What GiveIndia gets from Social Media

Name of Business: GiveIndia

Website URL: http://www.giveindia.org/

Industry: Non-profit

Target Audience: Internet savvy, working class population falling between the age group of 25-45

Category of Business

GiveIndia was launched by Venkat Krishnan, an IIM-A graduate, in April 2000 as icicicommunities.org. GiveIndia is an online platform for people across the world who wish to make donations. There are about 200 NGOs that receive funding through GiveIndia’s online donation platform. They first carefully scrutinized over 3,000 Indian NGOs for transparency and credibility and out of those chose 200 that met the GiveIndia listing criteria. Till date, more than 75,000 donors from across the world have been able to help millions of people through the GiveIndia platform. Donors have the freedom to select a cause of their choice to support from the 200 NGOs.

Marketing Efforts

GiveIndia has used social media integration in order to increase visibility and awareness among the working class and also to encourage people from all over the world to make donations to the causes of their choice. GiveIndia has used Facebook to reach out to its target audience. They began this endeavor two years back. They have customized their fan page to include additional tabs that connect the users and fans to their blog and events. They also have a tab that features videos from YouTube for all of their fans.

GiveIndia has also made use of Twitter to inform users and fans about their activities. They started using Twitter in April 2009. They have regularly updated their tweets for their fans.

Another social media initiative taken by GiveIndia is the GiveIndia page on www.causes.com. This causes page is a part of Facebook where they promote this philanthropic endeavor and aim at connecting people and organizations in the US to 200 Indian NGOs.

GiveIndia also has an active blog http://blog.giveindia.org/, which they use to highlight their programs and causes. They also have user posts and have done a great job in integrating the blog with their website, their page on causes.com as well as their facebook page.

When talking about social media, GiveIndia’s CIO Dhaval Udani said, “It’s a great tool for awareness and reaching out to the mass number of people out there. However, we are yet to see its real benefit.”

Result of Efforts

GiveIndia’s Alexa rating has improved continuously. Their traffic rank for India now stands at 17,972 and worldwide stands at 151,153. Due to their efforts, their fans increased to over 900 on Facebook and to over 600 on Twitter. On causes.com, GiveIndia now has more than 3,400 members and has received donations through this platform.

Marketing Investment

GiveIndia has made marketing investment in the form of employee time and effort. Their current employees, who understanding the objectives of GiveIndia and the message they want to convey, have taken all the initiatives.