1. What is AAS Ashram?
Amarshradha Atmabodh Sadhna Ashram popularly known as AAS Ashram is a place for Spiritual upliftment also working on social causes tgrought its non profit arm Amar Shradha Charitable Trust, dedicated to promote a “giving culture”. We aspire for a world where all of us come together to create a better and an equal world for everyone.
We respect your decision to donate, and understand that you want your contribution to make an impact. AAS helps you with this by offering you a wide range of donation options on a variety of causes. AAS employs stringent norms of credibility and accountability to its associates and also send a feedback report with details on how your money has made a difference.
We would require you PAN number if your annual donations across all programs cross Rs.50,000/-.
Monthly Giving on AAS enables donors who want to support beneficiaries from underprivileged communities through crucial long-term life events. When you choose to give monthly for a long-term, your donation is no longer just charity but grows to become an investment. It is an investment that helps beneficiaries for a long-term through his or her need. This helps the community at large.
You can support a host of causes through AAS . AAS along with its partner orhanisations, work in different aspects of poverty alleviation through causes that support Children, Differently Abled, Education, Elderly, Livelihood, Environment, Health, Women, and Youth.
Yes, of course. You may support as many programs as you wish to.
You can donate to AAS in the below steps
- Select a cause that you wish to support.
- Select the number of units that you want to support by adding more units to the cart.
- Click on the ‘Donate’ button on the page
- Make the payment.
You will receive you donation receipt after you finish the transaction. Your subsequent donation amounts will be charged to your card in a 30 day cycle.
9. When does my monthly giving donation gets charged to my card?
Your ‘monthly giving’ donation will be charged to your card in a 30 day . Ex: If you make your first donation on 20th of the month, your subsequent donation will be 30 days later and so on.
AAS presently accepts
- all credit cards and debit cards made in India, for donations.
- You can also donate through cheque or direct account transfer.
AAS has very high standards on credit card security to better protect the information you give us when you make the donation. We do not store any payment information on our servers.
For all the programs that you support we will send you regular reports with update on the program.
We do welcome visitors to the beneficiary communities but we do not allow the donors to visit the specific beneficiaries that they have supported or sponsored, as it can often give rise to awkward situations for the beneficiary.
We are sorry to see that you are thinking of terminating your monthly giving . Is there anything we can do to change your mind? In case you do have to cancel your giving program, please log in to AAS and then click on ‘Cancel Subscription’ on the respective program in the ‘Donations’ section of the ‘Your Profile’ page. We will send you an email confirming your cancellation.
Your donation will be charged to your card in a 30 days cycle and you will receive a receipt within 48 hours of the donation. If you haven’t received your receipt within 48 hours, please contact us at at contact@sadguruprasadam.com
All Indian taxpayers can avail the tax exemption for donations made through 80G.
At AAS , we value the trust and faith donors place in us while making a donation. To ensure that we live up to this trust, we have a set of norms that that nonprofits have to fulfil to be profiled on our site. Every nonprofit undergoes a robust due diligence process that covers legal, compliance, financial, implementation and monitoring checks and only on fulfilling all the requirements are listed on the site.
18. How does the due diligence process works?
An overview of our due-diligence process
We go to the extent of meeting the actual people that our partner organisations serve. They mostly live in remote villages, but that doesn’t stop us because we take our promise to bring you trustworthy options very seriously.
We regularly review the norms of our due diligence and verification process to keep them in line with the laws of the land. We evolve to keep ourselves at the cutting edge of technology and operations. This helps us review the process and norms regularly so that you can always be sure that your donations are always reaching the right people in the right way.
19. What type of critical checks do we carry for partner NGO’s?
Critical Checks Before Listing
Every nonprofit has a set of requisite qualifiers which are essential to its listing and continued presence on the site.
The most critical evaluation parameter is where we understand and verify how the nonprofit implements, monitors, and reviews its programs so that there is integrity in their results and there is effective tracking of expenses incurred.
Legal
We will make sure that the organisation meets all requirements of the law of the land is a registered legal entity. All documents of incorporation, identity and applicable licenses are physically verified for accuracy.
Compliance
The organisation should have undergone a minimum of one audit cycle and filed one set of tax returns to ensure that the organisation has been checked at least once by a third party and there are no serious notations in the reports.
The audited financials for upto three years are physically verified to understand the health of the organisation as well as to check if there are serious concerns raised by their auditor. Any concerns raised by the auditors are checked and only after satisfactory clarification, we proceed with the listing.
Monitoring & Evaluation’ (M&E)
Nonprofits are assessed for verifiable records
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Of beneficiaries and benefits the program offers them
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Of Payments made to its employees
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That no donations raised through us are used for political or religious activities.
Nonprofits are assessed for financial aspects like
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Making sure that more than 70% of expenses made through a non-cash medium
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Verifiable records of accounts and expenses which they will make available for us as requested
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Components of cost covered by donations made by our donors cannot have an alternate donor
Corporate Governance
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Verifiable records of board meetings, attendance and minutes.
Systems & Process – Financial Information
Check of financial process is done on ground through periodic visits to the nonprofit partners across 23 states of the country.
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We review the accounting structure, total income and expenditure incurred by programs and the organisation in the past two years.
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For already listed nonprofits, we do the verification with specific focus on GiveIndia funds related expenses against a random selection of vouchers and bills.
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We enforce a maximum cap on the cash expenses that can be made using donations received through GiveIndia. We verify adherence to this aspect as well.
Systems & Process – Program Implementation
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We check the on-ground implementation of the listed program through visits to project site and interaction with employees who manage the program
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We verify how the organization tracks its beneficiaries as well as the impact of the program.
Systems & Process – Verification
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We visit the beneficiaries in person to reconfirm benefits without prior intimation to the NGO
Our team travels across the length and the breadth of the country to make sure that we do these checks so you can give with trust. We travel across the country no matter how remote the areas of execution are, to make sure that the program works the way it is meant to.
20. Does our donation reach out to correct people?
Making sure your donations reach the right people
While it is difficult to verify every donation made through us, we verify a random sample for every program for every listed program.
Verification visits are conducted by randomly identifying two or more beneficiaries of a program from the reports that have been sent by the nonprofits. Our team then visit the beneficiary, usually directly without prior information. Checks are conducted on
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If the beneficiary exists
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She has received the benefits as described in the feedback report.
What happens if a partner nonprofit does not meet our requirements?
If a partner nonprofit does not meet our requirements at the initial due diligence stage, we will not list their programs on our platform
If the verification of an active program fails, it could be because of the below few reasons
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because the beneficiary does not exist
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the benefits given to him as described in the feedback report are found to be false.
We seek clarification from the nonprofit partner and also schedule a follow-up verification visit for a secondary visit. If even after the revisit, the nonprofit fails to show credible evidence or correct its process & procedures, then the partner NGO will be deactivated.