Deval Sanghavi speaks to Donald Lobo, one of India's most unassuming philanthropists.
Listen in as Lobo deftly steers the conversation away from the Rolling Stones article he was featured in, and as he talks about his giving philosophy and why he trusts organizations that are truly embedded in communities, what people think the terms impact and scale mean versus what they should mean, and why Lobo’s hopeful about the Indian social sector.
”It is wrong for all of us, including us, to only fund the successful ones. We've got to also look beyond them, right. And look to people who might have tried it and failed, and maybe they just needed that last additional push. Maybe some intangibles. And the other thing we can do , that we need in India, which again, looking at it from a US perspective is getting NGOs in the same room together to talk to each other and for the founder to get the hell out of there.”
Donald Lobo moved to the US from Mumbai in the early 1990s to pursue computer science, and found himself on Yahoo’s founding team. He is also the co-founder and lead developer of CiviCRM, which was set up to give the social sector free and open software. Having always had a keen interest in civil society, Lobo always found time to volunteer alongside his work, and very early on he began thinking about investing more and more of his time and his resources in causes close to his heart. Lobo is the founder of the Chintu Gudiya Foundation that funds NGOs in India and runs Tech4Dev, that works with non-profits to build their tech capacities.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
Know more about Donald Lobo's work at Chintu Gudiya Foundation on LinkedIn. To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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