In its State of the Panth se­ries, the US-based Sikh Re­search In­sti­tute (SikhRI) has re­leased its eighth re­search re­port on Das­vandh or tithes as it is gen­er­ally known in the Eng­lish world, based on an ex­ten­sive global sur­vey of in­di­vid­u­als through 23 coun­tries. En­ti­tled, Dan: Sikhi, Non­prof­its & Giv­ing, the 63-page re­port pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive look into the mean­ing of giv­ing in the Sikh par­a­digm. It pro­vides a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and the cur­rent mean­ing of giv­ing in the Sikh con­cept and pre­cept. The re­port looks into the short­com­ings and the need to re­ori­ent our au­then­tic cul­ture of phil­an­thropy. Sig­nif­i­cantly, the re­port also pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions on giv­ing in the true Nam-Dan-Ish­nan per­spec­tive.

WITH THE GROWTH OF NON­PROF­ITS AS IM­POR­TANT PLAY­ERS in the so­cial, health and re­li­gious sec­tors, this re­port has come at the op­por­tune time and hope­fully will en­able those who care to delve deep into it to un­der­stand and then con­tribute to causes keep­ing the true Sikh ethos in mind.

As the world be­comes more in­ter­con­nected, the SikhRI re­port on Giv­ing, at­tempts to “un­der­stand how some have an abun­dance of mon­e­tary wealth, and oth­ers do not, and the more we un­der­stand the var­i­ous needs un­ad­dressed in our back­yards and abroad. Peo­ple want to give. Peo­ple need to give. But do we un­der­stand what it means to give?”

The re­port analy­ses ideas con­veyed in the Nam-Dan-Is­nan (Iden­ti­fy­ing-Giv­ing-Cleans­ing) doctrine from a Gur­mat (Gu­ru’s Way) per­spec­tive, as in­ferred from Bani (wis­dom), Tavarikh (his­tory), and Rahit (lifestyle).

As Sikhs, we are all aware of our in­di­vid­ual Das­vand duty, but col­lec­tively we have fallen short. How can we build on our Guru-be­stowed cul­ture of giv­ing and phil­an­thropy? 

Kul­vir Singh, Chair, SikhRI

“While the af­flu­ence of the global Sikh di­as­pora has grown ex­po­nen­tially, so too have the in­equal­i­ties in our so­ci­ety,” said Kul­vir Singh, SikhRI Chair. “As Sikhs, we are all aware of our in­di­vid­ual Das­vand duty, but col­lec­tively we have fallen short. How can we build on our Guru-be­stowed cul­ture of giv­ing and phil­an­thropy? This re­port pro­vides in­sights and im­pli­ca­tions rel­e­vant for every mem­ber and in­sti­tu­tion in our Panth.”

Read­ers can ac­cess the ex­tremely well-writ­ten, beau­ti­fully de­signed, pro­fusely an­no­tated with Gur­bani, de­tails of con­tri­bu­tions by Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh, the an­nual re­ceipts and spend­ing of main Sikh bod­ies world­wide, de­tails of the sur­vey and pos­si­ble pa­ra­me­ters for do­na­tions, by click­ing the fol­low­ing link: Dan: Sikhi, Non-Prof­its and Giv­ing.

The re­port analy­ses why Sikhs are more prone to im­me­di­ate-dis­as­ter char­ity than long-term phil­an­thropy and makes a case for change.

The SikhRI con­ducted a global sur­vey of 726 self-iden­ti­fied Sikhs from 23 coun­tries to learn more about the opin­ions on giv­ing in the Sikh com­mu­nity. The ma­jor­ity of re­spon­dents said that im­pact and out­comes most in­form their per­spec­tive on the ef­fec­tive­ness of Sikh non­prof­its, fol­lowed by pub­lic re­la­tions, so­cial me­dia and trans­parency.

Im­mers­ing our­selves in Sikh ethos paired with the global sur­vey al­lowed us to see Dan or giv­ing from a va­ri­ety of in­ter­est­ing and even sur­pris­ing per­spec­tives. 

Harinder Singh, Se­nior Fel­low, SikhRI

Harinder Singh, SikhRI’s Se­nior Fel­low, re­marked: “Im­mers­ing our­selves in Sikh ethos paired with the global sur­vey al­lowed us to see Dan or giv­ing from a va­ri­ety of in­ter­est­ing and even sur­pris­ing per­spec­tives. We learned that al­though 54% of re­spon­dents said they were more likely to sup­port long-term phil­an­thropy rather than short-term char­ity pro­jects mon­e­tar­ily, the data shows that the ma­jor­ity of com­mu­nity funds are di­rected to char­ity rather than phil­an­thropy. We were in­ter­ested in why that is the case, how to re­vive the Gu­ru’s par­a­digm, and what is the state of cur­rent Sikh non­prof­its.”

The re­port con­cludes with rec­om­men­da­tions on both in­di­vid­ual and in­sti­tu­tional lev­els pro­vid­ing a clear di­rec­tional frame­work for ap­ply­ing the prin­ci­ples of Nam-Dan-Is­nan. The Sikh non­profit check­list, in­cluded in the re­port, pro­vides cri­te­ria that in­di­vid­u­als and in­sti­tu­tions can use to eval­u­ate non­profit or­ga­ni­za­tions from a Gur­mat per­spec­tive.

Jasleen Kaur, SikhRI’s Re­searcher said: “We hope that pro­vid­ing a com­plete pic­ture of how giv­ing is un­der­stood both in the Guru Granth Sahib and in Sikh his­tory, will help the Sikh com­mu­nity model cur­rent pro­jects around long-term plan­ning and in­sti­tu­tion build­ing.”

We hope that pro­vid­ing a com­plete pic­ture of how giv­ing is un­der­stood both in the Guru Granth Sahib and in Sikh his­tory, will help the Sikh com­mu­nity model cur­rent pro­jects around long-term plan­ning and in­sti­tu­tion build­ing.

Jasleen Kaur, Re­searcher, SikhRI

Over­all, the re­port con­tributes to the global dis­course about Sikh no­tions of giv­ing and sup­ports its find­ings with Gur­mat-based sources and opin­ions from the Panth it­self. A com­plete set of raw data is in­cluded as a sep­a­rate doc­u­ment to in­cen­tivize fur­ther aca­d­e­mic re­search. 

Sig­nif­i­cantly, “this re­port makes rec­om­men­da­tions based on Gur­mat to help in­di­vid­u­als and in­sti­tu­tions bet­ter un­der­stand giv­ing within the Nam-Dan-Is­nan doc­trine. It also pro­vides cri­te­ria that in­di­vid­u­als and in­sti­tu­tions can use to
eval­u­ate non­profit or­ga­ni­za­tions from a Gur­mat per­spec­tive.”