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India’s giving landscape reflects a powerful blend of tradition and transition. While a significant share of people continue to engage in informal acts of generosity, such as helping strangers or supporting those in immediate need, formal giving remains comparatively lower than global averages. This gap signals both a challenge and an opportunity: trust, accessibility, and awareness continue to shape how individuals choose to give.
A particularly striking insight is the strong culture of helping strangers, which places India among the more community-responsive societies globally. This suggests that empathy and responsiveness are deeply embedded social values. However, translating this instinct into sustained financial contributions to organisations requires stronger bridges — clearer communication of impact, greater transparency, and more accessible giving channels.
Volunteering trends also point towards evolving civic participation, especially among younger populations. As India’s demographic dividend grows, there is an opportunity to convert intent into structured engagement through pathways that align with skills, time, and purpose.
For organisations, the way forward lies in building trust-led ecosystems — where giving is not just reactive, but intentional, informed, and sustained.
How often did you give money away in 2025, either to charity, a person or family in need, or to a religious organisation?
The average proportion of income people gave to each of the three donation routes, and overall.
What would you say are the main reasons that you gave / did not give money away in 2025?
Which cause(s) did you donate to / do unpaid voluntary work for in 2025?
Of the total value of your donations to charities in 2025, approximately how much went to each of the following?
To what extent, if at all, have charities had a positive or negative impact in your local community, or have they made no difference?
For the last charity that you gave money to, how did you first find out about them?
How trustworthy do you tend to find each of these types of charities?
How could charities encourage you to donate in 2026?
Of the xx% that did unpaid, voluntary work in 2025 that benefitted people other than their family or friends, how many shifts did they do?
Think about the opportunities you have to get involved in making positive changes to society (whether locally or further afield). Which best describes your perspective?
"The Government encourages people to give to charity." Do you...
OneStage is a social impact organisation working to build a more equitable and inclusive society by strengthening the ecosystem of giving and development. We partner with corporates, foundations, and communities to design and implement high-impact programmes across health, education, livelihoods, and climate resilience.
Our approach combines on-ground execution with data-driven insights, enabling scalable and sustainable solutions that respond to real community needs. By fostering collaboration between donors and grassroots stakeholders, OneStage aims to make giving more transparent, effective, and meaningful.
Through our work, we strive to not only deliver measurable outcomes but also to deepen trust and engagement in the social sector, ensuring that every contribution creates lasting change.
OneStage is a social impact organisation working to build a more equitable and inclusive society by strengthening the ecosystem of giving and development. We partner with corporates, foundations, and communities to design and implement high-impact programmes across health, education, livelihoods, and climate resilience.
Our approach combines on-ground execution with data-driven insights, enabling scalable and sustainable solutions that respond to real community needs. By fostering collaboration between donors and grassroots stakeholders, OneStage aims to make giving more transparent, effective, and meaningful.
Through our work, we strive to not only deliver measurable outcomes but also to deepen trust and engagement in the social sector, ensuring that every contribution creates lasting change.
