- 61% Indians helped strangers; 34% volunteered; and 36% donated money
- But major western economies fall out of Top 10 for first time; Half of the world’s population ‘Helped Strangers’
New Delhi| June 14, 2021| The COVID-19 pandemic has upended giving trends across the world as per Charities Aid Foundation’s (CAF) World Giving Index (WGI) 2021 [1]. Several Western economies have slipped down the Index due to COVID lockdowns. But the good news for India is that it climbed up to the 14th rank, which Is several notches up from its 10-year average rank of 82 --published in a special 10-year anniversary edition in 2019.
The WGI 2021 found that India has consistently been working its way up from 2017, when it was ranked 124. In the years 2018 and 2019, India ranked 51 and 19 respectively (the results were not published for these years).
Giving insights on India’s performance on the Index, Meenakshi Batra, Chief Executive of CAF India said: ‘This report comes at a time when India is reeling under a severe COVID wave. And it is commendable to see India perform well on the Index. It gives a lot of hope to see that people are generously contributing money and time to various causes --especially COVID relief.’
The WGI is a global survey, which has interviewed more than 1.6 million people since 2009 and asks each of them three questions: have they helped a stranger, given money or volunteered for a good cause over the past month? This year, Indonesia has topped the index, followed by Kenya and Nigeria. Ranked at 14, India is one of the fastest climbers.
India’s performance on the Index:
Reading into the numbers, Batra explains: ‘Last year during the nationwide lockdown, jobless migrant workers from across India made a beeline for their villages, on foot, battling hunger and heat. But last year also saw many individuals, volunteers, NGOs, RWAs, spiritual and other community institutions, such as Gurdwaras coming out to help them. About 61 percent of Indians helped strangers last year. Similarly, when it comes to volunteering, India ranks six, which means that last year, despite the lockdown, 34 percent Indians volunteered their time.’
‘This year too, despite the scarcity of oxygen cylinders, medicines and the shameful cases of black-marketing, there were many good Samaritans, who went out of their way to help strangers during the peak of the second wave. This is a very encouraging sign!’
According to the report, last year about 36 percent people donated money to charities/ non-profits, which is one percent less than 2019. ‘NGOs have done an exemplary job in providing relief to the vulnerable masses. Lives were saved, but several vulnerable communities need long-term interventions, for which the non-profit sector needs support. People must recognise their work and donate money. This is especially important in the light of the new FCRA amendment, which has cut down the funding of several non-profits, who had been doing excellent work,’ says Batra.
Other key findings
- This year’s survey highlights the impact of lockdowns on charitable giving, as the USA, Canada, Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands -- all fell out of the highest rankings. Only Australia and New Zealand, where the survey was undertaken in the weeks before the first wave of the pandemic took hold, maintained their top 10 rankings.
- Several countries have moved up the rankings and made their first appearance in the top 10, including Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Kosovo – but whilst their overall giving scores have increased somewhat, their rise is driven by the relative decline of other countries.
- Communities around the world mobilised to help fellow citizens during the pandemic, resulting in the highest ‘helped a stranger’ figures since 2009. More than half (55%) of the world’s adults – or 3 billion people - reported helping someone they didn’t know in 2020.
- Similarly, more people donated money in 2020 than had done so in the last five years (31%). Levels of volunteering in 2020 are broadly unchanged at the global level.
Read the full report here: https://cafindia.org/media-center/publications/world-giving-index-2021
Trend analysis of India: https://cafindia.org/images/WGI/WGI_Trend_analysis_India.pdf
For further information:
Contact: Anindita Datta Choudhury, Lead, Media and Communication, CAF
India: 9871515804; email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Notes to editors:
[1] Methodology of the Charities Aid Foundation’s World Giving Index (WGI) 2020:
The CAF World Giving Index is based on data from Gallup’s World View World Poll, which is an ongoing research project. For this edition, data has been included for 114 countries, representing over 90% of the global adult population. The survey asks questions on many different aspects of life today including giving behaviour. In March 2020, Gallup paused data collection worldwide as it assessed risk in the face of the emerging pandemic. In May 2020, Gallup initiated contingency data collection plans, replacing face to face interviews (the usual data collection method in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, former Soviet states, developing Asia, the Middle East and Africa) with telephone based interview. This change is not considered to have had a material impact on the findings detailed in this report.
About CAF
CAF is a group of three charities based in Canada, the United States of America and the United Kingdom specialising in safe and effective cross-border giving. Together, we work with companies and philanthropists to support them to ensure that money reaches the causes at the heart of their giving plans. In the UK, CAF also operates CAF Bank, offering dedicated banking and support to more than 14,000 UK-based charities.
About CAF India
CAF India was set up in 1998 as an independent entity to promote and support the culture of strategic giving in India. It is a part of Global Alliance—a network of CAF organisations from 11 countries across the world. CAF India has a network of over 6,000 NGOs and works with corporates, institutions and individual donors to make their giving count