AID GBM and fund-raising ideas

The General Body Meeting of AID-TAMU was held on 16^th September, 2006. I presided over the meeting and made the customary presentation. For more details on AID-TAMU, please refer to:
http://tamu.aidindia.org

From my perspective, the GBM was extremely satisfying. I was pleased with the attendance as well as the response.
Coming to the point, Homarjun gave some pointers for fund-raising. His ideas and related comments can be found at:
http://homarjun.blogspot.com/2006/09/aid-tamu.html

Here’s my response. For starters, I appreciate the enthu and concern. So, don’t take any of this in a negative sense, but just an objective evaluation on the ideas.

Grocery Rides:

This will probably work if we don’t end up renting car. We may have to find some volunteers (with cars) who can take guys on their own car (saves rental charges + insurance). But, the real question is: How many students are willing to pay for grocery ride? Anyway, we could start a pilot program and see how it goes.

Cricket matches:

I think we discussed this in detail over emails.

Airport pick up:

Good idea. Again we need volunteers to do the driving.

Movie Screening:

In my opinion, this may not be possible. We explored this option last year. The copyright rules are like Rubik’s cubes. No one seems to get a clear hold on them. Last year we screened “Swades” in collaboration with the MSC LT Jordan institute. They handled all the copyright stuff. However, this screening was done free. If we were to charge, it’s a whole different deal.

Private Donations:

I mentioned this in my speech. This, I believe is still the most easiest and efficient fund-raiser that has a lot of potential. Those small drops of $5 do add up. Consider this, if we can tap 1/4^th of the Indian population and convince them to donate $5 a month ( ~ a meal), that adds up to $150*5 = $750 a month(I believe there are at least 600 desi’s on campus). That adds up to $9,000 a year !! We can get this rolling if we are aggressive enough.

AID-TAMU has moved from a relatively small organization to a place where we have raised $11,500 in a single year. As good as this looks, we can always do more !!