Questions we get asked. Answered plainly.

Clothes, books, shoes, bags, toys and household extras — bedding, kitchenware, stationery, small linen. If it is clean, complete and still usable, it qualifies. We cannot take medicine, food, anything with exposed wiring, or items so damaged that only a recycler can use them.

Four buckets when you list an item: Like New, Good, Usable and Needs Repair. “Usable” is the most common one — a shirt with a soft collar or a workbook with pages written in is perfectly fine. What fails is mould, stains through the fabric, or missing parts that make something unsafe.

No minimum. Six books or one jacket is a real donation and we will schedule it. There is no maximum either — above 50 items we split the bundle across two slots so the volunteer can carry it safely. Below 5 items, a drop-off hub is often quicker for everyone.

A partner can decline something at the hub, usually for condition or because nobody nearby needs it. Your donation gets a plain note (“shoes heavily worn at the sole”), no stars are credited, and we offer a return or a responsible recycler within seven days at our cost. A rejected item never disappears without a line in your timeline.

Choose Pickup in the donation wizard and pick a two-hour slot between 8 AM and 8 PM. A volunteer is assigned, calls before arriving, collects the sealed bundle and the handover is photographed into your timeline. Slots run seven days a week in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi NCR.

Write the donation code on the bag, leave it with your guard or a neighbour, and note that in the wizard — the volunteer will collect it without you. If plans change, reschedule free up to two hours before the slot from My Donations, or call +91 80 4711 2200 and we will move it for you.

The verification desk reviews photos and counts within 24 hours of the bundle reaching the partner hub. January and August are our heaviest months and can stretch to 48 hours. Your Impact Stars are credited the moment verification passes — never while the donation is still in review.

Every donation carries a code, for example RK-2481. Its timeline shows Submitted, Pickup scheduled, Collected, Verified and Distributed, with the partner's name, the counts they logged and the distribution note. The public totals on the Transparency dashboard are built from exactly those records.

Per item, after a partner verifies the count: clothes 10, books 8, shoes 20 a pair, bags 15, toys 12. “Other” items are reviewed by hand and credited case by case. Stars are never generated by the form — a human confirms the items first, then the ledger entry is written.

Stars never expire, and they are not money. They are recognition with a permanent ledger behind them: they move you up levels, unlock listed perks — digital impact cards, local drop-off drives, quarterly reports, partner offers — and can be spent on those perks. They are not redeemable for cash unless a specific offer says so in writing.

Starter (0–499) gets a digital impact card. Contributor (500–1,999) gets early access to local collection drives. Community Builder (2,000–4,999) gets a quarterly impact report and partner shout-outs. Impact Champion (5,000+) gets reward-partner offers and an invite to our community ambassador programme.

Yes — for pickups and drop-offs alike. The receipt, the pickup slot and your stars have to attach to someone, and a partner's confirmation needs a place to land. Sign-in takes ten seconds with a magic link or Google, and there is no password to invent or remember.

Your address is used to plan the pickup and to reach you if a volunteer is running late — nothing else. Photos are used to verify condition and quantity, then shown on your own donation timeline and to the partner receiving it. We do not sell either, and they never appear publicly. The full detail sits in our Privacy Policy.

Write to help@sevakarya.com from the email address on your account and say “delete my account”. We remove your profile, address, donation photos and message history within 30 days and send you a confirmation. We keep only the minimal transaction records the law requires, flagged clearly in that confirmation mail.

Apply from the partners page with your registration certificate, PAN, an address proof, a needs list and one contact person. We run a reference call and verify everything within ten working days, publish your profile, and route the first pickups. There is no fee, now or later — partners never pay to receive.

Every verified badge is backed by document checks and a reference call. Each public profile shows the date we verified it, the items it currently needs, and what it has distributed so far. If a partner misses two reporting cycles, we pause new listings until they catch up — the badge is only as good as the reporting behind it.

Partners try repair first — a button, a sole, a seam — and only then downcycle into rags, stuffing or fibre through authorised recyclers. What is genuinely unusable goes to licensed waste handlers, never to an open dump by our hand, and those quantities appear in the quarterly impact numbers.