What are Restricted and Unrestricted donations?
Since the inception of IDRF in 1988, Dr. Prakash has successfully led IDRF and funded many NGOs all over India. When talking with him, he mentioned that there are two types of classification for donations:
- Unrestricted Donations - The donors have complete trust in IDRF when making their donations, thus, stating no choice or preference. These types of donations are called unrestricted donations. It becomes the responsibility of IDRF to utilize that money on projects or causes as per the needs arising, which are beneficial for the poor in India, such as educating poor girls, health for rural poor, women empowerment, etc.
- Restricted Donations – When donors want to donate for a desired project, state, or cause, these are considered as Restricted Donations. Before accepting funding from donors, IDRF ensure all aspects of the NGO as well as the projects, including legal terms as well as the FCRA registration, as added by Dr. Prakash. Our operational and management team conducts a stringent study of the project before sending grants to the NGOs.
Dr. Prakash mentioned that IDRF never provides funding for any religious purpose like fundings to temples, mosques, churches, or gurudwaras or others for promoting religious ideologies. But we provide
them fundings only if they work to help underprivileged people irrespective of religion, caste or creed for development in areas like education, health, community/women empowerment, eco-friendly developments, good governance and innovations, and disaster relief. For instance, recently, we have provided medical vans in West Bengal state to use for tribal people irrespective of their religion, caste or creed and the project was managed by ISKCON. Thus, our efforts are to accept donations and utilize our funds for projects that are genuinely meant for charity or development purposes.
- IDRF is very transparent and accountable in all its operations and has received accreditations and recognition from across the industry for this reason. The funds transferred to NGOs are displayed on the IDRF website. The IDRF website exhibits operational reports and audited financial reports. We keep our website updated with all the latest information about our work, projects, NGO details, etc.
- At IDRF, we believe in minimum overhead expenses, hence, all our work is paperless. We use digital media for regular communication with our donors and send them mail only once a year for annual fund requests. Moreover, we keep our donors updated about our work by sending them a quarterly
newsletters and report of projects for which they have donated. We also send donation appeals with quarterly reports in emails. Thus, as a responsible US nonprofit supporting India, we make a small contribution in protecting the environment by adopting a paperless work system.
