Giving Compass' Take:

• India Development Review analyses data following the implementation of the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Act (FCRA).

• How do regulations influence the flow of philanthropic dollars? 

• Learn about philanthropy in India in 2019. 

In year 2015-16, foreign donations worth INR 17,620 crore were made to 23,802 nonprofits in India. This figure was 16 percent higher than the previous year’s figure. In the same year however, some 10,000 FCRA registrations held by nonprofits were cancelled by the government.

FCRA refers to the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Act, a law in the Indian Constitution that looks at the inflow of philanthropic money from foreign contributors, specifically to nonprofits in India.

In recent years, FCRA has become an important part of the public discourse, and foreign donations have been getting an increasing amount of attention from both the media and the government. Despite this, there have been instances where conflicting data points have been quoted by various entities.

To address this problem of inconsistent and inaccurate data, the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP) at Ashoka University commissioned research that uses a quantitative approach, and analyses publicly available data on financial flows into the sector.

  • In 2016-17, the number of nonprofits with FCRA registration declined eight percent (by 1,896) to 21,906. During the same year, the total foreign funds received by them dropped 16 percent from INR 17,620 crore to INR 14,824 crore.
  • According to another data set in the FCRA data bank, between 2010-11 and 2015-16, there were 13,068 FCRA registration numbers for which nonprofits had not filed annual FCRA returns. This matches the volume of FCRA cancellations seen during this period, and supports the reading that the en masse cancellations are primarily a result of the weeding out of multiple registration numbers.

Read the full article about FCRA data at India Development Review.