WHEELS is a social impact arm, initiated by but not limited to, PanIIT Community
Our Vision is to create a material impact on 20% of the “Rurban” population of India (~160M) by 2030
WHEELS started as the “Giving Back”/Philanthropy initiative of PanIIT to drive country-scale transformation (especially of rural India) commensurate with the power & brand of global IIT alumni & ecosystem.
Individual IITs have created their respective foundations to help fund on-campus activities and capital improvements. However, most alumni (save few with large enough wealth to create their own non-profit foundations) who wish to ‘give back’ to their additional causes & communities of interest find it difficult. From searching for matching (to their cause & location) non-profits to assessing their credibility to monitoring their performance become all too overwhelming, resulting in the intent often stopping short of action. WGF was created to remove that barrier and provide an easy ‘giving’ platform, and along the way also collaborate with their fraternity of fellow IITians and institutes.
WHEELS Global Foundation (WGF) was formally incorporated as a 501C(3) organization in the United States, at the behest of late President Abdul Kalam, as a simple enabling platform for the 400,000+ alumni to ‘give back’ to not only their country by birth but also to their country ‘by adoption’. WGF strives to offer technology-enabled solutions to the six major challenges faced by people all over the world: clean potable drinking Water, scale Healthcare delivery, renewable energy, access to Education, rural Livelihood, and Sustainability. As alumni of the IIT system, we adopted the tag line: Applying Technology to Scale impact of Philanthropy. Our goal is to work collaboratively with other NGOs with feet-on-the-ground to become their technology partners and to help them scale their promising solutions with huge growth & impact runway. Where new solutions must be developed, we will work with the IITs to sponsor research and development.
From its origins of IIT ecosystem roots, WGF has further grown by welcoming participation from professionals and experts with shared passion and expertise relevant to its mission & priorities (e.g., professionals from medical, legal, and public services).
WGF has built a robust structure to drive sustained engagement & participation of worldwide alumni & extended ecosystem community for rapid impact-at-scale. Below are the key elements of that structure.
Select group of well-known alumni leaders in the IIT community who provide strategic oversight and direction to ensure WGF maintains its growth trajectory to achieve its stated vision. Typically, they have been at the apex of their professional and financial success and are deeply imbued with a sense of giving back with a pledge for multiple years and see WGF as a key organization in their endowment plans. They commit to bringing large sponsors to ensure WGF has a robust operational infrastructure and critical funds to drive its mission.
They are global alumni leaders who have achieved commnedable professional success in their careers and have a deep passion for impact and believe in WGF’s mission and vision. They bring in a variety of needed skills, experiences, resources, and network access to help WGF execute its annual plans successfully. They are invited in to join the Board by existing WGF Trustees and/or officeholders.
WHEELS Global Foundation’s Advisors have a deep interest in Wheel’s mission, and impact initiatives and help WHEELS team with their deep network of resources, connections, and advice on a variety of initiatives. Typically these are impact-driven professionals and leaders who participate in various
meetings and initiatives on a need-basis and play a vital role in WGF’s growth of partners, projects, and access to resources.
Deliver the promised impact on the target population at the desired scale, via the chosen portfolio of projects supporting each council’s aspirations and overall WGF aspirations. Councils draw upon the resources and expertise residing in the Committees to drive their project activities. Councils are led by 1 to 2 leaders with requisite thought-leadership and recognition in the vertical domain to draw in and inspire the ecosystem (and guest members) to join and help execute their activities.
Regional chapters represent a regional representation of the national WGF organization, and hence carry out most of the activities, albeit for the regional footprint. They help connect the global WGF entity to the grassroots of the ecosystem.
Committees act as horizontal resource/capacity pools that support project execution activities of all vertically organized WGF Councils. They develop a comprehensive charter of the activities that need to be driven in their domain for WGF’s overall success (i.e., long-term vision as well as current year goals).
