Dame distinction

Co-founder of JustGiving (JG), a global online fund-routing platform, Zarine Kharas was made Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2015 "for services to business and charity.” Kharas,whose JG website enables donors to conveniently contribute to charities registered with them, was amongst the 1,163 recipients who featured in the Queen’s 2015 birthday honors list. As reported in The Guardian of June 12, 2015, "For only the second time in honors history, more women received awards — 51% of all recipients — but just seven are made dames, compared with 33 knighthoods for men, reflecting a gender imbalance at the highest levels of industry, business, politics and academia.” Seven percent of those honored were from ethnic minorities.

Dame Zarine Kharas with badge worn by Dame Commander

Sir Jonathan Stephens, chair of the honors committee was quoted by The Guardian as stating, "This list is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things on behalf of their community. There is still more to do in making the list truly representative.”
Established in 1917 by King George V, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is "the order of chivalry of British democracy rewarding service in a wide range of useful activities,” summarizes Wikipedia. As per its five level hierarchy in civil and military divisions, the two seniormost levels earn the recipient the title of knight, if male, or dame, if female.
On hearing of the award, 64-year-old Kharas issued a statement reproduced on www.fundraising,co.uk, "In 2001 Anne-Marie Huby and I set out to build a sustainable business that was mission led and had social values at its core. JG has been investing and innovating on behalf of good causes ever since and we’re both enormously proud of its achievements in connecting people to the causes they care about. None of it would have been possible without the trust of our charity partners, the 24 million people who have given through JG over the years and the hard work of our 170-strong team.”
Six years earlier Kharas had been awarded the Royal Society of Arts’ Albert Medal for "democratizing fund-raising and technology for charities.” She has made her home in the UK from the time she left Karachi to study law at Cambridge. After her law studies she worked for Lawrence Graham and Linklaters and Paines, both solicitor firms specializing in corporate and finance law. Subsequently she worked for Credit Suisse First Boston, MC Securities and Simmons and Simmons before launching JG.
Among the many organizations that have benefitted through the JG initiative is Cancer Research UK whose executive director of fund-raising and marketing, Richard Taylor acknowledged that JG "has raised a huge amount of money for important causes, including ours. Thanks to Zarine and Anne-Marie’s vision and leadership and continued investment in world class technology, charities of all sizes can simply use JG and keep their focus on raising more money, and the entire sector is stronger for it.”
Since 2001 the site has been used to raise and donate over two billion pounds (Rs 200 billion) for good causes, states fundraising.co.uk. By charging a five percent fee on donations as administration costs, the company’s website allows people to donate to charities registered with JG. The welfare organizations pay a monthly subscription fee of £15. Since 85% of donations through the site are eligible for Gift Aid tax relief, JG also assists in reclaiming of Gift Aid relief and passing it on to the charities. The main beneficiaries are smaller charities that find donation tracking and fund-raising costly. Further, JG offers people doing sponsored events the chance to build their own webpage to collect sponsorship from supporters. Among their major success stories last year was in April 2014 when Stephen Sutton raised over £4.5 million (Rs 400.5 million) for the Teenage Cancer Trust, and a month prior, Christian Smith who was killed in a crash with a car during a 24-hour charity bike ride for Mind, posthumously raised £ 68,000 (Rs 6.8 million) after his death was covered in the media.
Having repeatedly won recognition over the years, the Charity Times award in 2004 claimed JG had "transformed the face of donating in the UK.”