TracksGiving Blog

We work out of Bombay Connect, a co-working space, based out of...

ritvvijparrikh — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0530

We work out of Bombay Connect, a co-working space, based out of Bandra West, Mumbai.

We are off to Ahmedabad from 14th for mentoring at IIM-A....

ritvvijparrikh — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0530

We are off to Ahmedabad from 14th for mentoring at IIM-A. TracksGiving enters finals (Top 75 from 14,000+ applications) of Economic Times: Power of Ideas.

Update: Uploaded photograph of all 75 teams that spent 10 days at IIM-A along with CIIE members.

Stories of giving

ritvvijparrikh — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0530

The end has come to Karna after the battle with Arjuna. But his soul is not leaving the body. The Dharma Devata is around his body protecting the soul. At that time, Bhagwan Srikrishna appears before him in the guise of a Brahmin with a begging bowl.
Knowing Him to be Bhagwan, Karna prays to Him and asks him “What to give” since he has nothing on hand.
Bhagawan says ” O ! Karna !! The Dharma Devata is protecting your soul. Pl give away the Punya you have earned by your Dhaarmic Acts, so far, to me as Dhaana. I have come to receive the Dhaana and relieve you from this worldly attachment. Immediately,without any hesitation, Karna removes the arrow from his chest and with the handful of his blood give away the Punya so far he has earned thro”out his life with these words ” I give THEE the Punya whatever I have earned so far,along with the Punya what I am now earning by this Act of mine now. ” That is Karna the King of Giving.

This is as quoted in Villiputhuraar Bharatham.

“Rivers do not drink their own water, nor do tree eat their own fruit, nor do rain clouds eat the grains reared by them. The wealth of the noble is used solely for the benefit of others!
Even after accepting that giving is good and that one must learn to give, several questions need to be answered.

The first question is: When should one give?

We all know the famous incident from Mahabharat.
Yudhisthir asks a beggar seeking alms to come the next day. On this, Bhim rejoices that Yudhisthir his brother, has conquered death! For he is sure that he will be around the next day to give. Yudhisthir gets the message.
One does not know really whether one will be there tomorrow to give!
The time to give, therefore, is now.

The next question is: ‘How much to give?’

One recalls the famous incident from history.
Rana Pratap was reeling after defeat from the Moghals. He had lost his army, he had lost his wealth, and most important, he had lost hope, his will to fight. At that time, in his darkest hour, his erstwhile minister, Bhamasha, came seeking him and placed his entire fortune at the disposal of Rana Pratap. With this, Rana Pratap raised an army and lived to fight another day.
The answer to this question how much to give is:
“Give as much as one can!

The next question is: ‘What to give?’

It is not only money that can be given away. It could be a flower or even a smile. It is not how much one gives but how one gives that really matters. When you give a smile to a stranger that may be the only good thing received by him in days and weeks!
“You can give anything but you must give with all your heart!”

Next we have to answer: ‘How to give?’

Coming to the manner of giving, one has to ensure that the receiver does not feel humiliated, nor the giver feels proud by giving. In giving, follow the advice ‘Let not your left hand know what your right hand gives? Charity without publicity and fanfare is the highest form of charity.’
‘Give quietly!’
While giving, let not the recipient feel small or humiliated. After all, what we give never really belonged to us. We come to this world with nothing and will go with nothing. The thing gifted was only with us for a temporary period. Why then take pride in giving away something which really did not belong to us?
Give with grace and with a feeling of gratitude.

“What should one feel after giving?”

We all know the story of Eklavya. When Dronacharya asked him for his right thumb as “Guru Dakshina, he unhesitatingly cut off the thumb and gave it to Dronacharya.

There is a little known sequel to this story.
Eklavya was asked whether he ever regretted the act of giving away his thumb. He replied, and the reply has to be believed to be true, as it was asked to him when he was dying.

His reply was “Yes! I regretted this only once in my life. It was when Pandavas were coming in to kill Dronacharya who was broken hearted on the false news of death of his son, Ashwathama, and had stopped fighting. It was then that I regretted the loss of my thumb. If the thumb was there, no one could have dared hurt my Guru?

The message to us is clear.
Give and never regret giving!

And the last question is:
‘How much should we provide for our heirs?’

Ask yourself ‘are we taking away from them the gift of work? - A source of happiness?
The answer is given by Warren Buffett:
“Leave your kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing!”
I would conclude by saying:
Let us learn the Art of Giving,
and quoting the Sant Kabir:
“When the wealth in the house increases, when water fills a boat, throw them out (for good causes) with both hands!”

This is the wise thing to do.

9 ways how cause marketing can help you achieve marketing objectives

ritvvijparrikh — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0530

Today we spoke at the India Center for CSR on how cause marketing can help achieve marketing objectives.

9 ways how cause marketing can help you achieve your marketing objectives. from TracksGiving.com

We are extremely happy to announce that TracksGiving made it to...

ritvvijparrikh — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0530

We are extremely happy to announce that TracksGiving made it to the FIRST SHORTLIST of the Economic Times: Power of Ideas - 2012 Award. We will now go in for one-on-one mentoring followed by another round of pitches.

We are pleased to announce that ThoughtWorks Bangalore has...

ritvvijparrikh — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0530

We are pleased to announce that ThoughtWorks Bangalore has decided to support TracksGiving as part of its Social Impact Program. A team of 15 is developing open source email tracking functionality for TracksGiving! Here is a picture of the wonderful team that worked on it.

A good example of how businesses use cause marketing to engage...

ritvvijparrikh — Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0530

A good example of how businesses use cause marketing to engage their customers casually.

Today we presented the concept of cause marketing as a tool...

ritvvijparrikh — Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 +0530

Today we presented the concept of cause marketing as a tool for in-reach marketing to a 100+ crowd at Start-up Saturday Mumbai session on Sales. In pic: Kunal Shah of Freecharge.in giving his talk.

TracksGiving was selected as The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE)...

ritvvijparrikh — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0530

TracksGiving was selected as The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Smasher’s finalist (Top 7 out of 153 start-ups). Also had a one-on-one mentoring session with Mahesh Murthy from Seedfund. The train chugs on…

Pay $5 on Google Offers and get a $10 Starbucks card. Also...

ritvvijparrikh — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0530

Pay $5 on Google Offers and get a $10 Starbucks card. Also Google donates $3.

AT&T’s - End the dropout crisis cause marketing...

ritvvijparrikh — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0530

AT&T’s - End the dropout crisis cause marketing campaign. In order to help the students graduate and thus lower the dropout rate, AT&T has launched an interesting campaign where in for each posted comment on its campaign page, it donates $2.

Cause marketing's dirty secret: Transparency

ritvvijparrikh — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0530

Transparency Issues in Cause Marketing from mikelawrence

MyPerks.in launches its cause marketing campaign

ritvvijparrikh — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0530

http://myPerks.in/, a corporate perks platform for employees of 15 major corporates in India, starts using TracksGiving to allow its customers to plant trees.

Quote –- India faces an environmental emergency with melting glaciers, rampant soil erosion and a swiftly destabilizing monsoon. This is impacting your health, causing frequent droughts or floods and hurting our nations food security. With increasing food price and rampant farmer suicides, what will we do if our farmers (760 million of them) give up? This reality was too disturbing for us to ignore.

https://secure.tracksgiving.com/users/kwench/campaigns/trees-for-life

TracksGiving reaches Echoing Green Semifinals

ritvvijparrikh — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0530

TracksGiving reaches the semifinals of the prestigious Echoing Green Fellowship 2012. We were shortlisted in the top 350 social entrepreneurs from 3500 applications world wide. Look out for Pykih Inc at http://www.echoinggreen.org/blog/2012-semifinalists

www.PamperedChef.com is the premier direct seller of high...

ritvvijparrikh — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0530

www.PamperedChef.com is the premier direct seller of high quality kitchen tools and part of Berkshire Hathaway. Since 1991, The Pampered Chef® has contributed $19 million to the fight against hunger in America. They are currently aiming to raise $20 million worth of groceries for those in need.

Whole Foods Market is a foods supermarket chain based in Austin,...

ritvvijparrikh — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0530

Whole Foods Market is a foods supermarket chain based in Austin, Texas which emphasizes “natural and organic products.” The company has been ranked among the most socially responsible businesses and placed third on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Top 25 Green Power Partners. The Company runs a “Help Fight Childhood Hunger – Donate Now” drive as part of its community giving program.

The Rolling Stone Magazine’s december 2011 edition ran a...

ritvvijparrikh — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0530

The Rolling Stone Magazine’s december 2011 edition ran a full page advertisement of BELVEDERE Vodka’s (PRODUCT)RED Special edition bottle. For every bottle sold, BELVEDERE will contribute 50% of the profits to eliminate HIV/AIDS in Africa. The advertisement also had a QR code, which took us to a website that asks for the DOB to verify that the user has passed the Legal Drinking Age. Once past this page, the website had a video of R&B singer Usher endorsing the brand and the cause.

Evolution of our homepage!

ritvvijparrikh — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0530

Evolution of our homepage!

6 reasons to trust your data on our cloud

ritvvijparrikh — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0530

Your trust is everything to us. Hence, we use industry-standards to maintain security of your data over the cloud.

1) World-class hosting

We are deployed on Amazon EC2 servers through www.heroku.com (a Salesforce company). Most of the world’s largest cloud companies use Amazon EC2 e.g. Dropbox, Netflix, Nasdaq OMX, Instagram, etc. All files are stored on Amazon S3 file servers.

2) SSL Security

TracksGiving uses SSL security, the same security mechanism that major banking websites and e-commerce sites employ. Because of it, all communication to and fro, from your your computer and our server is encrypted.

3) Password protected and scoped sessions

All web based sessions and logins are password protected. All passwords are encrypted in database. To avoid recurring exposure of your password, we allow logging in through your Facebook id. Our products store data of multiple clients in the same database. To avoid accidental cross-client data access, all data access is scoped. That is, first we get the logged in user (e.g. Acme Corp) and only then we attempt to fetch any other data. All API requests are protected by 128-bit key.

4) Automatic back-ups

Our database is regularly backed up.

5) Protection against malicious attacks from front-end

Our front-end is secured against Mass Assignment attack, SQL Injection attack and Cross scripting attacks among others.

6) Your data is yours!

If at any point you think we messed up real bad, or if you just want to move on, you request for an export of all your data. You can take your data and exit any time without any termination fee. We do not sell, distribute or share your data with anyone.

AT&T runs an event triggered cause marketing campaign to...

ritvvijparrikh — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0530

AT&T runs an event triggered cause marketing campaign to support - “No text and drive”. All that consumers have to do is watch a video and take a pledge by signing up with their Facebook account and AT&T donates $2 per pledge upto $60,000 to National Organizations for Youth Safety, to continue their effective community-based programs to teach teens to be safer drivers.