Emerging trend of Crowdfunding for causes as opposed to conventional NGO system

With financial crunch on NGO's due to downturns in the market & stifling by the govt. gathering funds for specific causes is the trend & it could help in addressing & bringing awareness to issues

There has been a trend that has been occuring in recent times in India as well as across the world . That is crowdfunding or fundraising for a specific cause or issue. This is being conducted by Indians from various backgrounds who are very passionate about a certain cause or issue and try to actively advocate for and appeal for funds in order to achieve their goal. 

The most recent example of this is by Cecille Rodrigues, a professional musician from Goa who has become a social activist and was a candidate for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the 2017 Assembly elections. She developed and released a song on the pathetic and pitiful state of the roads across the state of Goa last September which became popular across Goa and was trending across social media. She began a campaign called #rosto meaning roads where she has been travelling across the state writing on areas where there should be speed breakers, also highlighting where there are potholes and poor state of the roads and malfunctioning traffic lights. She has been doing daily posts across instagram, youtube and facebook. As a result of this Goans from the United Kingdom and locals in the various areas have donated money in order to build these speed breakers and fix the roads. 

Another example of this is by Sanjay Tiwari, who is a filmmaker, poet and social worker. He conducts an annual initiative where he donates and provides sweaters to homeless and needy people across New Delhi. This year he extended his initiative to other cities such as Indore Gwalior and so on. The people could donate their old sweaters as well.The first stage of this initiative was to collect funds which was done through promotion and appeal for funds over all the various social media platforms and youtube as well. After this was done then the orders for the sweaters were made and then transported and then distributed. There were also activities that were done by children in certains villages to appeal for funds.

Each step of this entire process was shown with regular daily posts with the total amount collected and the exact amount being used to purchase the sweaters. 

It is my belief that this is the future of social and development work. The conventional NGO model and system is very laborious and any donation to them means it is going to the administrative expenses such as salary of the staff, their travel expenses and office expenses, hardly any of the money goes directly towards the program or projects being conducted. It is also very difficult to trace your donation. There is a huge staff  of field workers, accounts, supervisors, overall program managers and ultimately the organisational head, all of which need to be paid well. 

This is not the case with the crowdfunded causes and initiatives. They are mostly transparent and you can see the money going directly for the specific purpose. The people involved in these initiatives are usually very active on social media and give you an exact break up of what the money is needed for and once the money is raised what it will be spent on. They then usually show you the result of the money you have donated after the specific cause has been achieved. It is also mostly done by volunteers who do everything related to the initiative such as logistics and use their own money for any costs involved. It also helps to bring people together to work on the particular cause and to donate their time and money and give them a feeling of doing something good and ownership of their area. 

I support this crowdfunded model or cause based model of development which I believe will gather more steam as time goes on as people would like to see more active and transparent developmental activities and be able to part of it as well.