{"id":22807,"date":"2026-02-27T02:31:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T02:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=22807"},"modified":"2026-02-28T02:30:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T02:30:49","slug":"revealed-the-billions-given-to-charity-by-ordinary-indians-every-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2026\/02\/27\/revealed-the-billions-given-to-charity-by-ordinary-indians-every-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: The Billions Given to Charity by Ordinary Indians Every Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>INDIA, FEBRUARY 19, 2026 (BBC): India&#8217;s philanthropy story is usually told from the top down. It features corporate social responsibility (CSR) budgets, billionaire pledges and splashy foundations. But a new report argues that the real engine of Indian generosity is far more prosaic &#8211; and vastly larger. The <em>How India Gives 2025<\/em> report, produced by the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP) at Ashoka University, challenges the conventional narrative that organized, institutional money dominates the country&#8217;s giving landscape. Instead, it points to a quieter colossus: households. According to the report, India&#8217;s total household giving is estimated at US$ 6.5 billion annually, including cash, in-kind contributions and volunteering. About 68% of respondents report giving in some form. Of this, 48% is in kind &#8211; such as food, clothing or other household goods &#8211; followed by cash donations (44%) and volunteering (30%) with non-profits, religious institutions or community groups. <br><br>&#8220;India is a very generous country. Our findings suggest that ordinary households play a much larger role than is commonly acknowledged. Generosity appears widespread and culturally embedded,&#8221; Jinny Uppal, head of Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Ashoka University, told the BBC. The survey looks at &#8220;everyday giving&#8221; which includes both direct, personal help &#8211; to beggars, family or friends, often seen as charity &#8211; and donations to organised, non-religious institutions, which are typically described as philanthropy. Roughly 40\u201345% of giving flows to religious organizations, with a comparable share directed to beggars and destitute people, especially in urban areas. In rural India, religious institutions take the lead. &#8220;We asked behavioural questions about motivation. For more than 90% of respondents, the underlying driver is a sense of religious duty &#8211; a moral obligation that shapes and sustains their giving,&#8221; says Krishanu Chakraborty, head of research at the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Ashoka University.<br><br>More at source.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c2lrjlkpw2eo\n\">https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c2lrjlkpw2eo<br><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>INDIA, FEBRUARY 19, 2026 (BBC): India&#8217;s philanthropy story is usually told from the top down. It features corporate social responsibility,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22824,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22825,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22807\/revisions\/22825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}