MIT Solve

Solution Overview & Team Lead Details

Solution name.

Finance for NGOs

Provide a one-line summary of your solution.

Our app aims to provide a user-friendly platform for NGOs and community initiatives to record their finances and do fundraising in accordance with the law.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

NGOs and community organizations in India lack an easy-to-use and affordable platform to manage their finances and fundraise.

India has over 3 million NGOs and the number of unregistered community organizations such as student clubs, resident associations, etc. is even higher.

Around ~10% of such NGOs such as Plan International and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are big enough to have dedicated finance departments that can track expenditures and donations of the NGO along with managing its fundraising needs.

For other NGOs and community organizations especially those who work at the grassroots level in smaller towns and communities lack the resources to do so. For example, I have noticed a dozen NGOs in my small city of Sirsa send staff members every month to the houses of donors to collect recurring donations. When it comes to doing audits and complying with financial reporting, they find it difficult to fulfill all the obligations, they struggle as there is no easy way to track and record all expenses. In this case, the NGOs that already struggle with a lack of financial resources have to pay hefty sums to Chartered Accountants to help with it.

With increasing scrutiny of NGOs in the Indian ecosystem, it makes it difficult for them to comply with all financial reporting requirements and manage donors putting them at risk of closure.

It directly impacts 2.7 million NGOs that are helping countless lives. Hence, this problem has an impact on millions of Indians who are currently being helped by these not-for-profits.

Elevator pitch

What is your solution?

Our solution is to build an app to help NGOs track their finances and manage donors in a user-friendly and cheap way.

It will include the following components:

A feature allowing NGOs to add any expense they are incurring and digitally record the invoice of that expense.
- They can also organize that expense into categories such as salary, food & beverage, travel cost, etc.
- It will be free to use up to a certain amount of expenses and after that, a small fee will be charged.
  - The amounts need to be decided after further market research.
  - For example- expenses up to Rs.500,000 can be recorded for free; for expenses totaling Rs. 500,000 - Rs. 10,000,000 a monthly fee of Rs. 5,000 can be introduced.
- Charts and graphics showing how NGOs are allocating their expenses will be automatically created which can be shared with donors leading to transparency.

A feature allowing NGOs to set up a customized tool to collect monthly and one-time donations of varying amounts and the ability to generate automatic invoices.
- It will accept payments from all commonly used platforms in India such as UPI apps (PayTm, Google Pay, etc.), net banking, debit and credit cards.
- It will deduct a management fee of 1% of donations.
- It can be integrated with the website of the NGO.
- It will generate an automatic invoice for the donations.

Donor management- All key information of donors can be securely accessed for relationship building.

Reporting- Data involving expenses and donations of NGOs can be extracted in different forms that can be used for financial reporting.

Learning module- Step-by-step guide on how to do annual financial reporting and file all documentation. We will also host expert office hours close to tax season where NGOs can get their common queries answered.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Our solution serves ~2.7 million small and medium-sized NGOs that are working on different UNSDG goals and positively impacting millions of lives in India.

There are various crowdfunding platforms, and finance tracking apps for businesses but no specific app for NGOs to meet their financial management and fundraising needs in India.

Our solutions have been described above and they will help NGOs in the following ways:

Save on labor costs, now NGOs won't have to hire multiple staff members to go monthly to houses of donors to collect recurring donations and track invoices of expenses.
- The existing staff will have to do less manual work such as recording all receipts, going from house to house to collect donations, etc.
They will also save on the cost of hiring a lawyer and chartered accountant to assist them with financial reporting.
It will make it easier for them to comply with legal obligations which reduce their risk of closure.
85% of people we surveyed reported that high legal costs to do annual financial reporting are a barrier to entry preventing them from starting an NGO. Our solution will reduce that barrier to entry.

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

We have experience running an NGO for 2.5 years. Hence, we understand the financial management needs of an NGO.
We have volunteered with various community organizations such as student clubs, and faith-based organizations in smaller cities and metro cities in India. So, we understand the needs of different kinds of NGOs.
Our academic background is in business and commerce and alongside this, we have done entrepreneurship incubation programs as well. This has equipped us to learn the basics of starting a venture and implementing it.
Based on the above experiences, we are able to identify and connect with our potential users.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

We have conducted focus group discussions with 100+ representatives from different NGOs and community organizations.
- This has provided us insight into what are the challenges faced by our user group due to the lack of a consolidated platform to manage finances and fundraising.
- The current options in the market are limited to USA and expensive such as Give Lively and Quickbooks.
- We understood the key features an NGO or a community organization requires.
We have tested different fundraising and finance management platforms that are available in India and on an international level.
As founders of an NGO, we understand the needs of small and medium organizations in terms of managing their finances.

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Other: Addressing an unmet social, environmental, or economic need not covered in the four dimensions above.

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team located?

Sirsa, Haryana, India

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Isha Godara