Asha for Education - Providing Hope for Tomorrow Asha Atlanta 1 Atlanta Chapter Meeting 01/31/2010

Asha for Education Asha Atlanta 2 MISSION: To catalyze socio-economic change in India through education of underprivileged children. Guiding Principles - 100% volunteer run - No hierarchy - Non-political and non-religious - Zero Overhead - Credibility is a focus

The Year 2009 Asha Atlanta 3 Projects Supported => 9 Funds to be Disbursed (by Jan End) => 38K ($23K till date) Funds Raised (Total 36K) Sanskriti Cultural Event (13K) ING 2009 (3K) Atlanta Marathon (10K) Braves Raffles (0.5K) Net IP event (0.3K) WAH (1.2K) Calendars (0.5K) Cyclone Aila (2K) Registry of Hope (2.5K) Project specific individual Donations (2.5K) Other donations (0.5K)

The Year 2010 (Goals) Asha Atlanta 4 Projects to be Supported => 12 Fundraising target =>60K 4 main sources of funding: Marathon Training (30K from ING, Atlanta, Peachtree Road Race) Social events (10K from Wine & Cheese Event, dinner, event sponsorships, new events) Support-a-project,WAH & Registry-of-Hope (10K) Cultural event (10K, TBD in Fall) Raising awareness in local groups — Spread the word Get registered in Emory and GSU.

The Year 2010 (1 st Quarter) Asha Atlanta 5 ING fundraising event (Jan – March) Wine & Cheese Event (March/ April) Support-a-project efforts (WB, Gujarat, Karnataka, AP) Raising awareness in local groups Get local students involved (high school students, youth clubs)

Wine and Cheese ( March / April.. TBD) WHY ?  Get Asha-Atlanta chapter exposed to more organizations and audience  Create public awareness about Asha  Have a Booth  Presentation of our accomplishments  Membership options  Provide a stage for networking for our members and volunteers  Increase our membership accounts  Gain more sponsors

What do we need to do?  As a team we need to make this event a success.. We need your help!  Come up with a theme  Wine tasting  Entertainment  Ideas ?  Create a Budget  Find the venue  Find Volunteers  Find Sponsors  Aggressive Marketing  Target Audience

Cultural Event : “Natyanjali” (Aug 21, 2010 ) What is it?  Similar to Sanskriti  Partnering with Natyanjali dance school to host the Cultural event  Themed on Lord Krishna.. Bharatnatyam  Venue has been booked by the Teachers/ Rialto Center at Georgia State University as a possible for Aug 21,  Natyanjali wants to keep use some funds towards the expenditure and rest all goes to ASHA What's in it for us?  Promotion and Marketing of ASHA  Gain sponsors / members and more funds during the process

What are we going to offer?  Volunteers  Marketing  Stage Management  Misc Support  Proposed cost (~10000); Funds to be raised (tickets, sponsors, DVDs) => ~25000

Sanskriti 2010 We are partnering with Natyanjali (a classical dance school) to host a dance event similar to Sanskriti 2009 Preliminary discussions are on with the stake holders This will be a bharathanatyam event, with a special guest from Chennai Estimated Revenue for Asha > 10K Your Inputs?

Sanskriti 2010 – preliminary numbers We will help with Marketing, Website, e-ticketing, Brochures, Auditorium, Seating, Production, DVD and Event day volunteering. Estimated Production cost is 25K Funds raised by Natyanjali 8.5K Estimated Sponsorships & Ads 11K Estimated tickets sales 17K We will try to keep the production cost to a minimum.

Action Items Asha Atlanta 12 If you are on facebook join the campaign get your friends in Atlanta involved Take leadership roles in various events and help us grow Talk to the organizations you are involved with. Get long term donors and corporate sponsorships (from ur company)

What can you do? Asha Atlanta 13 Visit us at We can do it. You can help!!  This group is for you if  If you consider charity as your hobby  If you are looking for a group doing fun events for a great cause  If you want to help unfortunate kids in India and change their lives  Commitments can be from 2-3 hrs for one time event to 4 hrs/week for 2-3 months depending on what you want to do.  You can help in  Events/Fundraisers  Publicity/ Spreading the word  Website development  Stewarding projects, getting site visits done in India.

Attendees (8): Senthil, Hema Nagrajan, Hema Ramanathan, Tapobrata, Padmanava, Pritesh, Vineet, Lakhsmi. Self-sustenance for Marathon Program (e.g. coordinator from older running group, alumni runners as mentors) Planning events with an event proposal at hand and volunteer names associated with it (2 leaders, 3 supporting) Get children/high-school kids involved and get to their parents ( e.g. Balya Bihar); More events like Sanskriti where a school of arts performs. Connect to local organizations to raise awareness and start support-a-project in diff. states (KA, AP, TN, MP,Gujarat, WB) Discussions and Meeting minutes Asha Atlanta 14

Asha for Education Asha Atlanta 15  Over 70 Chapters Globally  1000s of Active Volunteers  Raised over $4M in 2008  Highly ranked in charitynavigator.org

The Year 2009 Asha Atlanta 16 Active volunteer strength increased by (Beyond student groups) Monthly Project Meetings started Half-yearly Newsletter out after 2 yrs Donor database created and maintained Facebook account created New look for Atlanta Chapter website (regularly updated) Publicity campaign in Peachtree Road Race and Global Mela

Looking back – Year 2008 Asha Atlanta 17 Asha Atlanta

Asha on Social Networks Asha Atlanta 18 The Atlanta chapter is active on Facebook and Orkut. New events and volunteering opportunities are posted on these networks. Great way to show your support to Asha and updating your friends at the same time.

ZOH policy Asha Atlanta 19 Asha takes pride in its Zero Overhead (ZOH) Policy. Simply put this means all the money we raise goes to the children we support. All administrative expenses (ex Credit card processing fees, cost of running the marathon training program etc) are kept to a minimum as much as possible. A recent Asha Representative Committee (ARC) poll due to accept/modify the ZOH policy but gave chapters the option of moving away from ZOH if they are unable to raise funds to meet the admin expenses.

ZOH Challenges Asha Atlanta 20 Atlanta had so far decided to stick to ZOH as we have seen this to be a major motivating factor for donors to choose Asha over other charities. In 2008, all our marathon admin expenses were sponsored by TSG. We are looking for sponsorships to cover the admin expenses from this point onwards. Other ideas include organizing events especially to cover for admin expenses, so regular donors' money always goes to the children. Suggestions are welcome! We will do an official voting soon.