The Tech4Good Community has launched a tech platform that connects Indian nonprofits with mentors and tool-makers to amplify their social impact. Nonprofits across India can use OTTER [Online Tech Training Engagement Resource], developed by Tech4Good Community, a social change initiative, to become aware, access support, avail discounts and get mentorship from companies like Google, Salesforce, Atlassian, Give India, and Razorpay.
“We want to improve access to technology for nonprofits, especially small and remote ones,” said Rinju Rajan, Co-Founder of Tech4Good Community. “OTTER is our biggest dream, and has been two years in the making.”
“OTTER addresses a huge unsolved problem in the nonprofit-volunteer ecosystem today: the search,” said Prashanth B, Tech Lead, Google India. “The more time I spend searching, the less time I spend solving. OTTER turns this around by building a system through which nonprofits and mentors can discover each other. It’s not a social network, it’s a network of societies.”
“As soon as a nonprofit signs up to OTTER, they get a diagnostic tool to identify any technological gaps they face, and tools to bridge that gap,“ said Anusha Meher Bhargava, Co-Founder, Tech4Good Community. “OTTER has the potential to help nonprofits quickly become more impactful.”
“Technology has never been more important to running a nonprofit than during the pandemic”, said Girish Ananthanarayanan, COO and Director-Scale Programmes at Peepul India. “The tools that nonprofits use to continue their work without interruption can make or break them. Whether it is to manage remote work, disseminate information, or track impact for lakhs of people, the right solution can save an incredible amount of time and resources. I’m exhilarated to see OTTER being launched – finally a one stop shop to search for and connect to solutions.”
“Through OTTER, nonprofits can get special discounts on paid tools, and tool-makers can better understand how their tools are used on the ground,” said Akhila Somanath, Co-Founder, Tech4Good Community. “We want nonprofits to benefit from technology the same way that companies do, be it through a payment gateway, an online data collection tool, or a management information system.”
“We are confident that OTTER can transform how Indian NGOs work,” said Rinju Rajan.
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About Tech4Good Community
Tech4Good Community is an organization incubated by The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation. Their mission is to amplify the social impact of nonprofits by leveraging technology. They have built partnerships with other technology companies for employee engagement, conduct workshops and enable nonprofits’ access to solutions such as management information system (MIS), fundraising platforms, payment gateways, programme management software, online data collection tools, and donor/beneficiary management systems. These solutions have helped nonprofits react with agility during the pandemic and widen the social impact.
