What Mitr is
Mitr (Hindi: friend) is India's verified NGO directory — an independent, free platform that lists every organisation on India's official non-profit registries and lets each one claim and verify its own profile.
Today that is 1,61,203 organisations, of which 16,795 have published a detailed profile. They are browsable across 35 states and union territories, 180 city pages and 40 cause pages. Searching is free, listing is free, and claiming a page is free.
Why it exists
India's NGO data is public but unusable. The registries are real, authoritative and open — and almost nobody can get anything out of them. If you want to give money, give time, or find a partner in your own city, the public record is a set of government portals that were not built for you to search.
So people fall back on whoever markets best. That is exactly backwards: the organisations most worth finding are often the ones with no communications budget, and “looks professional” is not evidence of anything. The gap isn't a shortage of information — it's that the information nobody disputes is the hardest to reach.
Mitr starts from that public record and makes it searchable, then gives each organisation a way to take ownership of its own entry and build something checkable on top. Not a new authority. A usable front door to the one that already exists.
Where the data comes from
Every listing originates in an official source — principally NITI Aayog's Darpan register and state government portals. Nothing here started life as a marketing submission.
That has consequences worth being straight about. Registry data goes stale: addresses move, phone numbers die, and an organisation that wound up years ago may still be listed. Records also duplicate across sources, and we merge what we can detect. This is why claiming matters — the organisation itself is the only reliable authority on its own details, and a claimed page is one a human has taken responsibility for.
Of 1,61,203 listings, 16,795 carry enough detail to be worth publishing as a full profile. The rest are in the directory but deliberately kept out of search engines until there is something substantive on them — we would rather publish fewer, better pages than pad the index.
What Mitr is not
This list matters more than the feature list, so it goes above it.
- Not a government body. Mitr is independent and has no official status. Darpan, FCRA and 12A/80G are run by the Government of India; we point at them, we don't speak for them.
- Not an endorsement. A listing means an organisation is on the public record — nothing more. Most organisations here have never interacted with us.
- Not an auditor. We do not inspect anyone's books or visit anyone's projects. A trust level is computed from registration status and activity on this network, and it carries no legal weight. The full methodology is public.
- Not a donation platform. You cannot give money through Mitr today. When you decide to give, you do it with the organisation directly.
- Not for sale. We do not sell placement, ranking, trust levels or listings, and there is no paid tier. If anyone offers to sell you any of those in Mitr's name, they are not us.
Who is behind Mitr
Mitr is built and operated as Mitr, an independent project. It is not affiliated with, and should not be confused with, any similarly named organisation — “Mitr” is a common word, and several unrelated hospitals, foundations and government programmes share it.
If you need to reach a human — to correct a listing, report a problem, or ask what we're doing with a record — contact us. Every email is read by a person.
Corrections
A directory built from 1.6 lakh rows of registry data will contain errors, and we would rather hear about them. Every organisation page carries a Report control for flagging wrong, misleading or duplicated information, and if it is your organisation, claiming the page lets you fix the record yourself — permanently, and without asking us. Anything else, write to us.