Recognition for credibility

To day at about 5:20 pm a gentalmen walked in to my office and aske about SSS office being closed. On asking, what is the purpose of his visit to SSS, he said he wanted to donate Rs.5000/- as it his son's birthday. He said he donates every year on this day.
It is about 18 years back, we were in the process of forming SSS as a trust. We would be trustees were discussing the modalities of trust and its functions like objective, funds, source of funds, government aid, recruitment, staff,our work philosophy etc. During the debate on source of funds, I proposed not to go for government aid for various reasons. Most of my friends were apprehensive about the survival without government aid. Some showed the concern verbally and some were quite. But overall mood was not in favor. Since I had better way of putting my point across, and I being a bit more aggressive at that time, my opinion prevailed. One of our would be trustees inquired, how long people will give donation? and how many times the same person will donate. To this, my answer was, same person will donate to SSS any number of times and people to known to us and unknown to us will also donate as long as we work honestly, sincerely, and selflessly. Support will come always with out fail. But in my opinion, the primary condition would be that we do not take any benefit out of this work directly or indirectly, no monetary considerations be taken for whatsoever reason, no advantage derived by way of publicity for our personal gains directly or indirectly. If we consider this work as GOD'S work, there would be no reason for getting fulfilled our desired objective.
And needless to say, we followed our own resolution in absolute terms, and thus no wonder we are still working without government aid. Why I have to wright this? Because, we have been receiving donations from people unknown to us, and they have been donating regularly. We have succeeded in creating confidence & credibility in the minds of people by way of our transparent and honest work culture. That is the most satisfying factor for me. I know right from the inception, that this work is not ours but it is Divine, and if it is truly Divine than "HE" has to take care of it. We are only means to execute the Divine will. And that is what is really happening since 1993.


Navin Deshpande, Secretary, SSS