in India has largely focused on U/HNIs, family philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and grant-making foundations. Pioneering studies like CSIP’s “How India Gives 2020-2021 and 2021-2022” reports and Sattva’s 2019 “Everyday Giving in India: Harnessing the Potential of a Billion Givers for Social Impact” have provided valuable insights into the everyday giving market, laying the foundation for the sector’s understanding of this segment of givers. However, empirical research remains limited on how nonprofit organizations in India leverage monetary giving by everyday individuals.
Research on volunteering in India has primarily focused on two key areas: Corporate employee volunteering9,10, and specific demographic segments like youth11. While these studies offer useful benchmarks, they represent only part of the volunteering landscape. India’s vast and diverse population spans rural and urban communities, different age groups, professional backgrounds, and socioeconomic contexts, all of which can and do contribute their time, talent, and skills to nonprofits.
The next building block in growing everyday giving is to understand how nonprofits actually engage with everyday givers, what strategies work, where the challenges lie, and what fundraisers and volunteer managers need in order to grow everyday giving to their organizations and causes.
Using Data and Research to Advance Everyday Giving in India – UDARTA:EG – was designed to address this need. This collaborative study investigates how Indian nonprofit organizations currently leverage everyday giving with a specific focus on two key areas:
This research aims to provide empirical insights into the strategies employed by Indian NPOs, their effectiveness, and the challenges encountered in harnessing everyday giving.
By capturing insights directly from nonprofit organizations, this research seeks to identify patterns, best practices, and barriers, and provide actionable recommendations that Indian social sector practitioners can use to strengthen their engagement with everyday givers.
The GivingTuesday Data Commons (GTDC) is a global network striving to better understand and grow generosity around the world – especially from everyday givers. The Data Commons convenes learning communities, conducts collaborative research into giving-related behaviors, reveals trends in generosity and donations, and shares findings among its global community. With more than 180 data partners and 2,000 collaborators, GTDC provides to the social sector what the commercial sector has long benefitted from: Infrastructure to drive better data-driven decision-making, build a more resilient social sector, and accelerate equitable social innovation.
UDARTA:EG is the first project of the GivingTuesday Data Commons in India, emerging from extensive consultations with stakeholders from across the social sector between 2022 and 2023. These conversations identified key research priorities and built consensus around taking an action research approach that prioritizes sector practitioners as the primary end-users of insights.
Officially launched in 2023, UDARTA:EG was co-designed by a Core Group of social sector organizations representing nonprofits, intermediaries, research institutions, technology platforms, and funders. This collaborative has worked together for over a year to develop this first-of-its-kind study on everyday giving in India. A Working Group of over 50 social sector leaders committed to growing everyday giving across the country, has also convened at key points in the study’s development to share feedback and input. Through this collaborative approach to study design and implementation, UDARTA:EG seeks to bridge the research-to-action gap.
UDARTA:EG employed a mixed-methods research design, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The research design was developed by GivingTuesday in collaboration with the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP) and The 4th Wheel, with consultative input from the Core Group.
This section details what the data reveal about how nonprofits are currently engaging with everyday giving as a whole, followed by deep dives into fundraising (money and goods) and volunteer engagement (time, skills, and voice).
Our analysis used complementary metrics to identify effective everyday giving practices among study participants. For fundraising, we examined both the proportion of budget raised from everyday givers, and organizational ratings of worthwhileness. For volunteering, we analyzed volunteer counts alongside worthwhileness ratings, recognizing that unlike fundraising where higher numbers typically indicate better outcomes, more volunteers isn’t necessarily better – effectiveness depends on meaningful engagement rather than sheer numbers.
These paired indicators – quantitative outcomes (funds raised from everyday givers and volunteer count) coupled with organizational satisfaction (measured through the worthwhileness score) – are what identify which practices and strategies correlate with effective everyday giving engagement across different organizational contexts.
Far from being a niche strategy only suited to select organizations, everyday giving in its various forms is prevalent across the nonprofit sector.
The vast majority of respondents are engaging most with everyday giving in the form of time (86%) and skills (83%). This widespread adoption reflects how deeply volunteer engagement is embedded in Indian nonprofit operations, from community-led models to structured volunteer programs that have evolved significantly over the past decade. In the UDARTA:EG sample, the majority (70%) of nonprofits reported actively engaging everyday givers as volunteers in the past five years.
Financial giving follows closely, with 79% of NPOs reporting some level of engagement with monetary donations from everyday givers. However, only 37% of NPOs reported actively fundraising from everyday givers in the past five years. While most organizations receive financial contributions from everyday givers, not many have developed systematic approaches to cultivate and retain these givers.
Voice and goods are the most underutilized channels of everyday giving for nonprofits. These forms remain largely opportunistic rather than strategic.
Across all forms of giving, the majority of organizations operate on an “as needed” basis, rather than through planned, regular engagement.
This absence of strategic and planned approaches reflects broader organizational challenges. As experts explained, many nonprofits lack the dedicated staff and systems needed for consistent everyday giver engagement, with leadership often prioritizing larger institutional grants over building individual donor bases. “I’d rather go chasing after a ₹25 lakh project than ₹2,500 donations,” one expert observed, highlighting the resource allocation mindset that keeps everyday giving strategies underdeveloped.
Organizations successfully engaging everyday givers span the full spectrum of profiles, from grassroots community groups to established institutions, from rural to urban contexts, from direct service delivery to advocacy work.
Regression analyses examining how factors like organizational size, age, cause area, geographical location, operational model, and annual budget correlate with everyday giving engagement found no significant patterns or predictors.
This finding challenges the myth that everyday giving is only viable for certain types of organizations, for example, larger, older, more established nonprofits or those working on “popular” cause areas like education, health, or disaster relief that naturally resonate with everyday citizens. This belief can discourage smaller organizations, newer nonprofits, or those working on harder-to-quantify issues like behavior change or policy advocacy from investing in everyday giver strategies.
Any nonprofit can potentially build meaningful community support through everyday giving, regardless of its size, cause area, or operational characteristics.
Continue reading for the Conclusion, Acknowledgements, and Appendix sections
Deep dive into the data and insights on how nonprofits raise funds from everyday givers.
Topics include motivations, access channels, engagement and retention strategies, segmentation approaches, and challenges.
Deep dive into the data and insights on how nonprofits engage everyday volunteers.
Topics include motivations, access channels, selection processes, engagement and retention strategies, and challenges.
The value of everyday giving lies in building authentic community relationships that enhance both organizational sustainability and impact. This study shows that any nonprofit organization can access that vital support.
However, the most successful nonprofits don’t rely on a single tactic: They combine strategy, segmentation, outreach, and internal capacity building. Start where you are, build systematically, and track your results so you can iterate and improve.
The evidence points to specific approaches that consistently deliver specific types of results. No matter where you are in your everyday giving journey, there are tactics that could work for you.
If you are a nonprofit organization looking to increase the share of monetary giving by everyday givers to your overall budget:
If you are a nonprofit organization looking to build long-term support and increase the percentage of recurring monetary donors to your organization:
If you are a nonprofit organization looking to increase your volunteer count:
Ultimately, unlocking the full potential of everyday giving depends not just on choosing the right tactics, but on strengthening the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of nonprofit teams to apply them effectively. This study shows that success isn’t limited to large or well-resourced organizations. It comes from strategic thinking, consistent execution, and a willingness to build internal capabilities over time. Whether it is training, better use of data, smarter segmentation, or adopting simple digital tools, even small shifts in how teams approach fundraising and volunteer engagement can lead to significant organizational gains.
The opportunity for nonprofit leaders is clear: By equipping fundraising and volunteer management teams with the right skills and support, nonprofits can turn everyday giving into a reliable engine of both funding and community connection. This also presents a clear opportunity for funders and ecosystem enablers to step in – not just as financial supporters, but as partners in building long-term capability and skills.
By investing in fundraising training, enabling access to digital tools, supporting knowledge-sharing platforms, and backing strategic planning efforts, they can play a critical role in helping nonprofits move from ad-hoc outreach to sustained, community-driven giving. Strengthening these foundational parameters will allow more organizations to tap into the power of everyday givers, turning individual acts of generosity into lasting impact.
This study would not have been possible without the contributions of hundreds of collaborators who came together to create this resource.
We extend our deepest gratitude to:
The respondents
Hundreds of Indian nonprofit practitioners, including five subject matter experts, who generously shared their valuable time, experiences, and wisdom with us. Their candid insights, commitment to advancing everyday giving in India and their willingness to contribute to collective learning and sector strengthening have made this public resource a reality.
The Core Group of implementing organizations
Atma, ATE Chandra Foundation, Centre For Social Impact and Philanthropy (Ashoka University), Bhumi, Blue Ribbon Movement, ComMutiny, GivingTuesday, Giving Together Foundation, Ooloi Labs, Pratham Education Foundation, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, The 4th Wheel, Sattva Consulting.
This group co-designed and co-delivered this study from inception through completion between 2023 and 2025. Their dedication and commitment to this collective effort has been invaluable.
The Research Group
GivingTuesday who led the quantitative research design with initial input from the Centre For Social Impact and Philanthropy. The 4th Wheel who led the qualitative research. Pratham Education Foundation who facilitated engagement with nonprofit respondents; and Ooloi Labs who built and managed the technology platform on which these data were collected.
The authors
This report was written by Kavita Mathew and Ragini Menon with input from the GivingTuesday and The 4th Wheel teams.
The Outreach Partners
Bhumi, ComMutiny, Blue Ribbon Movement, ConnectFor, Danamojo, Sattva India Partner Network, and India Development Review for promoting the study within their networks and encouraging widespread participation from diverse nonprofits, making this study truly representative of India’s social sector.
The Working Group
For their valuable input on the study’s design. Over 50 organizations and sector experts attended working group convenings and shared insights and input that shaped the study’s focus, direction, and approach to disseminating findings for maximum sector impact.
Funding Partners
GivingTuesday for funding this study, and the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies Foundation for supporting the dissemination of this resource and recognizing the vital importance of turning research insights into actionable tools for practitioners.
The survey trial participants
Organizations who generously tested survey instruments and provided feedback that significantly improved the quality and clarity of our data collection approach.
The design team at Altr Collective
For their thoughtful creative work that transformed complex analysis into engaging and accessible designs, making these insights truly useful for busy nonprofit leaders.
Rajyashree Dutt
For her meticulous proofreading and copyediting of this report ahead of publication.
The GivingTuesday team – for input that has spanned myriad functions:
This study is a testament to what the Indian social sector can achieve when organizations unite around shared learning and collective impact.
Primary data were collected for this study using three tools:
For quantitative data collection, outreach partners from across the social sector promoted the study within their networks, and encouraged widespread participation from diverse organizations. Respondents opted into the study by responding to the Expression of Interest.
The 304 nonprofit organizations that made up the study’s sample represent diverse characteristics:
While this sample may not be statistically representative of India’s entire nonprofit sector, the substantial sample size and breadth of organizational characteristics provide a robust foundation for identifying meaningful patterns and trends. This diversity ensures that insights reflect experiences across different regional contexts, organizational maturity levels, funding scales, and programmatic approaches, offering valuable sector-level insights into the current state and future potential of everyday giving in India.
Sample representation
The study sample was drawn from organizations that voluntarily opted into research on everyday giving, likely resulting in higher engagement rates than would be observed across the broader Indian nonprofit sector. Organizations already interested in or practicing everyday giving were more likely to participate, potentially overrepresenting positive outcomes and underrepresenting barriers faced by the sector as a whole.
Geographic and linguistic constraints
Survey responses were collected in English, potentially limiting participation from organizations that operate predominantly in regional languages or serve primarily non-English speaking communities. This may have created geographic and operational biases in the sample composition.
Self-reported data limitations
All quantitative data on fundraising outcomes, volunteer numbers, and organizational characteristics relied on self-reporting by survey respondents. These figures were not independently verified and may be subject to recall bias, social desirability bias, or variations in how organizations define and track everyday giving metrics.
Definitional variations
While the study provided definitions for everyday giving forms, organizations may have interpreted and categorized volunteer activities, donor types, and engagement levels differently based on their operational contexts. This could affect comparability of responses across different organizational types and sizes.
Causality constraints
While statistical associations are identified throughout the analysis, the study design does not establish causal relationships between organizational practices and everyday giving outcomes. Observed correlations may reflect unmeasured variables, reverse causation, or other confounding factors not captured in the survey instrument.
Follow-up interview scope
Qualitative insights were gathered from a subset of purposively selected survey participants through follow-up interviews. The selection made may not fully represent the entire range of experiences and perspectives present in the broader sample of 304 organizations.
Temporal scope
The study captures organizational practices and outcomes at a specific point in time (early 2025) and relies on retrospective reporting for historical trends. Everyday giving strategies and effectiveness may vary significantly based on external factors, seasonal patterns, or organizational lifecycle stages not fully captured in this analysis.
1Charities Aid Foundation. (2024). World Giving Index 2024: Global Trends in Generosity. https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/inside-giving/wgi/wgi_2024_report.pdf ↩︎
2Charities Aid Foundation. (2025). World Giving Report. https://www.worldgivingreport.org/explore-the-data [India vs global average data comparison] ↩︎
3Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy. (2020). How India Gives 2020-2021. Ashoka University. https://csip.ashoka.edu.in/publications/how-india-gives/ ↩︎
4Bain & Company and Dasra. (2024). India Philanthropy Report 2024. https://www.bain.com/insights/india-philanthropy-report-2024/ ↩︎
5Sattva Consulting. (2019). Everyday Giving in India: Harnessing the Potential of a Billion Givers for Social Impact. https://rohininilekaniphilanthropies.org/report/everyday-giving-in-india-harnessing-the-potential-of-a-billion-givers-for-social-impact/ ↩︎
6Sattva Consulting. (2019). Everyday Giving in India: Harnessing the Potential of a Billion Givers for Social Impact. https://rohininilekaniphilanthropies.org/report/everyday-giving-in-india-harnessing-the-potential-of-a-billion-givers-for-social-impact/ ↩︎
7Bain & Company and Dasra. (2025). India Philanthropy Report 2025. https://www.bain.com/insights/india-philanthropy-report-2025/ ↩︎
8GivingTuesday. (2024). State of Generosity 2024. https://stateofgenerosity.givingtuesday.org/2024#trust ↩︎
9Goodera. (2024). India Corporate Volunteering Quotient 2024. https://www.goodera.com/ebook/india-corporate-volunteering-quotient ↩︎
10India Welfare Trust. (2023). Volunteering in 100 Top Companies in India. https://idronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Volunteering-in-100-Top-companies-in-India_Aug-2023_vF.pdf ↩︎
11United Nations Development Programme. (2017). State of Youth and Volunteerism in India. https://www.undp.org/india/publications/2017-state-youth-and-volunteerism-india
This report provides the most authoritative government-backed research on volunteering in India but is limited to youth volunteers and is now eight years old, highlighting the gap in comprehensive, current data on broader volunteer engagement across India’s nonprofit sector. ↩︎
12Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). High Net Worth Individual classification for Non-Institutional Investors. https://www.sebi.gov.in ↩︎
13Given that our sample was drawn from organizations that opted into a study on everyday giving, engagement rates in our data likely reflect higher participation than across the broader sector, though the patterns and insights remain valuable for understanding current practices. ↩︎
