Questions
Fifteen straight
answers
Including the one about the new tax regime that most donation pages leave out, and the one about what we have got wrong.
Where the money goes
How much of my donation actually reaches a child?
Eighty-four paise in the rupee. The other sixteen are nine paise of running the trust — office, accounts, the statutory audit, compliance filings — and seven paise of raising the next rupee, which includes this website. We would rather print the number than a claim that it is a hundred. Any charity telling you every rupee reaches the field is either paying its overheads out of a donation it has not told you about, or it is not being audited.
Can I say what my money is spent on?
Yes, at the giving tiers and above, and we will hold you to it in the report. But we will also say this plainly: unrestricted money is worth more to us than restricted money. Rent, the audit and a teacher's salary in July are the things that keep a centre open, and they are the things nobody wants their name on.
Where can I see the accounts?
On the accounts page of this site: the audited accounts and the annual report for every year since we started, in full, including the years we did badly. The 2023–24 report says on its own first page that our overheads hit twenty per cent because we moved office twice.
Tax & receipts
Does 80G work under the new tax regime?
No, and this is the part most donation pages leave out. Section 80G is not available if you file under the new regime of section 115BAC, which is now the default. Only a few centrally-notified funds — PM CARES, the National Defence Fund and similar — survive there, and we are not one of them. If you are on the new regime you will save nothing in tax by giving to us. Give anyway or do not, but do it with the real number in front of you. We are not tax advisers; please check with yours.
Is my donation tax deductible?
Under section 80G, yes — fifty per cent of what you give is deductible, and the total of such donations is itself capped at ten per cent of your adjusted gross total income. A deduction reduces your taxable income; it is not a refund, so what you actually save is that deduction multiplied by your own marginal tax rate.
Can I donate in cash?
You can, but anything over two thousand rupees in cash is not deductible under 80G, no matter what receipt we give you. Above that, use a bank transfer or UPI so the deduction survives.
I live abroad. Can I donate?
Not to us, and please do not try. We are not registered under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, so accepting a donation from outside India — including from an NRI holding a foreign passport — would be an offence for us, not for you. If you want to give in India, ask a relative here to give in their own name and their own PAN.
When do I get my receipt?
By email within forty-eight hours, with our 80G approval number and PAN on it. We also file the annual statement of donations with the income tax department, which is what makes the deduction actually stick when you file — a receipt alone no longer does.
Getting involved
We are a company. Can we route CSR spend to you?
Yes. We are registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs under Form CSR-1, which is the thing your compliance team will ask for, and we can issue a utilisation certificate and a project report each quarter. Talk to us before the March rush; a project designed in January works better than one designed in the last week of the financial year.
Can I donate clothes, books or old computers?
Usually no, and we would rather say so than take them and quietly throw them away, which is what most of the sector does. We take new notebooks, new uniforms in the sizes we are short of, and rice or dal in unopened sacks. Everything else costs us more to sort, store and dispose of than it is worth.
Can I visit a centre?
Any working day, and you do not need to warn us. Call the office in the morning and someone will tell you which centres are running that evening. We would rather you came unannounced — a centre that only looks good on a scheduled visit is not a centre worth funding.
Can I volunteer?
For a term at a time, not for an afternoon. Children who are already used to adults disappearing do not need more practice at it. We ask for two hours a week for four months, and we run a short induction and a background check before you meet a child.
About us
What has not worked?
A tablet-based learning programme we ran for two years and closed, because the children who gained from it were the ones already doing well. Two centres in Wagholi that never filled and one of which is closing this year. Both are written up in the annual reports rather than left out of them.
Who runs this, and who checks them?
A board of five trustees, none of them related to another and none of them paid. The board meets four times a year and all four sets of minutes are published on this site, unedited. Day to day there are twenty-six of us, and nineteen grew up in the neighbourhoods the centres are in.
Why only these few neighbourhoods?
Because staying in one place for fourteen years is the only thing we have found that works. We know which families move for the sugarcane season, which lane floods, and which child stopped coming in September and why. A programme spread across four districts knows none of that.