Sankara Eye Foundation, USA

Founded in 1998, the mission of the Sankara Eye Foundation, USA (SEF, USA) is to realize the goal of eradicating curable blindness in India. We initiate and drive community eye care activities in India by working with eye care organizations such as Sankara Eye Foundation, India which runs Sankara Eye Hospitals across India.. SEF USA has increased the number of specialty eye care hospitals from 1 in 1998 to 9 by 2017. The number of free eye surgeries is performed at an annual rate of 160,000 as of 2017. The goal is to perform 500,000 free eye surgeries per year. SEF has performed over 1.66 million free eye surgeries as of Nov 30, 2017.

SEF's vision is to eradicate curable blindness in India. SEF foresees a world where no one is nee

Goal One: Build new self-sustaining eye care hospitals and expand the capacity of current hospitals from 485000 free eye surgeries per year to reach the goal of 1 million free eye surgeries per year.

Goal Two: SEF has earmarked new areas and communities that are in need of eye care services and has added partners to build and expand their capacity to meet the demand and achieve SEF goals.

Goal Three: Invest in fundraising infrastructure to increase SEF fundraising capacity to meet the goal of Vision2030, $100 million for capacity building and $100 million for operating deficit by 2027.

SEF has a very specific goal with exact implementation plans to reach a huge milestone towards its vision. The goal is to perform 1 million sustainable free eye surgeries per year by the year 2030. In the last 12 to 18 months, SEF trained and educated the leaders of its partners and motivated them to buy into the aggressive goals. With mutual training and learning, the team devised an implementation plan. SEF (both India and US) and all its partners are now enabled, educated, and trained to start the execution of “march to a million”. This plan introduces a very aggressive goal for SEF to raise $200 million dollars in the next 8 years- and to accomplish that, SEF is creating an environment for its leaders to grow in their areas of interest- like marketing, finance, event management etc., by working with them and bringing in consultants. For example, we have brought in a marketing consultant to train the leaders on donor retention, effective use of social media and marketing.

COVID posed a challenge to many of the non-profits in multiple ways. SEF was not an exception. SEF's core operation in India got affected. SEF depends on rural outreach, which was severely impacted during pandemic. And in most of the hospitals paid surgeries also completely stopped which resulted in our partners not having the funds even to pay the medical and administrative staff. Some of the hospitals were temporarily used for COVID treatments, adding to the existing problems. New hospital construction suffered schedule delays. SEF’s primary method of getting new donors and funds is by hosting events which could not be done. SEF needed to raise funds to keep some of partners alive during COVID. SEF took a few drastic measures to adapt to the challenges and changes that were happening globally. Cutting expenses: 1. SEF canceled all in-person events for 2020 and 2021. 2. SEF cut all travels in 2020 and 2021. 3. SEF put a close watch on expenses relating to advertisements. 4. SEF had only 2 employees and minimal contract help thru the pandemic years. Other measures: 1. SEF applied for PPP (paycheck protection program) loan from the federal government for both the years 2. SEF came up with innovative ways of doing online events. This kept the volunteer base engaged and help build donor momentum. The foundation organized virtual walkathons, online concerts and a unique SEF Envision online event in Dec 2020 to bring the donor community together and talk about SEF's vision. 3. SEF had two focused fund drives to raise funds specifically for COVID relief in India, one in 2020 and another in 2021 and raised over $521,000. 4. SEF trained many High school students during summer and Christmas breaks to make personal calls to donors and to write "thank you" notes to donors.