Giving Compass' Take:

• Kumari Shibulal, founder and chairperson of the Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives, shares her learnings and hands-on approach to philanthropy. 

• Would you consider your approach to philanthropy to be hands-on? 

• Read more examples of this type of philanthropy approach. 

In this interview with IDR, Kumari Shibulal discusses how taking a hands-on approach has enriched her philanthropic efforts and shares lessons from her journey.

Tell us about how you started your philanthropic journey. What got you interested in going down this path?

Both me and Shibu, my husband, come from middle-class backgrounds. While Shibu grew up in a middle-class family, mine belonged to the lower middle-class. Our parents insisted that we should get educated, and we have reached where we are today because of that insistence.

Education has the power to transform lives, and that’s why we chose to start our philanthropic journey with education. We started in 1999 at a very small scale, by sponsoring scholarships for two children from the school where Shibu studied. Then it grew to four, then six, and so on. Today, we sponsor 3,500 children’s graduate education every year through the Vidyadhan programme and run several other education programmes too. When we started this work two decades ago, we never thought that we would scale our efforts up to the extent that we have today.

What enabled you to grow your work? 

Collaborating with others to expand the pool of givers has contributed significantly to the growth of our programmes.

You have taken a very hands-on approach to your philanthropy. How has this informed your choices around allocating resources and making programmatic shifts, if needed?

We provide need-based scholarships to students in ten states, through the Vidyadhan programme. While we follow the same process in each of these states, the context does vary from one state to the other. Taking a hands-on approach to building this programme has allowed us to adapt it, where required. By doing this, we can ensure that we are responsive to the students’ needs.

Read the full article about an open approach to philanthropy by Rachita Vora and Sneha Philip at India Development Review.