Nourish Bangladesh

The General Fund "Portfolio" uses your donations to provide dry food and cash transfers to the economically disadvantaged communities in Bangladesh. Implementation of our projects are conducted by a list of nonprofit organizations and grassroots volunteers that have been thoroughly vetted by Nourish Bangladesh. Through our implementing partners we have now provided relief in 27 districts in Bangladesh. Our beneficiaries include poor households, day laborers, individuals with disabilities, covid patients, flood victims, Rohingya refugees, sex workers, the transgender community, women led households, school children, and the indigenous community. Thanks to our supporters and implementing partners, we are proud to have funded more than half a million meals within 10 months of our existence!

What is the Portfolio?

The Portfolio is a list of nonprofit organizations and grassroots volunteer groups that have been vetted by Nourish Bangladesh. Local grassroots volunteers that spontaneously come together during disasters to fundraise and help those in need, are usually convened and led by a team leader working as an independent unit and sometimes working as contractors for established nonprofits. Most successful volunteer groups in Bangladesh, also more likely to be vetted by us, have a history of helping out during disasters - coming together during disasters and disbanding afterwards. The volunteers are a diverse mix of youth and adults from different occupations. They tend to have very little overhead costs compared to established NGOs although it is usually not zero. We have so far vetted the following nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups:

Non-Profit Organizations: BRAC, JAAGO, BDesh Foundation, Thrive, Bidyanondo, Manusher Jonno Foundation, Action Against Hunger, Al Zahoor Welfare Foundation, Health and Development Aid.
Grassroots Volunteers led by: Mithun Das, Azdani N Bari, A J Salim, Muhtasim A Zisan

Why invest in the Portfolio instead of the best NGO and/or Volunteer Group?

Our research suggests that there is no such thing as the best NGO or volunteer group. Trust that we have a healthy appetite for generating quantitative scales that reduces multidimensional measures into a single rank ordered scale. But we strongly believe that such an attempt would be misguided. Every rank reducing algorithm has certain assumptions about reducibility which we are quite certain does not apply here. In simple terms, we believe that all nonprofits and volunteers have their strengths and weaknesses. Based on our preliminary research, we have reached the conclusion that given our objective of fighting hunger amidst the COVID19 pandemic, bigger nonprofits tend to be low risk, low pay-off options while the smaller nonprofits and grassroot volunteer groups tend to be higher risk, higher pay-off options. Thus, after vetting each organization, we split your donations between the different nonprofits and grassroots volunteer groups.

What is the timeline for vetting and disbursing funds?

We generally disburse our funds from the portfolio every 1 to 2 months. So far we have vetted 9 NGOs and 4 volunteer groups. We may disburse your donations gradually over a period of several months to alleviate the problem of what practitioners in the field call “donor fatigue.”

How will the funds be spent?

We use these funds to fight hunger in the economically disadvantaged communities amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. We send the money to nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups that do food relief and in some cases cash relief.