Today, the HCl Foundation, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of IT giant HCl will be giving out the ‘HCl Grant’, an ongoing cash award of Rs 5 crore to three NGOs in the areas of Education, Environment and Health. Kushan Mitra speaks to Nidhi Pundhir, Director (CSR), HCl about the intensive process that goes into selecting the award winners from a huge pool of applicants and how the HCl Grant works. Excerpts:
How did the HCl Grant come to beIJ
This is part of our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative through the HCl Foundation and it started in 2015, and we wanted to look at the valuable contributions made by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). And since we were also initiating ourselves into CSR, we also wanted to learn from NGOs. Then our Founder-Chairman Shiv Nadar also said that while we know that the government is based on three estates — the Executive, legislature and Judiciary, and we have always known about the role of a free media as the fourth estate, we defined non-governmental organisations as the fifth estate.
So, in 2015 we started the grant and given that Mr. Nadar has an interest in education we started with that sector with several applications for the grant, especially in the area of Hindi education and in 2016 we added Health and Environment also.
Again, we took a very broad spectrum approach. For example in education we look at primary, secondary and higher education, we look at inclusion. In health we also kept it quite broad spectrum as we have in the environment sector, although everything revolves around conservation.
So we conceptualised the HCl Grant and it was open for all NGOs to apply, and the moment we opened up health and environment the number of applications and registrations grew significantly. We do a grant of Rs 5 crore each, and the recipient gets a Rs 5 crore grant for a specific three-five year project.
And how are the recipients selectedIJ
It is a very robust process, of course, being an IT company we realise the value of technology enhancing the reach of NGO’s to approach us and vice-versa, so we have an online portal. In India there are very few CSR grants that have an online portal. So NGOs can go to the site and register and give an idea of the project they want the grant for. We have kept it quite simple, so that NGOs from all over India and all sizes, although there is a slight eligibility criteria, where in the environment category the NGO should have an annual budget of Rs 50 lakhs and in the health and education categories they should have an annual budget of Rs 1.5 crores.
So as to not overwhelm themselvesIJ
Well, most of the NGO’s that apply, all have a budget of at least a crore, in environment also most NGO’s have a budget of around Rs 75 lakhs. In the health and education space, however, most NGO’s have higher budgets because they are institutionalised one way or another.
Also we want an NGO with ten years of experience, a legal life of ten years and in environment at least five years. The reason for relaxation in environment is that the environment space is still quite new, the workings in the science and methods in the environmental space are also quite new whereas health and education are more conventional spaces. The reason for keeping some limit is because we also believe in strong governance and we believe that the success of the chosen program will be backed by strong governance and have experience of managing money and a Rs 5 crore grant is not a small grant.
So how many NGO’s apply for the grantIJ
This year we had 3,449 NGOs applying for the grant and only around 850 completed the process, which adhered to the conditions. Then there is a four-level expert evaluation of each application, which means that each application is read by four experts. One in finance, one in the subject area of the application, and even in that area we sought thematic experts micro-category. So, if the grant application is in early childhood education we ensure that we consult someone in that space, so we have a panel of thirty such experts.
Then we also have a governance partner, which is Grant Thornton which looks at the board and social audit and the kind of image they have, but each and every application is read. So we spend sixty days to narrow down from 800-odd applications to around 50-odd applications. And then we stop screening the applications in the traditional sense and we go visit them, to see their work on the ground. This year we must have visited 19 states and union territories to see ongoing projects that are closest to the proposed projects. In some projects scalability is a challenge, so we go and assess that as well through organisation strength and governance. We look at relevance and innovation aspects and look at scalability, can the project scale up over the period of the grant as well as sustainability, will the project continue once the grant is over and how well it works with ongoing government schemes as well.
(The HCl Grant will be awarded today evening at the HCl campus, Sector 126, Noida by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh)