India Giving Day 2025: The Next Chapter in Galvanizing More and Better American Giving to India

October 2 marked Gandhi’s birthday. While many aspects of his life and philosophy have been celebrated, debated, and even criticized, it might be worth reflecting on his concept of ‘trusteeship.’ Gandhi’s doctrine of trusteeship is a philosophy and an approach towards bringing greater social and economic justice to society and ensuring the responsible use of resources and wealth. Simply put, it means that wealthy people should serve as trustees of wealth and should use it to provide for the welfare of society in general, especially people in need. It is the spirit of this wisdom that we announced the start of our third India Giving Day Campaign on October 2.

In domains as diverse as politics, economics, medicine, and philanthropy, the first step in addressing an opportunity or a problem is to diagnose it, in order to understand it fully. Second, one needs to come up with actionable recommendations. And finally, and most importantly, efforts must be made to implement the most compelling recommendations. India Giving Day is an effort to apply promising ideas from past scholarship about increasing the amount and quality of Indian-American diaspora philanthropy benefitting India.

By way of background, over the last decade there have been a series of high-quality studies of the state of Indian diaspora philanthropy that have included recommendations about how to grow its impact. Each of these reports indicated that Indian-Americans were the sleeping giant of American philanthropy, and that over time this vibrant community which has contributed so much to the United States in other domains could increase its giving by at least $2 billion annually.

As we and others reflected on the various recommendations to bolster diaspora giving, we noted that the culture of giving in India is not new, but is deeply rooted in Indian values. Furthermore, philanthropy and giving has an important role to play in supporting India as a leader in growth and development, resilience, and responses to challenges in society. 

One of the specific recommendations of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation report titled “Strengthening Philanthropy Giving & Impact Investing for Development in India” was to “promote national campaigns for giving.” An influential report by Dalberg and Indiaspora found that there was an opportunity to triple Indian-American giving to all causes, prompting entrepreneur and philanthropist Sunil Wadhwani to call on the community to commit to reaching this goal at a Philanthropy Summit held in 2018. 

In responding to these recommendations, the India Philanthropy Alliance (IPA) wove together these two ideas by establishing India Giving Day (IGD) in 2023 to grow the amount and quality of American private philanthropy to India. The inaugural India Giving Day raised $1.4 million in March 2023 for 25 leading nonprofits active in India that have a legal presence in the U.S.  That was followed up by mobilizing $5.5 million for 33 nonprofits in March 2024. We are pleased to share the news that on October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, the Alliance announced the countdown to the third India Giving Day to be held on March 14, 2025.

India Giving Day was designed to reflect many of the recommendations in the reports mentioned earlier. For example:

1. A Steering Committee ensures that only effective and trustworthy Indian nonprofits are listed on the IGD platform through rigorous analysis of their applications. (Those that are chosen are eligible for more than $100,000 in matching funds and prizes available to listed organizations thanks to a major grant from the Rural India Supporting Trust.)

2. The Campaign encourages youth engagement by emphasizing peer-to-peer fundraising and making it easy for young people to attract new donations to their favorite charities.

3. IGD seeks to educate the public about the impact of thoughtful philanthropy on both intended beneficiaries and on the givers themselves. IGD National Co-Chairs Deepak Raj and Raj Gupta said it best when they wrote, “Research shows that people who give the most to charities are, on average, happier, healthier, and more successful than those who give less, or not at all.”

This year, the Campaign will work towards another big increase in peer-to-peer fundraising and in local community events by actively supporting participating nonprofits and other allies in these areas. We will be providing small grants to dozens of local observances and celebrations of India Giving Day across the country. 

We will also distill lessons learned from organizations such as Heart to Heart Foundation and Vicente Ferrer Foundation USA that excelled last year in motivating youth to serve as peer-to-peer fundraisers. While our focus is on American giving to India, we welcome those involved in Indian-American donations to local causes, such as Hunger Mitao, to join and benefit from our movement. We are a big and inclusive tent. 

We have set a goal of raising at least $7.5 million next March for participating nonprofits that they can use in further reducing poverty, improving education and health care for underserved populations, and ensuring environmental preservation and animal welfare. We encourage nonprofits interested in joining this movement to visit the IGD website to explore how their noble missions can benefit, and we thank our current and past campaign sponsors including RIST, the MacArthur Foundation, Bank of America, MasterCard, and a host of generous family foundations. 

Come join our movement!

About the Authors

Alex Counts (@AlexCounts) is the Executive Director of the India Philanthropy Alliance, an adjunct faculty member at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of four books including Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Three Decades of Social Entrepreneurship (Revised Edition). 

Yamini Mishra (@Yamini_Mishra) is the Country Director of the MacArthur Foundation in India. She serves on the India Giving Day Steering Committee.