Dhiraj Sinha’s life changed at 50. He wanted to make his 50th birthday memorable. One, he left his corporate career to concentrate on investing and trading. He signed a pledge – Living the Promise – of giving away 50% of what you have – in your own lifetime or in your will. 170 people have already signed the pledge – and Dhiraj seemed to be nudging those present to join the gang. Dhiraj spoke about his own giving journey. It started off 10 years ago – and has been a sporadic walk mostly. An ad-hoc approach when folks approach you to help. 

Dhiraj became more conscious of a more planned approach to giving. It starts with identifying causes that move you – and stay with those. And then moves on to identifying people who are working for those causes. Vetting the NGOs you want to give to is important – not only does the country have opportunists operating under NGO banners, but also the impact and multiplier effect in the NGO’s work needs to be studied. Sustainability of the giving is required to do justice to a cause. And as a side effect, it helps you develop expertise in this area.  Giving is also not just about money. One can give time too. Dhiraj spends some time every month mentoring at Social Venture Partners – which help social entrepreneurs build their NGOs.  

Sudhir Variyar spoke of an interesting initiative in CSR at Multiple Assets. They take in 100 underprivileged kids every year and sponsor their college education. Shortlisting is on the basis of aptitude and attitude. These kids are helped to get placements in Multiple’s portfolio companies.

Dhiraj’s preference is for funding what he calls multipliers. The teaching to fish instead of donating fish approach. He hired two interns – and paid them Rs. 40 K in salary – to work with his neighbourhood slums. They got 500 people to get an Ayushman Bharat card, which will cover medical emergencies for 500 families. He now donates to Haq Darshak – an NGO in the same space. Dhiraj has been helping 14 Trees, an NGO that Atul Gopal, Makrand Dekhane and Uddipan Bagchi also support. We need to have a phone number to call a volunteer to order a 14T gift card. Realised that customising the text in the card is going to play an important role in tree parenting’s spread. The 29th batch gifted 10 trees, planted in a 14 Trees forest near Pune, to speakers and departed batchmates – Anshuman Tripathi and Neelesh Wagle. 

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