Meenakshi Batra is the chief executive officer of Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), a trust that works to encourage and support donors to give in strategic ways. In 1998, Batra set up the organisation to provide strategic and management support to companies, individuals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with an aim to ensure greater impact of their philanthropic and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) investments.
Batra has served in various leadership roles with international development and humanitarian agencies in South and Southeast Asia. She has successfully led many country programmes in India, Afghanistan and Indonesia. Her foundation also helps connect corporate entities with NGOs.
CAF is an international non-profit organisation promoting effective giving and philanthropy. CAF India is part of an international network with offices in nine countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Russia, South Africa and the United States and distributes funds to over 90 countries around the world.
While talking about CAF initiative, Batra said: "All our initiatives are very unique. We are a cause universal organisation and we support about 500 organisations every year with funding, capacity building, institutions strengthening and to do that we are working with a number of corporates and with a number of individual to raise resources. We also mobilise skills through our volunteer programmes. We enable volunteers working independently as well as working with corporates to give their time, skills and knowledge to various non-profit organisations. And we have a 60-member team.”
CAF promotes and supports all social development causes that positions it uniquely to address a wide cross sectoral span of donor interests. CAF India, with its dedicated team of experts, brings development sector knowledge and experience to take 'Giving' further.
Commenting on how the government is helping the organisation, Batra said: “We align our programs with government. Government has a lot of development schemes. Though our innovations in our projects we create a lot of lessons which we share with the government. Also we draw a lot of inspiration from their overall agenda that the government is setting up for the country to bring about the change. Government has provided an enabling environment for us like the CSR act. They have asked companies to donate 2 per cent of their profit into the social development agenda.”
Batra also shared her advice for young entrepreneurs, she mentioned, “I would say that people should follow their heart. They should focus on their dream that they want to achieve. We all need to think about how we are going to change our country, only then we will move forward. We really need to bring about more activities in our social life. Also, we need to stay away with negative aspects.”
