Founding Beliefs
iCONGO sincerely and inherently believes in the philosophy of the leaders of our struggle for independence, including Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Mandela, Mother Theresa, Darwin, Che Guevara, Margaret Mead and other thought leaders like them, who lead the change for society selflessly without the need for big money, seats of power or any other material possessions. We need to be the change that we want to see in the world as common people and good citizens. Gandhiji had relinquished seats of power as he wanted to just do his duty as a citizen and in that he rose above and became extraordinary. Gandhiji had said that doing good for society is what the NGO movement should be and thus it will always remain the PEOPLE SECTOR.
- Our inherent belief is that the NGO movement is the people sector and thus as a collective of NGOs we need to reclaim and preserve public trust in the people sector by getting people involved as good citizens with social causes. Hence we need to go beyond just asking for money and must take people on a journey to understand the issues we work on, as a collective sector. Funds are required by all of us, but the focus should be on self-sustainability and drawing people in, rather than on constantly asking for grants without working on retaining long term relationships and trust, thus spoiling the ecosystem for the sector.
- We sincerely believe that various people want to do good and be involved with NGOs but are skeptical and cynical about the sector as we have by ourselves blemished our credibility by not adopting good practices of accountability and transparency, but instead having high administration costs and issues of money siphoning and other such issues of corruption. We, as a sector, should not indulge in just taking grants from government or other bodies as most NGOs now just take grants for granted and do not work towards self-sustainability, and thus we today have 1.6 million NGOs in the country who are pure money chasers and do not deliver any service at the grass roots level. Grants are only a starting point, and we as a sector should take on the responsibility of ensuring self-sustainability in our projects so that citizens/ tax payers’ money can be put to better use for building public welfare, public good and social justice.
- We sincerely believe that social justice through citizen action can be achieved for all causes by involving citizens with pre screened NGOs that adhere to “THE OMEGA RATING- Transparency & accountability charter” that shall be adopted by the people sector as a collective movement to reclaim and preserve trust.
- We sincerely believe and know that majority of the good work that is being done on the ground is by small grass roots NGOs that people in urban India may have never heard of, like they hear of the cool sounding NGOs. These cool sounding NGOs are over-spending the money on PR that they should be spending on the community. Hence to link citizens to the PEOPLE SECTOR, we want to mainstream the work of the smaller grassroots NGOs who work with little or no funding but are making a huge difference for various communities and for social justice overall.
- We believe that Together as ONE we can RIGHT every WRONG, if we start involving citizens with the PEOPLE sector to not JUST GIVE but practice Philanthropy for social justice, by investing a little time and involvement for understanding issues and advocating for the same as concerned citizens to be and lead the change to promote good governance as ONE PEOPLE by asking for accountability and transparency from all sectors.
- We believe that fundraising is not just about getting people to give money but about engaging people with the causes dear to their heart, to ensure their involvement and commitment to being and leading the change they are investing in.