Most foundations start with a cause and build a story around it. We started with a complaint: too many CSR reports read like brochures, glossy photos, vague adjectives, and almost no way for the company that wrote the cheque to independently verify a single claim in them.

Gratify was built backwards from that complaint. Before we picked our first cause, we decided what a Gratify report would have to contain: on-ground assessment data, defined KPIs, documented execution, and an honest account of what worked and what didn't. Only after that standard was set did we choose where to apply it, education, healthcare and homecare, environment, women and child, and rural development.

We're a new foundation. We don't have ten years of case studies to point to, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. What we do have is a standard we built before we needed one, which means it isn't bending to fit anything yet.