Social endeavours get support from many unexpected quarters

Our humbling experience of how organisations like Nilenso, family, ex-colleagues, have supported Samanvay

Businesses run on a simple idea, they make the lives better for their customers and their customer willingly reward them in the form of money. The engine that non-profits run on, is the surplus money and time available in the society which its members charitably contribute. There are exceptions to this too, like monopoly businesses, mandatory (i.e. coercive) CSR contributions, charity as a marketing tool, etc…but this blog is not about that. This blog is about the kinds of contribution and support we got, that I wasn’t expecting when we started Samanvay.

It may be obvious but is important to state that running even a tech non-profit requires one to work with much fewer resources, compared to tech business because there are fewer resources to go around overall. Hence the support becomes important. I want to talk about three examples of the support we received and why they mattered to us. (I understand that public praise embarrasses people, but it is a good embarrassment, so it is alright I think to do so).

I want to start with people at Nilenso…
I know that I cannot do justice to all the support that they have provided us, so this is not comprehensive. Nilenso provided us with space to work for 3 years. It wasn’t free but it wasn’t a lot of money too. We too used emotional reasoning to get a discounted price.
By the way, I have understood using emotional reasoning for our kind of is a valid currency, and I use it without sacrificing self-respect and losing intellectual honesty. It is fun and I like it when I get the opportunity to do it :-).

The design team at Nilenso volunteered for OpenCHS, the UI design is what we have kind of have now too. It was the first volunteer contribution on OpenCHS! and we were moonlighting mostly at this time.

Today (25-Apr, when I am writing this) is our last day at Nilenso office space, and they gifted us a Printer, gift-wrapped!. Yes, that is the kind of things “companies” gift each other. We had planned to use the printer in their office since we only moved to across the road. Folks at Nilenso are so nice that I really hope that some of it also rubbed onto me too.

C42 folks
When we were looking for the new office space, C42 folks graciously offered us to use their erstwhile space without any fees for six months. This will allow us to save enough so that we can pay for the massive advance that one needs to pay in Bangalore for rent.
Earlier when we were starting we used the space from QuinType for few weeks. So, now it is almost three years, and we have been lucky to be hosted by someone or other.

Then there are simple acts of kindness
It often happens that if I go out with my friends (I call close ex-colleagues friends), even family sometimes — there is an unstated rule, created by them, that they would pay. I do not resist because I understand that this started happening only in the last three years, and they know well that I can afford it too. There are more situations that this kicks in. I accept it as a respect for their gesture.

All help matters. For me, this doesn’t go against the idea of the economic sustainability of a social endeavour. Economic sustainability for non-profit cannot exclude the support and contribution from anyone. It will be a mistake to allow only philanthropies to provide this. It is the sum total of everything, that sustains it.