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Does anyone have some good ideas on how to promote and raze money for your charity/NGO/non-profit? Basically I need to raze enough to pay 20 English teachers in Indonesia for my orphanage. I could either pay a local TEFL school to provide teachers on a contract basis or pay for plane tickets for volunteers (plus shity housing). Not sure which would be cheaper or better for the long run.
For starters:
Starting the NGO is the “easy” part. Convincing people to give you money is where it gets a little tricky. If anyone ever comes up with the perfect formula, I’m sure we’ll all be “ears open” to figure it out.
Dunia is our first “cause” and people have been very generous (I will give you the total soon, we are VERY close by the way). Folks have been much more inclined to donate to a specific cause than to La Cima’s general fund. Your orphanage provides a built in “sponsorship” type opportunity where there are lots of little causes.
It has made the biggest difference, for us, to recruit teams and actually put them on the ground. This allows them to see for themselves what is going on and see what the need is. I think Confuscious (sp) said “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I touch and I understand.” By getting people to “touch” the situation, you develop your own NGO marketing department.
It is one thing for me, as director of an NGO, to walk into an office and ask for money. People get that everyday, and if I tried a direct approach, I would hit a firewall everytime. It is a whole different ball of wax when a co-worker returns from Honduras and won’t shut up about all the stuff they saw and did and they keep running the photo album on their computer. Then people can realize that we are for real and they will be much more open to getting involved.
We get more and more people every year that want to come on a trip because of a co-worker or family member that went the year before. Our schedule is filling up much more quickly now.
It is a long and difficult process to get money to keep things going. That is one of the most important reasons to have an influential board of directors. They all need to have the same vision and they need to put their money where their mouth is. Then they have to do their best to work within their sphere of influence to get support.
There is more.
I guess I should put this in a bit more of a detailed fashion, just for you Rob ;).I did a stint working as a fundraiser (for juvenile delinquents) and found The Complete fundraising Handbook (Botting and Norton) useful if you want to try and tap into trust funds and the like. (but it is UK based) There are loads of funds which sponsor specific types of projects – all you have to do is prove to them, generally with lots of bits of paper, that you fit their funds objectives.
There has been a lot in the press recently about the value of gap years for the participants and teaching English was used as an example of how gap years students are put into situations out of their depth.(check out times or bbc) I’m TEFL qualified and the qualification is not a walk in the park, in fact I think it was harder than my ‘porper’ teaching quals but when I got dumped in Naples with 35 14 year olds to teach English to I didn’t have a fucking clue (ok so that might be one of the reasons for a career change but still)
Often gap year students get some kind of qualification before going on their gap year (and they pay their own flights etc) and tfel is one of them, also a lot of TFEL teachers teach and travel for the experience and are not so ‘interested’ in the money – davescafe is a great place to check out the ins and outs of teaching English – I really think that having TEFL qualified teachers would be best for the students and best in the long run – also if you planning to apply for funding then having qualified staff will be a big plus and tick in the right box.
http://www.davescafe.com/Alternative would be to hitch yourself up with one of the gap year companies who will deal with the recruitment etc of gap year students.
20 teacher is a hell of a lot of students –are you sure you’ve got your student: teacher ratio right – even if your planning on lessons all day (only on the English language) there is a limit to how much people actually learn. If you look into teaching in China (daves café) they have over 50 in a class – ok not brilliant but they get by.
Another idea (it must be the red wine) – re-reading what Dr Dave said – its true nothing beats word of mouth and people seeing it with their own eyes. I worked for a large UK tour operator in Goa and set up a link with the local orphanage / training ground for disabled children – it offered the tourists the opportunity to donate to the local community and a guarantee that your money was going to the right kind of place (which the tourists loved – so much classier to donate to something with a name as opposed to a kid on the street) – instead of getting the tourists to donate money we asked the orphanage what they needed (normally something mundane like combs, toothbrushes etc) and the tourists went an bought it and it was delivered – sometimes in person to the orphans.
It might be worth trying to cultivate some links with tour operators (they have to prove their ‘interest in the local community’) whist this might not generate loads of money it will generate good will and publicity – and also at the end of the day, combs, pencils and paper cost money so every little helps.
I’m not going to have a another glass of red and shut up for the night!
Unfortunately that is the extent of my fund raising knowledge, apart from a couple of big unsuccessful bids for EU and Lottery funds.
I spent the rest of my time arguing with my sexist ex royal marine boss and learning that if you want to be a successful fund raiser in the UK it helps if you have a beard, wear sandals with socks, read the Guardian and talk about caring and sharing a lot.
If anyone is really interested in fund raising in the UK I could probably get a bit more info – my mother (without the beard, sandals and guardian) assisted the big guys in fundraising for a large UK hospice and has written a fact sheet on fundraising which I could dig out.
Jamesintheworld appears to have gone awol – maybe the orphans are not a high priority?!
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