How to Check If an NGO in India Is Genuine: Four Records

How do you check if an NGO in India is genuine?

Four records, in this order: the organisation's NPO Darpan Unique ID on the NITI Aayog portal, the registration certificate issued by whichever authority created it, its income-tax exemption and 80G donation-approval orders, and FCRA registration if it says it receives money from abroad. Ask for all four in writing.

Each record answers a different question, and each one has a limit that matters as much as what it confirms.

Record	Where you check it	What it cannot tell you
NPO Darpan Unique ID	Search NPO page on ngodarpan.gov.in	Endorsement, programme quality, or standing today
Registration certificate	The register that issued it: state Charity Commissioner, Registrar of Societies, or Registrar of Companies	Whether filings are current or the governing body has changed
Income-tax exemption and 80G orders	Order copies held by the organisation	How the money is spent once it reaches the account
FCRA registration	Validate FCRA Certificate lookup on fcraonline.gov.in	Anything at all about its domestic fundraising

What each one confirms is covered in the section that deals with it below: the Darpan ID confirms a completed document and PAN check, the certificate confirms legal existence and legal form, the tax orders confirm exempt status and a deductible donation category, and the FCRA lookup confirms that a certificate is live.

What does an NPO Darpan Unique ID prove, and what does it not?

It proves the organisation applied to NITI Aayog's NPO Darpan portal and cleared its document checks: a registration certificate, the trust deed or memorandum, by-laws, a governing-body list, the organisation's PAN, and an office bearer's PAN and Aadhaar, verified online. It does not prove programme quality; the portal itself calls its listings self-declared.

One address is worth bookmarking: ngodarpan.gov.in. The portal runs as a single-page application, so its inner addresses redirect back to that homepage and cannot be linked directly. Open the homepage and use the portal's own menu to reach the pages named below.

Its Terms of Use say the portal lists organisations “based on self declaration” and that this “does not imply that organizations are endorsed or recommended by NITI Aayog/MeitY-NIC or by the concerned Ministries/ Departments/Governments body”. The homepage carries a second warning: NITI Aayog issues no physical Darpan certificate, only a registration ID, granted on the basis of a self-declared affidavit.

The ID does carry weight in one direction. The portal's About Darpan page states the Unique ID is mandatory for organisations seeking grants from ministries and departments of the central government and of every state and union territory, and that the Prevention of Money Laundering (Maintenance of Records) Amendment Rules, 2023 require financial institutions to ensure an NPO Darpan Unique ID before an NPO's bank account is opened and operated.

The same page says the ID is needed for FCRA registration or renewal and for seeking exemption under Section 80G, which puts it upstream of two of the main channels through which Indian NGOs raise money. An organisation collecting public donations without one has shut several doors on itself, and the reason is worth asking about.

Two live checks matter more than the number on the letterhead. The Search NPO page looks up an organisation by name, Darpan ID or PAN, with filters for registered state, district, sector and NPO type, so you can confirm the ID belongs to the organisation quoting it. The Blacklisted NPO page lists organisations whose Darpan ID has been blacklisted, with the Darpan ID, the authority that blacklisted it and the date it took effect.

How do you verify a registration certificate when every state keeps its own register?

Match the certificate to the register that issued it. Indian nonprofits take one of three legal forms, and the Darpan directory classifies them exactly that way: trust, society, or Section 8 company. Trusts and societies are created by a state authority under state law. A Section 8 company is a different animal, licensed by the Central Government.

Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, headed “Formation of companies with charitable objects”, lets the Central Government license a body whose objects include charity, education, social welfare, science or the environment, which applies its income to those objects and prohibits dividends to members, to register as a limited company without the word “Limited” in its name.

Maharashtra shows what a usable state register looks like. The Office of the Charity Commissioner runs a Know Your Trust lookup: pick one of its 30-plus Public Trust Registration offices, choose a trust type from A to F, then search by trust number, trust name or registration date. Results carry trust documents, trust accounts and Schedule-1 register data.

That same office's website lists the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, 1950 and the Societies Registration Act, 1860 among the laws it administers, so one authority sits over both statutes. Know Your Trust asks only for trust fields, though: trust type, trust number, trust name. For a society registered under the 1860 Act, write to the same office rather than assuming the search covers it.

For a Section 8 company the register is national rather than state-run. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs publishes a Company Master Data catalogue on the Open Government Data Platform, listing the Corporate Identification Number, company name, status, class, category, capital figures, date of registration, registered state and the Registrar of Companies office for every company on file.

The Ministry's own single-company lookup sits on mca.gov.in, which refuses any request it does not read as a live browser session and returns an HTTP 403 instead, so the bulk catalogue is the dependable route. Ask the organisation for its certificate of incorporation and its CIN, then match the name and number against the bulk catalogue. Where the document in your hand is an offer letter rather than a certificate, the same matching logic applies, and the guide to verifying an internship offer letter works through it.

Other states publish less, and some publish nothing searchable. State portals go down and stay down for stretches, so treat any single lookup as fallible rather than concluding an organisation does not exist because one page failed to load. Where no online register exists, ask for a stamped copy of the certificate with its registration number and date, then write to the registering office named on it and ask them to confirm. That letter costs you a stamp and settles the question.

Which documents should a real NGO be able to send you the same day?

Start with the set NITI Aayog demands at sign-up on the NPO Darpan portal, since any registered NPO has assembled it once: stamped registration certificate, founding deed or memorandum, by-laws, the current governing body list, and the PAN issued in the organisation's name. Then ask for the exemption and 80G orders, last year's audited accounts, and an annual report.

Two details in that list catch impostors. The portal requires the organisation's name to match its PAN card exactly, so a certificate, a receipt and a bank account in three slightly different names is a problem rather than a typo.

Office bearers' PAN and Aadhaar numbers are verified online during registration, which means a genuinely registered NPO has already put identifiable people on a government record. Ask who they are, then check those names against the governing body list and against the page naming its trustees on the organisation's own website.

On the tax side, ask for two orders by name. Exemption registration is granted under Section 12AB of the Income-tax Act, 1961, on an application made under clause (ac) of sub-section (1) of Section 12A. Approval that makes a donation deductible is granted under Section 80G of the same Act. The order copy names the section it was issued under.

Any order in hand today was issued under those 1961 Act provisions, but that Act is no longer the only one running. The department's e-filing home page now offers payment under two statutes at once: the 1961 Act for dues up to FY 2025-26, and the Income-tax Act, 2025 from Tax Year 2026-27 onwards. Read every section number here as 1961 numbering and check what it became under the 2025 Act before relying on it.

Both orders expire, which is why the dates on them matter more than the number. Section 12AB was inserted into the Act by the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act, 2020, with effect from 1 April 2021. It requires the Principal Commissioner or Commissioner to pass an order in writing “registering the trust or institution for a period of five years”, or provisionally for three years.

The same Act added provisos to sub-section (5) of Section 80G to the same effect: approval granted for a period of five years, provisional approval for three, and a fresh application due at least six months before an existing approval is due to expire. An order that lapsed two years ago is not an approval, so read the validity dates before you accept an 80G receipt.

The e-filing portal's deductions help page for assessment year 2026-27 places 80G under the old tax regime only, at 100% or 50% depending on the category, and allows no deduction for cash gifts above ₹2,000. The department's exempted-institutions search on incometaxindia.gov.in was refused with a 403 status on each try, so its current fields are not described here. A chartered accountant can tell you in minutes whether an order's format is real.

Audited accounts are worth asking for even when you are not donating, because staff and establishment costs sit inside them. The guide to what NGO jobs in India pay reads that part of the accounts from the other side of the desk.

How do you check the payment details before you send money?

Pay only into a bank account held in the organisation's registered name, never into a personal account, and never in cash without a numbered receipt. Before transferring, search the UPI ID, phone number, email address or account number in the Suspect Repository on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, run by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.

The portal describes that facility as an option for citizens to search I4C's repository of identifiers of cyber criminals, covering mobile numbers, e-mail IDs, account numbers, URLs and other identifiers, with a companion search for suspect websites and apps. Both are public and take under a minute: the identifier search and the website search.

A hit is a stop signal, not a finding of guilt: I4C says on the page that it does not certify the authenticity of the complaints behind the database and that errors are possible. A miss is not a clean chit either, only the absence of a recorded complaint.

Match the channel to the claim as well. If the organisation says it receives donations from abroad, foreign contribution is regulated separately, and the Darpan portal states its Unique ID is required for FCRA registration or renewal. Ask for the FCRA registration number and the designated bank account before sending anything from outside India.

A missing registration number is not automatically disqualifying. The FCRA portal's service cards set out two separate routes: form FC-3A, an FCRA registration valid for five years that carries general permission to receive foreign contribution, and form FC-3B, a one-time prior permission for a specific activity from a specific donor. An organisation running a single foreign-funded project may hold the second and not the first. Renewal is form FC-3C, valid for a further five years, and the portal warns that a registration not renewed before expiry ceases.

Then check the number rather than trusting it. The Ministry of Home Affairs FCRA portal carries a Validate FCRA Certificate page that takes a nine-digit registration number and a CAPTCHA and returns the association's name, address, last renewed date, and the from and to dates of certificate validity. Its only identifier field is labelled FCRA Registration Number, so it confirms registrations rather than prior permissions; for a prior permission, ask for the Ministry's letter and its date instead. The older fcraonline.nic.in address now redirects to fcraonline.gov.in.

The same portal runs a public dashboard of associations registered under FCRA, filterable by state, district and year, with a keyword search on association name and a choice of list or map view. Its status counters returned 14,449 active associations, 22,493 cancelled and 15,234 expired when queried on 22 August 2026. Cancelled and expired registrations outnumber live ones by roughly two and a half to one, which is the reason a registration number on its own settles nothing.

Which warning signs should stop you outright?

Government-emblem or NITI Aayog logo use, a framed “Darpan certificate,” and a listing on the Darpan blacklist are the three signs with official backing. NITI Aayog's advisory on the Darpan portal states that use of the NITI Aayog name or logo, or of the National Emblem, by an NPO is strictly prohibited; that a Darpan ID confers no right, endorsement, affiliation or recognition; and that unauthorised use can lead to the Darpan ID being blacklisted.

So the National Emblem or the NITI Aayog logo on a letterhead or a donation page is a reason to walk away, not a credential. A ministry or scheme logo is different: grantee organisations often carry one legitimately, so treat it as a claim to check against that ministry rather than as a red flag.

A framed “Darpan certificate” offered as proof of government approval is the same signal, since the portal says no physical certificate is issued at all. And an organisation whose ID turns up on the blacklist page has been flagged by name, by an authority, with effect from a stated date.

The everyday signals cost nothing to check and rarely appear alone:

• A collector who will only accept a personal UPI ID or wallet transfer
• Urgency built around a matching grant that closes tonight
• A registration number the organisation will not put in writing
• No audited accounts for the last completed financial year
• An address that resolves to nothing
• Photographs of identifiable children used as fundraising material with no programme described anywhere

None of these is proof by itself. Treat any of them as a reason to stop and ask for the four records in writing before money moves.

What do these checks still fail to tell you?

Whether the work is any good. Registration, tax approval and a Darpan ID describe compliance, not results. None of the four records shows how many people an organisation reached, what it spent to reach them, whether a programme survived the exit of its funder, or how the organisation treats the staff and volunteers who do the work.

Judge that separately, and mostly by asking. Read the audited accounts next to the annual report and see whether the programme spend in one matches the story in the other. Ask how beneficiary numbers are counted, and whether the same person is counted twice across two programmes. Look for published programme results with methods attached, and for plain answers to donor questions rather than adjectives.

The cheapest test of all is time. Spend a day volunteering with the organisation before you write a large cheque or commit a semester, and ask a current volunteer what they were asked to do in their first week.

If the commitment in question is an internship rather than a donation, two adjacent questions are worth a click each: how listings and paperwork work on the national internship portal, and how a placement at a nonprofit differs from a corporate internship.

What should you do if an organisation fails these checks?

Stop the payment first, and say why in writing so there is a record. If money has already moved, file a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, which splits complaint registration into a financial fraud route, an other cybercrime route, and a separate route for crimes against women and children, and report the mobile number, UPI ID, account or website through its Report Suspect facility.

Then take it to whoever holds authority over the organisation. That is the state Charity Commissioner or Registrar of Societies named on the registration certificate, the Registrar of Companies for a Section 8 company, the Income Tax Department where 80G receipts were issued against approval that does not exist, and the ministry or department concerned where government grants are in play, since a Darpan ID is blacklisted by the authority that finds the problem.

Keep the screenshots, the receipt, the identifiers and the dates: every one of those complaints will ask for them.