Over A Hundred Projects, Six Continents, One Operating Model: How A Spiritual Mission Runs Like An Institution

Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur runs more than a hundred projects through 136 centres 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 operates in 16 African countries. Its education arm runs more than 250 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.

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 anaemia. The programme is active across 15+ states in India with 26 screening partners and 90 dedicated centres, and has scaled rapidly over the last few years. Till date, over 3 million screenings have been conducted. The outcome reporting is more specific than most public health work: anaemia levels reduced from 48% to 24% in schools after targeted interventions.

The vision care project runs the same pattern at a greater volume: till date, over 8 million screenings and 1.2 million free spectacles distributed across 18 states, 165 districts and 20 NGO partners.

With both 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 250-bed charity hospital serving more than 500 villages, an upcoming university on a 26-acre campus, a 150-ward animal hospital, an 11-acre Centre of Excellence for Women and a naturopathy centre to follow. A charitable hospital at Surendranagar was also adopted recently.

Through the wide gamut of such initiatives, Shrimad Rajchandra Love and Care has touched millions of lives, treated 16.40 million patients through healthcare initiatives, supported 3.40 million students and reached 12.80 million people through humanitarian programmes.

What is being committed next

At Aho Gurudev, the sixtieth birth-anniversary celebrations of Pujya Gurudevshri, 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 an upcoming cancer hospital, a kidney and eye hospital, and expansion of the mega medical camps, the anemia mitigation programme, and the vision care project, to collectively uplift 60 million lives in 3 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.

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