We are nearing the end of our Spring Masters Charity Tennis Tournament. Tomorrow, we will hold our picnic to celebrate the tournament and award the prizes to the winners. The picnic is going to be held at Las Palmas Park in Sunnyvale. Come and enjoy food, free tennis clinics, and other attractions. We will also be conducting a few competitions like speed serve contests to fund raise for Anand Charity.

We will start around 10:30 in the picnic area accessible from Spinosa Dr (off Remington Ave.) and the tennis events will take place between 11:30 and 1:30 on courts 13, 14, and 15.

Our special thanks to our sponsors - ZoomIn, The Chugh Firm, State Bank of India, California.

We would also like to thank the following restaurants for helping us with the prizes and picnic arrangements - Taste Buds, Hot Breads, Spice Hut and Swetka’s Tennis Shop.

We are proud to announce that we are launching our newsletter News@Anand. The quarterly newsletter will aim to provide information about our projects, the impact we are creating in India and our fund-raising events. Anand Charity values transparency and periodic communication with our donors and we hope that we will be able to achieve both through our newsletter. A million thanks to all our volunteers who have put a lot of effort in creating the newsletter.

Please click here to read the first edition of our newsletter.

We welcome your questions and comments about our newsletter and about our work in general. Please feel free to contact us at contact@anandcharity.org. One of our volunteers will personally respond to you.

Thank you for your support to Anand Charity and we look forward to your continued support.

Anand Charity was present at Bay Area Telugu Association’s 2008 Ugadi Festival yesterday. A big thanks to BATA for letting us setting up a booth and helping us spread the word to the Bay Area Telugu community. We had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about Anand Charity and let them know about the good work we are doing. We will continue to take part in such events in the Bay Area in the coming months.

A big thanks to our volunteers who were present at the booths and also to the volunteers who worked behind the scenes to get everything ready for the show.

If you are interested in putting up a booth in your town at any Indian festival or gathering in your community, please contact us.

Here are some photographs from yesterday’s event (Slideshow on zoom.in):

Anand Charity relies on the efforts of our volunteers and recently, we have received a lot of help from one such volunteer, Karthik SS. Karthik runs his own ad agency in India - Balyhoo! (http://www.balyhoo.in). He is really talented and has designed our tennis tournament flyer and banner for our publicity events. You can see his amazing designs below.

We have made public our 2007 Annual report on our website. 2007 was an important year for us where we accomplished significant groundwork. Here are the key accomplishments for 2007 :

• Anand Charity incorporated in State of California (January)
• First meeting of Board of Directors held and the officers (President, Secretary and Treasurer) elected (March)
• Anand Charity granted 501(c)(3) federal tax exemption status (June)
• Anand Charity granted California State tax exemption (September)
• Invited grant proposals from charity organizations in India (December)
• Recruited more volunteers

2008 has been a great year so far with big steps forward. We are excited!

Hello Tennis Enthusiasts,

Registration for Anand Charity’s first public fundraising event, Spring Masters Charity Tennis Tournament, has started. To register for this event, please visit http://www.oneclicktennis.com.

OneClickTennis.com offers a convenient way to schedule your matches at the times most convenient to you and you report the results of the games after they are done. The matches are going to be played in the San Francisco Bay Area. Registration for the tournament ends on April 12th and the matches begin on April 14th.

So far, we also have two sponsors for the tournament. ZoomIn is a Gold Sponsor for the tournament and The Chugh Firm is a Silver sponsor. Thank you, ZoomIn and The Chugh Firm!

To see our flyer for the tennis tournament, please click here

Anand Charity will be present at the Bay Area Telugu Association’s (BATA) Ugadi Festival on April 5th and Bay Area Tamil Manram’s Chitthirai Kondattam on April 20th. Both, Bay Area Telugu Association and Bay Area Tamil Manram, were kind enough to let us setup a booth at their popular new year celebrations. Each of these festivals attract more than 2000 people each year.

We are very excited about the opportunity to showcase Anand Charity’s work to the Bay Area Indian community and we are putting our best foot forward to reach out to potential donors and volunteers.

A big shout out to all the Anand Charity volunteers who are working hard towards these events.

Since we have started our publicity and fundraising, our team has also been growing strongly. In the last couple of weeks, we have had three new volunteers joining Anand Charity - Mrinalini, Deepak and Ram.

Mrinalini is based in India. She has completed her masters in Communication and she is planning to do research in Developmental Communication. She sees herself as a social worker in the future. She is going to help Anand Charity with the planned newsletter and is going to be our editor-in-chief.

Deepak is based in Chennai and is working on a cool media startup in Chennai. He has been meaning to help charities for a long time and he sees Anand Charity as a perfect avenue. He is going to be the liaison between Anand Charity USA and the organizations in India. He is going to be heading our project coordination in India and will recruit more volunteers in India in the near future.

Ram is a certified CPA and CA. He will be lending his expertise for our accounting needs and our filings with IRS. Ram is currently a Senior Manager at a Big 4 accounting firm and he currently lives in Chicago. He is a very busy man and it is great that he is giving us his valuable time.

Today, we received another big donation ($1001) towards Project Umang. It was an anonymous donation and the entire Anand Charity team thanks the donor for his generous contribution. The donor was referred to us through Facebook’s Causes Application. If you are on Facebook, please help us spread the word by inviting your friends and family to the cause.

It has been very encouraging to see the donations pouring in over the last few weeks and we understand how much responsibility that puts on us. We assure our donors that we will exceed their expectations and do our part in helping folks back in India.

Yesterday, we received a large donation of $2500 from an anonymous donor. Thank you, Anonymous Donor, for believing in us and helping us do what we aim to do.

This does not lessen the contributions that other donors have made in the last few weeks. We have received an exciting response - many people have subscribed to recurring monthly donations with corporate matching and others have made significant donations. Together, we can make a difference to deserving lives in India! We will keep you updated with our progress frequently.

For those of you who would like to donate, please visit our page here. We guarantee that your money will be used in an effective way and that it will be a rewarding and satisfying experience for you.