Giving in India on the Rise, Report Finds
Giving in India on the Rise, Report Finds
A 2011 visit to India by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage that country's billionaires to increase their charitable giving appears to be paying dividends, Livemint.com reports.
Released by Bain & Company at the third annual Indian Philanthropy Forum in Mumbai, the India Philanthropy Report 2012 (24 pages, PDF) found that India's billionaires gave 3.1 percent of their income to charity in 2011, up from 2.3 percent in 2010. The report, which examined the philanthropic efforts of four hundred high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and emerging HNWIs in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Pune, found that younger HNWIs played a key role in helping to grow the country's philanthropic sector over the last year.
Indeed, among families engaged in philanthropy, 76 percent said they have young relatives taking an active role in choosing charities to support, while 69 percent have young members spearheading their family's charitable efforts. In addition to being involved in giving, younger HNWIs also said they planned to do more giving, with 57 percent saying they expected to boost their giving in 2012 and 49 percent of those over the age of 30 saying they expected to do so.
While the report suggests that Indian philanthropy will grow over the next few years, it also notes that more than 70 percent of the donors responding to the survey had less than three years of experience with philanthropy, underscoring the notion that the country's budding philanthropic sector is likely to experience growing pains.
Even so, some experts are optimistic about the future of the country's young HNWIs and their giving. "Only fifteen years back, the tech entrepreneurs were the novice givers in the U.S., and they were the ones that have created significant amount of innovation in philanthropy — not the Rockefellers or the Carnegies," said Deval Sanghavi, co-founder of the philanthropy advisory firm Dasra. "It's this new breed of novice philanthropists that will be the drivers of change in India."
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