Give Up Control and Let the Magic Happen | How 800 Hand Raisers Are Growing GivingTuesday in India

Every quarter, a young man named Shoaib runs a blood donation camp in his village in Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. Everyone who donates goes home with a GivingTuesday T-shirt and a GivingTuesday cup. Shoaib arranged the giveaways and organized the camps entirely on his own.

He was running these camps long before he heard of GivingTuesday. He found the movement last year after winning his category in a GivingTuesday storytelling competition. His camps show how community-led giving in India actually grows: a person already doing generous work adopts the movement and makes it his own.

Shoaib wants his neighbors to have a way to celebrate generosity and each other, the same way they celebrate Independence Day, Republic Day, and the festivals on their calendar.

In this episode of Missions to Movements, part of a special series presented by GivingTuesday, I sat down in Atlanta with Priyanka Dutt, Chief Advisor to India for GivingTuesday, ahead of GivingTuesday on December 1. We talked about why belonging drives giving, why fewer than half of Indian nonprofits that engage everyday givers as fundraisers have a retention strategy, and how one open call brought in 800 people who raised their hands to learn more about leading GivingTuesday in their own communities.

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Who Is Priyanka Dutt?

Priyanka Dutt is Chief Advisor to India for GivingTuesday, the global generosity movement led by CEO Asha Curran. She has spent more than 20 years in media and communication. She began her career producing television, then took those skills into the social sector, where she worked in social and behavior change communication on maternal and child health, reproductive healthcare, gender equity, nutrition, and HIV.

After two decades of building that expertise, she was ready for something new. She came to GivingTuesday knowing almost nothing about movement building or community-led philanthropy. What drew her in was the movement’s vision of a world built on shared humanity and radical generosity, along with her conversations with Asha.

“I’ve made career decisions all my life that have been based on my skills and my experience and what I know how to do,” Priyanka told me. This time she chose based on values alignment. That outside perspective shapes how she and her team in India approach the work, since most of them came from international development or the private sector.

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Why a Year-Round GivingTuesday Movement Has to Be Led Locally

Most people know GivingTuesday as a single day in December. In India, the movement runs year-round because local leaders decide what it looks like in their own communities. “If you try and plan for this to be a year-round thing, I think it would fail,” Priyanka Dutt said, “because so much of it is about the leaders who really make GivingTuesday, who bring it to life.”

Shoaib is her favorite example. He already ran blood donation camps to bring people together and serve his community. GivingTuesday gave him a name, a brand, and a global movement to connect his neighbors to. He wants them to know “there is something in the world that they can be a part of.”

I love this story because it shows what happens when an organization hands people its brand and trusts them with it. GivingTuesday has never told local leaders they can only take part in a few approved ways. If it had, I doubt Shoaib would be handing out branded cups at a blood drive in Uttar Pradesh.

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What the Data Says About Belonging and Giving in India

Two Indian studies point to the same conclusion. How India Gives, produced by the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy, and GivingTuesday’s own Udarta study both found that nonprofits see the most value and the most giving when they foster community.

Udarta is the Hindi word for generosity. It is also an acronym for Using Data And Research To Advance Everyday Giving in India, a study of how Indian nonprofits engage everyday givers as donors and as volunteers. Priyanka also pointed to the Charities Aid Foundation’s World Giving Report, which she said shows three times more giving where communities foster belonging.

“This is about the way you can be connected to something else,” Priyanka Dutt told me, “where you might see yourself in the work of what a nonprofit does, or a mission that is so much larger than any one organization.”

The Udarta research also found that fewer than 50% of Indian nonprofits that engage everyday givers as fundraisers have a retention strategy. Many aren’t planning to ask for a second gift, which puts building community even further out of reach. Moving from one ask to the next takes enormous effort and cost, and that is why so many organizations struggle to make everyday giving part of how they operate.

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How to Invite Donors to Belong to Your Mission

I spend much of my time helping nonprofits grow monthly giving programs, and the same problem shows up in almost every program I review. Most of our donor language is written to convince people to give. Very little of it speaks to the true believers who already care about the mission.

Take a typical thank-you: “Thank you so much, Priyanka, for your gift of $50 to provide meals.” It’s written in past tense, as if her part is finished. A present-tense version tells her who she is right now: “Priyanka, you put food on the table yesterday. It’s happening again tonight.” That version places her inside a group of people who are making something happen.

Priyanka Dutt pushed me to think beyond the thank-you note. “How are you thinking about building community that goes beyond the ask for money?” she asked. “What else could you involve your community in? And how do you create an invitation?” An invitation fosters ownership and participation, and it gives people a place to find their identity in your mission. “We all look for identity in places,” she said.

Nonprofits often say they want to build community, yet as a donor I rarely get to meet anyone else in it. Community forms when donors see and know each other, whether that happens at a virtual gathering for a large organization or over coffee between two donors in a small town. Your CRM already tells you who those donors are and where they live, which is enough to plan the first gathering.

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How 800 People Raised Their Hands to Learn About Leading GivingTuesday in India

GivingTuesday’s organizational work in India has been running for about four years. For most of that time, GivingTuesday’s India team searched for local leaders through programs, including a contest and a leadership journey. Each program turned up a few people who wanted to lead, but adding two people at a time wasn’t growing the movement fast enough.

Those programs did show the team that people everywhere were already doing generous things and inspiring their communities. That shifted the team’s focus to what GivingTuesday could add to work already underway. They decided to open leadership to as many people as possible, and they started with their own community.

The team asked the nonprofits in their network whether their communities would be interested in leading GivingTuesday locally. Ninety organizations wanted to talk it through, and those organizations put the call out to the people they work with and serve. Eight hundred people raised their hands to learn more.

Priyanka doesn’t know how many of the 800 will stay with it, and she isn’t concerned about that number. “The people exist out there already who are doing this thing,” she said. “And they are looking for community as well.”

When I asked what this teaches nonprofits that hold tightly to their branding and messaging, Priyanka described how much unlearning her team had to do. The main thing they had to learn was trust. “The moment you give up control, the moment you give up that wanting to shape every last detail and trust that the people who share your values are going to do things that will take you in the right direction, that’s where magic happens,” she said.

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What Comes Next for GivingTuesday India

Priyanka Dutt’s team expects to learn a lot from the hand raisers. The group is already supporting itself, with people who joined earlier stepping in to help newer members, and her team is doing very little to make that happen. “It’s got a life of its own, and it’ll go in the direction that it goes in,” she said.

Her hope for the coming year is that the hand raisers invite their friends and distribute power themselves, so the community grows through their invitations. Over the next five years, she wants more giving, more participation, and more leaders. Most of all, she wants more belonging and connection between people, and between people and the planet, its oceans, and its forests.

At the end of our conversation, I asked what she’s reading, and she told me about her great-grandfather’s journals, which her mother discovered. Translated from Bengali, they describe watching Japanese aircraft bomb Rangoon, walking from Myanmar back to Bengal through the jungle at night, and relocating his family again after moving to Rawalpindi just before the Partition of India.

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What This Means for Your Organization Right Now

Start with retention. If your organization engages everyday givers and has no plan for the second gift, close that gap first. The Udarta data suggests you have plenty of company. Community-led giving in India grew through people who were already doing generous work, and some of your donors are already doing the same for your mission by telling friends and showing up beyond their gift.

Next, look at your most recent donor message and check the tense. If it thanks someone for something they did, rewrite it to tell them what their support is doing now. Then find one way to invite your community into something beyond a donation, such as a meetup, a volunteer role, or a chance to bring a friend.

Finally, take Priyanka’s advice about control seriously. Pick one event or one piece of your messaging and let your supporters shape it. Shoaib’s T-shirts and cups came from a leader GivingTuesday trusted with its name. You can connect with Priyanka Dutt on LinkedIn and learn more about the movement at GivingTuesday.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the GivingTuesday hand raisers initiative in India?

GivingTuesday India invited people to raise their hands to lead GivingTuesday in their own communities. According to Priyanka Dutt, Chief Advisor to India for GivingTuesday, the team first asked nonprofits in its network whether their communities would be interested, and 90 organizations wanted to talk it through and shared the call. The result was 800 people who raised their hands to learn more about leading locally. The open call followed four years of contests and leadership programs that added only a few leaders at a time.

What is the Udarta study on everyday giving in India?

Udarta is a GivingTuesday study named for the Hindi word for generosity, and its name is also an acronym for Using Data And Research To Advance Everyday Giving in India. It examines how Indian nonprofits engage everyday givers as donors and as volunteers. The study found that fewer than 50% of nonprofits that engage everyday givers as fundraisers have a retention strategy. Like the How India Gives report from the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy, Udarta found that nonprofits see the most value and the most giving when they foster community.

How does belonging affect charitable giving?

Priyanka Dutt of GivingTuesday cites the Charities Aid Foundation’s World Giving Report as showing three times more giving in communities that foster belonging. In India, both How India Gives and GivingTuesday’s Udarta study found that nonprofits raise the most when they build community. Priyanka recommends that nonprofits invite supporters into ownership and participation that goes beyond a one-time ask. She says people look for identity in the missions they support.

How can nonprofits build community-led giving?

Community-led giving in India has grown through local leaders like Shoaib, who runs quarterly GivingTuesday blood donation camps in a village in Uttar Pradesh. Priyanka Dutt, Chief Advisor to India for GivingTuesday, says the key lesson for nonprofits is trust: giving up control over every detail and letting supporters who share your values lead. Writing donor communications in the present tense helps supporters see their ongoing role in the mission. Nonprofits can also give donors real chances to meet each other, from virtual gatherings to small local meetups.

Who is Priyanka Dutt?

Priyanka Dutt is Chief Advisor to India for GivingTuesday, the global generosity movement led by CEO Asha Curran. She has more than 20 years of experience in media and communication, starting in television production and moving into social and behavior change communication. Her earlier work covered maternal and child health, reproductive healthcare, gender equity, nutrition, and HIV. At GivingTuesday, she leads the work to grow a year-round, community-led generosity movement across India.