Admin expenses, dependency on local transfer and word clouds: An analysis of Foreign Funding to Indian NGOs with graphs and charts

In this short article, we will provide a series of data points that will help break down the nature of foreign funded non-profits in India. This is intended to serve as a reference for all discussions on the subject.

Basic Facts

1. A total of 21918 entities filed FC4 returns for the financial year 2018-2019
2. 10336 reported having received no funds from abroad at all
3. 16557 reported having received no funds from other FCRA NGOs within India.
4. 5361 NGOs received some funds from other FCRA NGOs within India.
5. 5033 relied on transfers from other FCRA NGOs within India for more than 30% of their foreign fund inflow.
6. 3341 reported having spent more than 20% of their total inflow on administrative expenses.

NGO distribution by size

We have categorized NGOs in these four categories

1. 634 Mega NGOs – Total foreign income (including interest income and intra-India transfers) above 10 crore
2. 599 Medium NGOs – Total foreign income of 1 to 10 crores
3. 11168 Small NGOs – Total foreign income of 5 lakhs to 1 crore
4. 6323 Micro NGOs – Total foreign income of < 5 lakhs
5. 3788 Not receiving funds – No foreign income at all

Admin Expenses and Size

Dependency on Local Transfer

A total of 2879 NGOs depend upon transfers from other FCRA NGOs in India for more than 20% of their total income. Of these

• 69 are Mega NGOs
• 66 are medium sized NGOs
• 2744 are Small and Micro NGOs

FDs and Cash in the hands of NGOs

We categorize the ratio of FD and cash in hand to the total inflow of foreign funds for the year in this segment. As can be seen, the large hoard of cash above Rs 13000 crores is concentrated in the mega NGOs

1. 634 large NGOs hold Rs 9576 crores in FD and cash – an average of Rs 15.1 crores
2. 599 Medium NGOs hold Rs 1349 crores in FD and cash – an average of Rs 2.25  crores
3. 17491 Small and Micro NGOs hold Rs 2189 crores in FD and cash – an average of Rs 12.5 lakhs

State Wise distribution

All NGOs

Mega NGOs

Medium NGOs

Small and Micro NGOs

Names of NGOs – word clouds

Wordclouds indicate the frequency at which a particular word appears in a list of names.

This has the names of NGOs with common words like A, An, The, Of, For removed:

All NGOs

Mega NGOs – Total foreign income above 10 crore

Medium NGOs – Total foreign income of 1 to 10 crores

Small NGOs – Total foreign income of 5 lakhs to 1 crore

Micro NGOs – Total foreign income of < 5 lakhs

Conclusion

The above mentioned charts demonstrate that a significant portion of NGOs will be affected by the FCRA Amendment passed recently by the Indian Parliament. Two provisions that will have the greatest impact are the amendment that restricts administrative expenses to 20% of fund inflow and another that requires all NGOs to utilise the funds themselves and not transfer them to other NGOs.