What are in-kind contributions and how to secure them?

In-kind contributions: The support that you receive from donors for your charity can be of two kinds:

– Cash- when there is a direct monetary support; and 

– In-kind- which is, non-monetary support, for which you would have otherwise spent 

In-kind contribution could include:

1. A donated product- for example- computer and peripherals, equipment’s, furniture, educational material, etc.
2. A donated service- for example- finance audit expert service provided by a finance firm
3. A voluntary (non-core) service – for example- help in running an event activity or volunteering as teacher for a charity education project 

For a charity organisation, by getting in-kind support, there is a direct saving in the budget and thus, the organisation has more resources for other activities that they could undertake. 

Example of activities that charity organisations seek in-kind support for:

In-kind support could be received for any and all kind of activities. There is no definite list for the same. Some example of activities that could preferably be done through in-kind support includes:

1. Events- One of the key activities for each in-kind support is easy to secure is events. A charity organisation requires to conduct various kinds of events either to strengthen engagement or for creating awareness. These could be events for schools, communities, or even in general public.

Within Events, several requirements can be managed through in-kind support. For example- food and beverages, water, venue, audio-visual material, gifts, prizes, t-shirt and apparels, etc. For this, one should list down all the requirements. For each item look for who can possibly provide this item or take care of the cost; approach the possible donors and secure the support. 

One of the reasons why donors agree to provide in-kind support for events is that an event provides opportunity for co-branding and thus, is a win-win situation for both the charity and organisation providing in-kind support.   

1. Specialised tasks: There are some specialised tasks for example- organisational restructuring exercise, developing and implementing an efficient process like SAP or technology, etc., which are required by a charity organisation as well. These are, otherwise, priced services provided by respective agencies. These agencies could be approached to provide such services through in-kind support (pro-bono is a popular term used for such type of support). A popular example in this category is the Google Grant of USD 10,000 provided by Google for all charity organisations for Google Ads advertising.
2. Regular services: There are certain services that are required by charity organisations regularly as like a corporate organisation but these are available for charity as in-kind support. A common example of such type of in-kind support is the data management service provided by Salesforce for which upto 10 licenses are provided free for NGOs. There are similar other product examples available which are either provided for free or at discounted price for NGOs.