In this session, Ankit talked about the current state of fund-raising office, the various issues associated with handling of funds in AID-India and the prospective ways to improve upon them. He started by listing the primary sources of funds in AID-Delhi, viz. meal-a-month program, sale of t-shirts, cards, folders and other such items, stalls at corporate offices and through local network. He said that individual chapters of AID-India raise funds locally to meet the daily requirements of the ongoing projects. The procedure of getting funds from AID-US is through the approval of the respective project. Ankit stressed that though the objectives are quite clear, still there are some important issues and concerns associated with the current state of fund-raising in India:-
- Requirement of seed fund
- Lack of dedicated teams in local chapters
- Time taken in approval procedures
- Chapter websites not integrating payment gateways
- Local bank accounts not available with chapters
He emphasized while most of the concerns mentioned above can be directly addressed by taking the respective action steps, some leniency in the formal procedures is also needed for fastening the processes. Ankit concluded the session by suggesting that promoting meal-a-month and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) can prove to be very fruitful for strengthening the fund-raising at AID-India.
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