one by one

The Maths Wizard Utpal


The question that comes to my mind is the following; suppose we do all the legwork, set up the organization, get the tax exemption and do all that. Let us also suppose that we also accumulate the money in the fund. What are we going to do with the money? Money for money’s sake is useless. Unless we actually use the money to do some socially beneficial project the whole enterprise/effort is a failure. So here is my 2 cents for a plan of action.

1. Identify a small project that we can do immediately.
2. Set up some measurable success criteria. Something/anything by which we can say that we have been successful.
3. Identify what amount of level of effort required to get to that success (money and time involvement). Once we have identified we can all chip in the money and determine who will be the main executor of the project.
4. Get that money and get the project rolling immediately. Forget the formal organization and tax and all those stuff and all that thing.

If the above project is successful then we have demonstrated the capability of this group to do and execute the social project. At that time, owing to the success of this project there will be more enthusiasm too about this. Then we can make the legal organization and start the formal fund collection etc and proceed for the long term. If we fail then well we have demonstrated our inability to do it and maybe think up some other idea or learn from our failure and try again.

This approach avoids the pitfall of putting the cart (setting up the organization/administration etc) before the horse (doing the actual social work). The other great risk that is mitigated is that this initial momentum we have gathered does not wane while all the administrative set up is being done. ……. Utpal