SEVA ▪ 2026When you give to an 80G-approved non-profit in India, the receipt you get back is a tax instrument. It lets you subtract part of the donation from your taxable income for that year, which lowers the tax you owe. It is not a cash rebate paid to you, and it is not a discount on the gift. It is a deduction you claim yourself when you file your return.
Everything below is general information about how that mechanism works, not tax advice. Your own income, your regime and the year's rules decide what actually applies to you, and a qualified professional is the right person to confirm it.
Under Section 80G, a donation to an approved charitable institution that is not one of the specified funds qualifies for a deduction of 50% of the donation amount. On a 10,000-rupee gift, 5,000 comes off your taxable income (subject to the qualifying-limit calculation on your total income). The full 100% figure people sometimes expect is reserved for specified government and national funds. Most everyday NGO donations sit at 50%.
The deduction is allowed only for money given, not for donations in kind. Clothes, food grains, blankets or equipment do not qualify for 80G, however useful they are on the ground. If you want the deduction, the contribution has to be monetary.
A registration number is exactly the kind of detail a receipt lives or dies on, which is why ours is printed here in full.
One rule quietly disqualifies more receipts than any other: a cash donation above 2,000 rupees gets no deduction at all. To stay eligible on anything larger, pay by a mode other than cash, meaning UPI, net banking, card, cheque or draft.
The threshold itself is not really the point; the digital trail is. Five thousand rupees handed over as cash is a generous gift and a worthless receipt. The same five thousand over UPI is fully in scope. When in doubt, pay in a way that leaves a record.
A valid 80G receipt is specific. It has to show the organisation's name and PAN, its address, its 80G registration number, and the amount you gave. Your own PAN goes onto the record as well, whatever the size of the gift. The certificate cannot be issued without it. That is not paperwork for its own sake.
Your claim is checked against the organisation's own filing. The non-profit reports each donation to the tax department in Form 10BD, listing your PAN, name, address and amount, and issues you a Certificate of Donation in Form 10BE. The figure you claim in your return has to match what they reported. And one donation earns exactly one deduction: an amount allowed under 80G cannot be claimed again under any other section of the Act.
Two things decide whether the deduction survives to your final tax bill. First, the regime. Section 80G cannot be claimed if you opt for the new tax regime under Section 115BAC. To take it you have to be in the old regime, where deductions like this one live.
Second, the registration. A donation made after an organisation's 80G certificate has lapsed or been cancelled is not eligible, so it is worth confirming the non-profit was validly registered in the year you gave. You do not have to take anyone's word for it. The Income Tax Department's public Exempted Institutions utility lets you look up an organisation's 80G status and PAN yourself.
We hold ourselves to the same standard we have just described. Pledge A Smile Foundation is a non-profit registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act 2013, ISO 9001 certified, 12A registered and 80G approved.
Here are the details in full, because a registration number is exactly the kind of detail a receipt lives or dies on. Our 80G approval number is AALCP2854P25DL02, valid to 31/3/2031. We are registered under 12A, registered under CSR-1, and listed on NGO Darpan as DL/2020/0262693.
When you donate and we issue your receipt, it will carry that approval number and your PAN. We need your PAN to issue your 80G certificate, whatever the amount. We then report the gift in Form 10BD, so the 10BE you receive matches what the department already has. To say it once more plainly: this is general information, not tax advice. For how 80G applies to your own return, check with a qualified tax professional.
The numbers are real.
So is the need.