Inside The Operating Model Behind A Global Spiritual Mission's Service Initiatives - Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshji

Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur runs a wide network of projects through centres spread across six continents. Its humanitarian arm, Shrimad Rajchandra Love and Care, has held Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 2020, and its Africa programme is active across multiple African countries. Its education arm runs a large network of value-education centres worldwide. Judged on footprint alone, it would be a mid-sized international NGO. It is, however, a spiritual organisation founded in 1994 by a philosophy doctorate, Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshji.

What makes it worth examining on business terms is not the scale but the consistency of method across very different programmes.

The three problems, and the answers

Charitable work at national scale runs into the same three obstacles: reaching people far from infrastructure, keeping them in the system after a first intervention, and having rigorous transparency and accountability. The mission's programmes are built around those three specifically.

Take healthcare outreach initiatives. The programme is active across a wide network of Indian states, working through multiple dedicated centres, and has scaled rapidly over the last few years. The outcome reporting is more specific than most public health work.

With these outreach programmes, regular follow-ups and re-intervention ensure that healing continues long after the departure of the visiting team; which is typically the failure point for most such interventions.

Lastly, real-time data collection and publishing of annual reports ensures transparency. Since several of the NGO's supporters are high-profile corporates who support via CSR, trackability of impact is paramount. The programmes are supported by a strong backbone of IT and data collection infrastructure to allow for detailed auditing.

The fixed assets

The physical infrastructure sits largely at Dharampur in South Gujarat: a charity hospital serving a large network of surrounding villages, an upcoming university, an animal hospital, a Centre of Excellence for Women and a naturopathy centre to follow. A charitable hospital at Surendranagar was also adopted recently.

Through this wide gamut of initiatives, Shrimad Rajchandra Love and Care has touched millions of lives across healthcare, education and humanitarian programmes.

What is being committed next

At Aho Gurudev, the sixtieth birth-anniversary celebrations of Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshji, a gathering is being held at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai on 25 and 26 September. At the event, the mission will announce sixty landmark initiatives, thirty spiritual and thirty in service.

The service side includes expansion of the mega medical camps, the anaemia mitigation programme, and the vision care project, aimed at uplifting a large number of lives over the coming years.

For an organisation whose founding line is to realise one's true self and serve others selflessly, the sixtieth-year celebrations of Pujya Gurudevshri are clearly bringing to life both these aspects and putting them into real action.