What is the Joy of Giving week?

JGW is India's festival of giving that takes place in the week containing Gandhi Jayanthi. The publicly owned week was launched in 2009 and in the 2nd year (2010), it has already 400+ events in 40+ cities across India, with hundreds of thousands of participants. Over Rs20cr in money and materials were donated during the Week last year and millions of hours were volunteered. You can see more about this at www.youtube.com/joyofgivingweek,www.facebook.com/joyofgivingweek and at http://picasaweb.google.com/joyofgivingweek.

The Week is a campaign that encourages every Indian to give back to society in any form that she/he chooses to - time, money, skills , a kind gesture...to someone less privileged. From housing societies, autorickshaw drivers, police personnel, children, college students and rural folk, to corporates, CEOs and celebrities....this is an opportunity for every single segment to get engaged. This year dates are Oct 2-8, 2011. 

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How can you make it happen in your city?

 

A. Structure of a JGW city core team/making the team work

1. We need a team of 4-5  committed and hardworking  people volunteering in each city to make it work successfully. All the key cities that have seen JGW take off have been able to put together such groups of volunteers.
2. One member of the team needs to be the city co- ordinator. A city co-ordinator will need to spend about 3 hours a day, ideally and not less than 2 hours. In the month of September, s/he will have to spend closer to 5 hours a day. Availability on weekdays to go out and meet various people, and occasionally on weekends to meet with volunteers, is important. Flexibility of time is high.
3. The co-ordinator should develop a team based on verticals in the city. Each "vertical owner" volunteer should be willing and able to reach out, make appointments and meet people on behalf of JGW in their specific "vertical". Examples of verticals include Corporates, NGOs, Media, Govt, Educational institutions etc. Have one or two members take responsibility for the vertical. Its not essential to have every vertical covered, though it is desirable.
4. Each vertical owner should be able to give a minimum of 2 hours a day and this will increase to ~3 hours/day in September. Again, availability to undertake meetings during weekdays is absolutely critical and those who can only volunteer on weekends are not suitable for these roles.
5. All volunteers must be excellent with follow up on email and phone - response times in getting back to people must not exceed 24-36 hours
6. People in the core team must have execution focus. and should not be just idea/strategy givers. The latter are of little use unless the idea giver is able to follow through with the execution as well.
In the past years, once a week/fortnightly team meetings with people taking ownership of specific tasks has helped enormously to make the campaign a success. See attached task list example.
7. Ideally women working from home or home makers, entrepreneurs/businessmen, corporate employees with high flexibility of time, and retired people make ideal core team members, since availability on weekdays is probably THE most important requirement for successful core volunteers.

B. What are the most useful verticals to have?

Media - Definitely, try and get a PR firm in the city to own the media vertical. Ensure that it is one of the top firms of the city that is 'well liked' by the media locally and that has access to all media
1. Corporates- most companies have a CSR department or a group of enthusiastic volunteers who drive CSR activities. Reaching out to them can help them engage their employees as well as fulfil their CSR obligations. 
NGOs- the JGW campaign is a great way for NGOs to leverage the connections they have and for the city to direct their initiatives to. Ensure that NGOs who want to participate have the ability to 'absorb' the type of resources that will get generated.
Government- a sure way to reach large numbers is to involve govt. departments such as transport, sports, railways etc. Govt. departments are looking for ways to reach out to the public and enhance their image and they will love to be involved. 

C.  Why will people agree to participate? What must team members say?

1. Most people want to do something good- give money, donate clothes or material, volunteer at a nearby old age home. Companies, educational institutions, media, etc. are often happy to participate in larger social activities. JGW in its first 2 years has seen a diverse range of participants, including CEOs like Narayana Murthy, Kumar Birla, Adi Godrej and others, celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar and others, almost all of India's key television channels and newspapers, and millions of aam junta like auto drivers, poor women organised as self-help groups and various others. 
The Joy of Giving Week is like Diwali or Id or Christmas- it does NOT belong to any one organisation or individual. Communicating that this is as much anyone's event as it is yours wins half the battle.
2. In JGW, people can choose what they would like to do. If they want ideas, the core team will help them- but there is no limit or prescription except that you have to help the less fortunate. This gives people the freedom to do what they like and the platform to do so. The core team of volunteers is available to anyone that wants support to do  their own initiative - this can include thinking through an event with the individual/organisation, making connections for them which will be helpful, help with visibility and media etc.
People carrying out the initiative will benefit entirely - the JGW team does NOT need any credit, visibility etc. All proceeds raised (if its a fundraiser) will go the organisation conducting the event, all benefits of a volunteering programme, an in kind donation drive etc will go entirely to the recipient entities.For e.g if a corporate in a city decides to do a book donation drive or any such activity, the can choose the organisation themselves, and if they ask the core team, we will give them a menu of options, help them connect etc. The organisation that is chosen can further determine how it would like to engage with the corporate going forward.

D Is there any money available to the JGW team?

1. Not really, since this is entirely a volunteer led event, we all meet our own expenses. However a small sum maybe available for things like press conferences etc- these come from donations made by a few JGW volunteers themselves. Therefore, these requirements will need to be pre approved well in advance.
We have found that in the past, money unavailability in the team is not a constraint to making JGW happen in the city - everyone is generally willing to come in with their contributions. In Chennai, for example, all press conferences were done with no money spend- the hotels gave us their venue free, the printer printed the flex free of cost and the PR agency did everything probono.