‘Partners’ or ‘Service Providers’?

A HUMBLE APPEAL to India-based KP associations

As written earlier, KOA has several board-approved programs to monetarily support our community back in India that is in need of our support. Some of these programs, educational and medical, have been in existence since the mid-1990s. The office bearers of KOA, such as its executive team comprising the president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer, as well as directors that comprise its board, and the program directors, are all volunteers that are not monetarily compensated for their respective responsibilities. The program directors collect donations from the US-based KP community, and some Canada-based, on an annual basis for their respective programs. Of course, KOA cannot work in vacuum. It depends on India-based KP organizations to help identify the needy and distribute our checks among the beneficiaries. They are in true sense ‘service providers’ as KOA pays them for their services provided - such as maintaining their office, collecting and uploading of the beneficiary information to our KOA portal that allows a donor access to beneficiary’s details for transparency - just as KOA pays other service providers for printing calendars and directories for its members, as well as website and portal development to two different service providers. Had they been an ‘equal partner of KOA’, these India-based associations that KOA works with should not be getting paid for such services from KOA, and more importantly, should have been supporting half the beneficiaries that KOA supports with money raised locally in India (In a partnership business, all partners share liabilities and profits equally, ref. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/partnership.asp ). That is unfortunately not the case. Additionally, the US-based members have their own needs and expectations of KOA. After all, KOA started off as an organization to serve these US-based members. I do not see these India-based KP associations coming forward to help the US-based members, do we? In fact, this thought has never crossed their mind, as it has all along been one-way traffic from the US to India all through these decades.

During this Covid wave that has dealt a devastating blow to our community back home, I have now started seeing posts from these associations as if they are at the forefront of this fight. When they post such messages, they MUST declare the source of help from KOA and other organizations that they have received, and more importantly, how much of their effort is their own, i.e., how much they have raised ‘locally’ (including those contributions from the overseas KP who donate from their rupee accounts), how many Covid-related equipment they have purchased and distributed with their own money, and all that. They must also publish their audited accounts ever since their inception(s) and post those on social media. This has to be done in order to be transparent to the community they wish to serve. This is nothing new to KOA, as it has all along done, because it is required by law to be transparent to its members and donors about the fundraising and how these donations were spent.

I would like to humbly request any India-based association working with KOA not to term the relationship as a ‘partner of KOA’, which is otherwise very MISLEADING. The correct word is ‘service provider of KOA’ and should be henceforth corrected. Their declarations on social media these days look hollow and more like बहती गंगा में हाथ धो लो on KOA’s dime. Is it possible for these associations, trusts and ashrams to rise to the occasion and pay for these new patients to meet post-Covid medical expenses, daily expenses of all those families who have lost their bread-earners, educational expenses of their children left behind WITHOUT looking for funds from KOA more than what KOA already pays for? There's money in India, LOTS OF IT. If that is not possible, as old habits seem to die hard for some with never-ending appetite for foreign funds, I have the following words for them: कुछ तो शर्म कर लो.