Tag Archives: funders

Donors offering feedback on humanitarian projects & proposals

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image of a panel discussion

Years ago, I was a part of an online community for humanitarian aid and development workers. It wasn’t a group for the sharing of best practices or professional development. It was a group for venting and kvetching.

The group didn’t last long in that form – as the group became more and more popular and new members came in, venting started to be frowned on, because of the expectation of such workers to always be positive took over – as it always does in the offline world. The snarky commenters were shamed into silence and the group became yet another boring, rarely-controversial discussion group for best practices and where to find jobs and funding.

One of my favorite times on the group were when conversations would break out about eyebrow-raising comments that came from funders. I loved the comments so much, I saved many of them. I just found them as I was cleaning out a hard drive and decided to share my favorites. No actual humanitarian groups or donors are named here.

These are reported to be actual comments humanitarian workers have gotten from foreign funders:

For the household disinfection kit you are proposing, could you please explain the purpose of the mop? I mean, I know people use it to clean their house, but could you write a justification to that effect?

Email conversation:
Funder: “Hey, can you include some photos of children. They usually look good for fundraising”.
Agency: “No. I cannot.”
Funder: “Why not?”
Agency “Because the project is NOT about children”.

Funder: “When refurbishing the health facility, ensure that a maximum of 2 coats of paint is used”.

After sending a very long and detailed report (according to the donor’s format and per their request), including photos showing the progress of each activity, I got this email response: “Hi. Can you give me some quick updates on the project?”

Funder, regarding the alphabetization component of a rural development program: “Why would women living in the desert need to learn how to read and write anyway?”

Funder: “We don’t understand why you want to do contingency activities due to increased fighting. Could you just solve the conflict?”

Funder: “Why do they need a gravity-fed spring water system? Don’t they have normal tap water?”

Funder said they would rather spend $200 US per day renting cars for a five-year project rather than actually buying cars, which would be far cheaper, “because we don’t support the purchase of assets.”

Funder, at our first meeting: “I thought you would be a man.”

I submitted a very long, detailed research report for a donor. Got it returned with feedback. Throughout the 120-page report there is a comment from the funder, stating “you should mention xyz government and UN report here.” The comments were given at least 20-30 times, and the comments got angrier and angrier throughout the report because we’d missed such an important document.
Me in follow-up call with the donor: “I have searched all of the documents you sent that you wanted us to include and the Internet, I can’t find xyz report.”
Donor: “It hasn’t been released yet.”
Me: “errrrmmmm… Could you send me a copy? That way I would be able to mention its contents” (and actually know it exists which obviously I didn’t before).
Donor: “I don’t have a copy.”
Me: “errmmmmm… have you even read it?”
Donor: “No, I just heard about it.”

Funder: “So are you actually a spy for the British Government?”
Worker: (nervous, confused) “No, I am sure my Government considers me far too troublesome to employ” (i.e. sweary with an inability to toe the line), “Why?”
Funder: “How else would a woman end up working in Mine Action here?”

Donor: “We are paid for a children’s rights project. We cant support you in a nutritional crisis.”

Had a potential donor call me at 3 AM local time, when I was helping with first response after a disaster, to say that they had decided that they wanted their aid to go to providing shelter to orphans and could my organization do that? At 3 AM, I had to explain that nobody knew which children were orphans as yet because they were still determining who had died, and that the first option would be to reunite children with extended family members rather than create a separate facility. They were noticeably displeased during this call. I clearly did not understand their humanitarian impulse to help ORPHANS. They didn’t give us the money.

Funder: “These photos don’t show a reality that would reflect the need for the kind of assistance you’re asking for. Do you have photos that more obviously show the effects of food insecurity and mass migration?”
Many words for: put in images of starving children 🙄. For the record; the photos we provided were of adult women who had consented to having their photos taken.

As for myself, I had to help a colleague explain to the representative of a very large, well-known tech agency that Africa is not a country and that not everyone spoke English there.

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If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

two exceptional resources re: donor cultivation

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There are two sites that I think are exceptional in talking about donor cultivation and building meaningful, ethical relationships with donors that lead to long-term support. These two resources can help move your program’s mindset away from “Where is that magical list of people/corporations/foundations that might donate to my organization” – which, by the way, does not exist – and, instead, move to creating much more effective, ongoing strategies for attracting support and new supporters. Taking time to read these free blogs once a week is as good as attending any conference or workshop regarding fundraising for nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, schools, community projects, etc.

One site is made up of excellent communications / outreach resources from Philanthropy Without Borders regarding donor site visits, empathy and ethics in fundraising and how to make the “big ask” during a site visit. Two of my favorite articles:

Another terrific resource: blogs by blogs by Mary Cahalane (Hands-On Fundraising). Mary has been a very successful fundraiser and believes strongly on cultivating relationships with donors, not just asking for money. She talks a lot about making emotional connections with donors and other supporters and about ethics in managing fundraising staff.

  • Mary also offers this gem from her Ultimate Guide on Donor Experience: We need to avoid focusing on the quick transactions and the shiny objects that are cropping up and begging for our attention. Without proper stewardship of both our donors and the data that represents them, we will never be able to perform our responsibilities and deliver on the promise of our mission.

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Funding for Technology

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I just updated a web page I have on my own web site that’s meant to help nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools and other mission-based organizations and programs to fundraise for technology needs – for hardware (like tablets, smart phones, laptops, etc.), software, a system to subscribe to, etc. The advice is focused on what information you need to have read to share with donors, how to frame your story about the need for this technology in human terms, and how to identify potential supporters.

I originally developed the page, and continue to update it, because I get emails from people who want to know where to find “the” list of foundations or corporate giving programs that fund software or hardware at nonprofits. And there really isn’t such a list – foundations and corporate giving programs are looking to fund program activities/causes, not equipment, specifically. Grants go to particular kinds of programs – those to help children, the environment, the arts, women experiencing domestic violence, a community in need of better cohesion, etc. But if you can show how technology is a program cost, how it helps you better serve people or your cause, it has a much better potential to attract funding. In other words: show how this is #tech4good. 

I say on the page:

Technology can help an animal shelter better track their animal in-take process and get animals ready for adoption more quickly. Technology can help make a professional theater better track ticket buyers who might be good prospects for donations. Technology can help a program supporting homeless teens to better identify trends and needs. Make your pitch for funding based on what technology will allow you to do regarding your organization’s clients – not so much about what the technology is. Again, a corporation doesn’t want to fund the purchase of 10 tablets for your organization – but a corporation would love to fund a resource that helps, say, homeless families, and if you can show exactly how the purchase of those 10 tablets will allow that, then funders will be much more attracted to such.

Have a look and share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.

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Free guide updated: Basic Fundraising for Small NGOs/Civil Society in the Developing World

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I’ve updated Basic Fundraising for Small NGOs/Civil Society in the Developing World for the first time in four years. I swore I wouldn’t anymore, and even said so on my web site… it’s quite the beast of a project, given that it’s entirely unfunded work. And I’ve been updating it since 2004.

But the continued pleas on sites like Quora from small NGOs in Asia and Africa, including very specific questions about crowdsourcing, a topic not covered in the 2015 version of the document, prompted me to spend oh-so-many hours updating it.

The PDF book is now 41 pages long and is available to download, for free, from my web site. It includes chapters on:

  • Fundraising: Some Things You Should NEVER Do
  • Networking & Establishing Credibility
  • Guidelines for Integrity, Transparency & Accountability
  • Using Social Media to Build Credibility
  • Absolute Essential Preparations To Solicit Donations
  • Finding Donors & Making Contact
  • Proposal Writing
  • Ethical Principles in Fundraising
  • Crowdfunding & Online Donations
  • Beware of Fundraising Scams
  • Financial Sustainability Action Planning
  • Individuals Raising Money in Another Country for Your NGO

The work of small community-based organizations (CBOs)/civil society organizations (CSOs)/non- governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries, collectively, is vital to millions of people. There is no group or institution doing more important work than CBOs / CSOs & NGOs. They represent local people and local decision-making. They often are the only group representing minority voices and the interests of those most-marginalized in a community. I call them mission- based organizations: they are organizations that exist, primarily, to fulfill a mission. They have a mission-statement that is supposed to guide all of their activities – in contrast to a business, which exists to make profits.

Financial support for their vital work, however, is hard to come by, and staff at these organizations, whether paid or unpaid (volunteer), have, usually, never had training in how to raise funds, what different funding streams can look like (individual donors, foundation grants, corporate grants, fees-for-service, government contracts-for- service, etc.), or how to maintain an accounting of funds.

I can’t solve this challenge with a book, but I hope I can give these NGOs the most basic information they need to secure funding. I hope it also helps consultants who are trying to help these small NGOs in developing countries.

Will I update it again? Not any time soon, barring the correction of some egregious mistakes, and maybe not at all. I need money too, folks. I need to devote my energy to projects that pay me. Please read more about my consulting services and let me know if you might like to work together!

vvbooklittleA resource that isn’t free but is very much worth your investment – at least I think so – is The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The book, which I co-wrote with Susan Ellis, extensive, detailed suggestions and specifics about using the Internet to support and involve volunteers: virtual volunteering. It includes task and role development, suggestions on support and supervision of online volunteers, guidelines for evaluating virtual volunteering activities, suggestions for risk management, online safety, ensuring client and volunteer confidentiality and setting boundaries for relationships in virtual volunteering, and much more. The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is available both as a traditional printed book and as a digital book.

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If nonprofits were brutally honest with funders

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How will the community be transformed as a result of this grant? 

Hahahaha, that’s a good one! This grant is for $5,000! And people say funders don’t have a sense of humor! 5K will allow us to pay for six weeks of rent, which means we can stay open, and who knows what awesome stuff we’ll accomplish during those six weeks, am I right? Please add three zeroes if you really want to see transformation.

This is from a hilarious article from Nonprofit: Adorable Festive by Vu Le, Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, and is something every nonprofit, NGO and government program will have a hearty laugh about – it’s something every foundation and corporate philanthropy program manager should read as well.

Read it, have a laugh – and, seriously, think about how you could say some of these things diplomatically in a funding application. Because it needs to be said.

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tips for fund-raising for NGOs serving the developing world

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fundhuntingSome of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) to online forums for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries, no matter what the subject of the forum is supposed to be (urban disasters, HIV/AIDS, maternal health, water and sanitation) , are regarding funding.

In 2004, frustrated at seeing fundraising questions from NGOs over and over and over again, and no INGOs nor UN agencies trying to answer them, I drafted a short list of basic tips for fund-raising for NGOs serving the developing world. I was an online volunteer with the Aid Workers Network then (the organization is long gone, unfortunately). Several other AWN volunteers revised the draft, and we finalized and published a version online for the AWN community. But I kept updating the document, and it grew from 15 pages to 30.

I have no idea how many people accessed the document. I tried to track it through various means, but was never successful.

I have updated the document for the first time since 2011, and instead of asking people to write me for it, so I could get an idea of how many people accessed it, I now have it ready for download from my web site. It’s now 29 pages.

But the big news is that I’ve updated it for the last time. I’m not updating it anymore.

Most of the information is timeless; the web sites in the document will change over time, the organizations cited will come and go, but the basic advice will always be valid, I hope. Also, there are so many more resources now to help NGOs with fundraising than there were 10 years ago, as any search on Google will show – this document isn’t filling an information gap like it was when it was first drafted and published.

Some things that have been surprising in the decade I’ve maintained this document, some of which are also reasons I will no longer be updating this document:

  • I have regularly gotten funding solicitations via email from NGOs in the developing world because they’ve done exactly what this document says NOT to do: they’ve found my name in association with fundraising and sent me a grant proposal, unsolicited, despite the obvious fact that I am NOT a foundation. The emails aren’t even addressed to me by name; they are often addressed to “sir”, or they have 10 other emails listed in the “to” bar.
  • I make it clear that this document is for NGOs serving the developing world, yet I frequently get requests for it from nonprofits in the USA. Sure, some of the advice is universal for mission-based organizations, but the document talks about funding sources that are available only to organizations working in, say, Africa or the poorest parts of Asia and South America, sources that are NOT available to organizations in North America.
  • Several people and organizations have posted the document to their web sites without my permission, despite me asking on my web site and in the document for this not to be done. When I’ve written to ask them to remove it – they often are posting an old version, not the latest – they say they had no idea I wouldn’t allow the document to be posted. Which means they didn’t bother to read even the first two pages, or, they just don’t care.
  • Several people and organizations have passed this document off as their own. That hurts most of all. All I’ve asked in return for this document is credit for it – I have never asked for payment. For someone to go through it and take my name off of it and then publish it as their own, including people from at least two NGOs – it’s shameful. It’s disheartening. It contributes to a negative image of NGOs working in and for the developing world.
  • I’ve never received follow up from anyone saying how they have used the document. Has it been helpful? Did it result in funding? I’ll never know.

I sound bitter. Sorry. I’m frustrated that a decade-long effort didn’t seem to do any good. If this document does make a difference for your NGO, I hope you will tell me.

Also see:

Survival Strategies for Nonprofits , a guide for nonprofits facing critical budget shortfalls.

OCHA guide to crowdfunding: a review

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409571-OCHA_TB16_Crowdfunding_for_Emergencies_onlineThe United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released a briefing called Crowdfunding for Emergencies. Not really a how-to guide, more of a look at how it might work in the very best of circumstances. I’m glad to see a UN agency – OCHA, in particular – talking about crowdfunding – about how individuals can donate financially, directly, to humanitarian efforts – but any talk of crowdfunding needs to come with a reality check. And there’s no reality check in this short report.

So, here’s my reality check regarding crowdfunding for humanitarian crises:

  • Most of the time, a crowdfunding effort does NOT raise lots of money. Most crowdfunding efforts fail to meet the expectations of the initiatives that attempt them. We hear only about the campaigns that are wildly successful – not the many more that aren’t successful at all. Let’s look at just Kickstarter, which is mentioned repeatedly in the report — but without these statistics: less than 41% of approved Kickstarter campaigns get funded — and Kickstarter says another 20% of projects submitted are rejected by the site. Out of the over 72,000 projects funded on Kickstarter since its inception, as of October 2014, only about 1,600 raised more than $100,000.
  • The wildly successful crowdfunding efforts you have heard about – for Haiti, for Nepal – have had a tremendous amount of marketing and media coverage behind them. Vast amounts. People were hearing about the dire circumstances in Nepal on the news, on the radio, on their social media networks, and on and on, for days and days. Most initiatives won’t have that kind of outreach behind their crowdfunding effort.
  • The wildly successful crowdfunding efforts you have heard about have, later, lead to some very bad feelings among donors, who later read stories about the misuse of funds. Crowdfunding might get your initiative lots of money, but if it does, it will also get you lots of scrutiny. Are you ready to handle such? Are you ready to show the impact of the money you raised, in hard facts and figures, on demand?
  • Donor fatigue is real. People get exhausted from seeing images depicting desperate circumstances. They are moved the first time, maybe the second time, but then they feel overwhelmed, emotionally-drained, even under siege. If your crowdfunding effort for a humanitarian crisis happens soon after another humanitarian crisis, it might not matter that you have an excellent outreach campaign and lots of media coverage.

I was glad to see this risk talked about in the publication:

“Financially supporting a few crowdfunded projects at the potential expense of the community-at-large is a substantial risk, as crowdfunding platforms tend to target individuals as compared to agencies.”

Crowdfunding is, absolutely, something humanitarian organizations should be exploring. But keep expectations realistic.

Also see:

Survival Strategies for Nonprofits

Nonprofits still struggling

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An interesting note, per my last blog about my most popular blogs in 2012: even those weren’t as popular as an entry from December 2011: Survival Strategies for Nonprofits. Visitor numbers for that blog just keep getting higher and higher.

It doesn’t take much to know why: nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other mission-based organizations are struggling. The recession is ending for much of the economy, but I think it will take another five years before nonprofits get to focus on expanding and experimenting again – not just surviving.

Also see:

Survival Strategies for Nonprofits , a guide for nonprofits facing critical budget shortfalls.

Can Komen recover?

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No matter how you feel about abortion services or Planned Parenthood, you have to agree that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation handled its decision-making and communications regarding its defunding of Planned Parenthood very, very poorly:

  • They did not discuss the decision with their affiliates, let alone involve those affiliates in the decision. Some of the affiliates (Oregon and Connecticut, and perhaps more) even issued press releases after the Komen headquarters announcement asking for their HQ to reconsider. When your organization’s own affiliates are asking PUBLICLY for you to reconsider a decision, you have made a grave error.
  • They gave contradictory statements about why they were defunding Planned Parenthood. Sometimes they said it was because of a new policy not to fund any organization under investigation by state or federal authorities – yet they had no plans to discontinue funding for Penn State! They said the decision wasn’t political, nor because they had hired a dedicated, outspoken advocate against the right to abortion services – Karen Handel – who retweeted this on her Twitter account, contradicting Komen’s statements about this NOT being a political decision:

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The original image from Lisa McIntire

Today, Komen somewhat reversed its decision regarding Planned Parenthood, but left the door open to stop funding the organization after the current funding cycle. It has not gone unnoticed that Komen has also stopped funding stem cell research. It has also has not gone unnoticed that Karen Handel is still a senior vice president at the Komen foundation.

This PR nightmare is not over for the Komen foundation. Can the foundation rebuild trust with the thousands of women who are saying they will never support the organization again? Can it successfully make this switch in its work, avoiding any organization that garners criticisms from far-right religious advocates, and therefore be the target of women’s rights advocates?

How should have Komen handled both this decision and the communications of such? Or is there any way for them to have done this without suffering such massive fallout with so many (now) former supporters? Share in the comments section here.

Also see: How to Handle Online Criticism.