The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : When the giving hand becomes a tight fist

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Saturday, Dec 27, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

When the giving hand becomes a tight fist

Deepika Arwind

NGOs fear future projects may be
in jeopardy
Many projects have been put
on hold

Bangalore: At a time when those dependent on the kindness of others need help most, they are preparing themselves to tighten their belt a couple of notches. Even as corporations — national and international — have clamped a freeze on recruitments and pay and laid off employees, they are also curtailing their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, which has impacted many projects of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

At The Association for People with Disability (APD), an education project costing Rs. 7 lakh to Rs. 8 lakh has been cancelled. “The company sponsoring the project wrote to us saying they could no longer go ahead with it,” said V.S. Basavaraj, Director, APD.

APD’s other programmes, such as call centre training for the disabled, while not shelved by companies, have been postponed. “We are able to raise materials because individuals and small stores are willing to help, but financial resources are definitely in a dicey position,” he added.

The recent walk-a-thon organised by the Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled had many corporate sponsors, and while this annual event — taking place for the fourth time — received a good response, Managing Trustee, Mahantesh G.K. admitted that some sponsors did pull out towards the end.

“A few companies could not support us,” he said, adding that many companies who have been supporting the Trust continue to do so. “A few post-dated cheques could not be cashed by us as the companies told us to hold back on them for now,” he says.

Though the situation is not bleak insofar as current projects are concerned, many NGOs fear that their future projects might be in jeopardy in the wake of this trend.

“Companies who were in talks with us to affiliate themselves with us are thinking of holding back due to a crunch in resources,” said Edward Thomas, Director, Banaglore Onyavara Seva Coota (BOSCO). He added that some “very good projects” initiated by BOSCO are on hold because they cannot find enough sponsors at this moment.

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) is a non-profit organisation largely funded by corporate initiatives — but older foundations, which have not cut back on any sort of funding.

“Many new U.S.-based multinationals are not accepting new proposals as of now,” said Gladwyn Joseph, Director ATREE. “We are expecting to face a bit of a problem as our organisation is entirely donor-driven,” he said. “May be this is also because the environmental portfolio is not on top of the list of corporate initiatives as of now.” Nonetheless, Mr. Joseph is quite optimistic about getting through this anticipated rough patch.

Companies like Mphasis who are proactive in the fields of disability and rural education, said they have not yet cut back on their programmes with NGOs. “We think this is a time when we our social responsibility increases,” said Meenu Bhambani, Manager, Community Initiative, Mphasis.

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