This has been a long overdue mail from my end. Finally I found time to
draft this quickly. As always, read it as ease.
I am of the opinion that dividing the overall contributions (leaving aside
case specific or field specific contributions) will be a good solution and a
better picture against our goal as a group.
Correct me if I am wrong, but, we dont' intend to limit our help to a
particular area of need, but would like to extend it to all the fields in
general. Overall improvement in society is what we aim for. Said so, I as
a member would be way more satisfied when I look at an year behind and see
that efforts and money going into all or more fields such as education,
medical, awareness campaigns, distribution projects & so on. Lately I
gave much thought on this, and somehow, I have not been too happy that huge
to major chunks of money went' only to medical cases. Ofcourse the nature of
these cases differ a lot from eachother, a year of education might not cost
anywhr close to what it takes saving a life. But again, we can never
choose one over the other right...as important is saving a life, equally imp
is making sure a kid is not left without proper education.
Some of the benefits I see doing this, would be:
I wouldnt' be having qns that more of money went' only against medical
cases. Not that one field is better than the other, or one help is better
than the other, but, extending the help in multiple cases and multiple
fields is more fulfilling to me.
Once we divide funds on a % basis (since we cannot guess the amount we
will recieve in a year ahead), qns on whether we can still go ahead and
help a case, how much can we put into it, will all be okay with this (not
taking up the case initially part, but more so the amount of money and so
on), chain of emails and discussions, and frustrations and not getting
enough replies or replies at all, all this can be avoided, somewhat. It
might make things more easy to decide on comparitively. We know how much we
will have on hand, and to where we can stretch ourselves aswell.
Having funds set aside from the budget will prompt us to put in equal
efforts in all directions. There are funds waiting to be used in a
particular field, this will only make us work on that field better, and
more, look around and research on the needy.
Now that we have teams for diff sub-groups, follow ups on funds would be
easier aswell. Dependency will be less on the overall management head/s.
I wish to add another option to members, if the suggestion gets enough
votes. This is giving more specific rights to members reference their
contributions. Members can also choose to which feild their contributions
be channelised, or be added into the general pool. This will ensure optimum
satisfaction to members. If particular, they can always mail us what part
of their contributions be to what field and so on, and we can just forward
the numbers to particular sub-group funds. Iam unsure if I said this as
clearly as I wish to, but hope u get the overall picture.
Now that steps are being taken for Registering the group, I think, we
should also take the group structure & working, a step further. Till now
we were more like frnds putting in money, ok with however we spend
eachother's contributions, betting on the trust we have for the ppl who run
the group, and never questioning where the funds went' even when we cannot
show penny to penny accounts updated many a time (keeping busy with so much
stuff in & out of the group ofcourse), who have come together to make a
difference.
From now on, if we can add to all the above a well organised network
frame, I think it will give us all, and new joining members specially, some
good idea on what to expect & look forward to, and a better sense of the
whole group and its outlook.
From a group of close knit circle of frnds, we have added some of our
frnds acquaintances, and from there some of their acquaintances, colleagues,
and so on. If we can pick up our working style up another step, I think, we
will kick off ourselves to working at an organisation level, from mere
circle of frnds.
Many other things are already on the way to make this group work as an
organisation or an entity of its own. I thought, its about time we added
this in aswell. I for one, would surely like to see this come in, and
would feel more happy to see each rupee gng into each sub-group, even if its
just 3 rupees overall that I might donate in a year.
Having said all of this, I do oversee that there might be some good group
work and field work involved, but again, we already have active members who
have chosen to represent some of the sub-groups. And in any case, volunteers
always come together in need, whichever sub-group a case belongs to. So members
can still work the same way, but focus will be into all directions, rather
than waiting for cases.
Also, I think, becos what we find around easily are medical related cases,
we are more prone to taking up these in general. Education and so on, ppl
really donot approach as much as for medical reasons, may be becos its a
life we talk about, though I completely donot agree that I would choose only
one over the other.
Hope I made some good sense :) and not hit it all over the roof.
As always, open for comments. Shoot them my way guys......
:)
Divya
