RESOURCE MOBILISATION

What is Fundraising?
This is the selling of an idea to others who have the means to contribute money, time, service or support in kind to make it happen.

What is Resource Mobilization?

This is the bigger effort of ensuring that the institution has adequate funds to develop and conduct activities.

This is done through; Proposal writing Concept papers Letter to donors Trainings Rent Charity walks

Key concepts

Types of donors
Corporate (Coca Cola company, Digicel, Banks, GT & T). Families and Foundations. Individual donors INGO Church agencies. Multi-National /UN agencies Government agencies. Multilateral Development Banks.

Where do donors get money?

Road walks/Charity walks. Market auctions. Concerts and exhibition games. Contributions from salaries. Personal will commitments. Government taxes. Sale of rights (Advert pictures when sold). Court claims.

What motivates donors to give?

Concern for good will. Duty to give; religious goals. Guilt: B.A.T due to its product that causes lung cancer. Personal experience: former victim of the same experience. Being asked. Personal benefit: Political ambition. Peer pressure. Corporate responsibility.

Donor pyramid

One time giver Regular giver Committed giver High value donor.

Common Fundraising Strategies

Ability to ask People give to people to help people Credibility Understand donors need. Know the relative standard of giving (Applying for little or more money) Donors are people not offices. They can like you, get annoyed, upset. Etc. Show peoples need. Set an example. The 80/20 rule: More efforts more funding. Seeking for long term partnership.

Never forget the 6Rs.

Right organization Right donor Right amount Right way Right time Right course. Be patient, never give up, try and try. Say thank you for good or bad news.

Tips on fundraising
Network. Start with local opportunities like; individuals at local levels, beneficiaries, other non government organizations, community based organizations, Religious leaders, cultural leaders, government structures i.e. Toshaos, Councilors, RDC, DEOs, etc.

Involve Donors: Let donors be part of your operations like getting involved in monitoring and evaluation, ask them to be part of board members at the executive if they can.
Work with celebrities: involve popular people as partners like cultural leaders, RDCs, DEOs or patrons of your project.

Know the donor: You should seek for funding from the donor you know how it operates, lend funding and trusted.
Working with international volunteers: As they mobilize resources physically, economically and socially where one can acquire experience. Watch grammar and spellings: this is one of the areas one should be very keen with when mobilizing resources in terms of proposal writing, concept papers and letter writings.

Understandable project: show the clear understanding of the project you are seeking funding for. Make clarity of the project to show donors that you know it. Appraisal process: one should know the proposal review processes. Proof read: to be very sure of your spellings, grammar and other errors, one should be in position to review or proof read the proposal before submission to the

Consider joint proposals: Using net works to avoid duplication of service delivery, when writing project proposal one should be knowledgeable of partner operational areas and seeking for reference from partners who must have got funding from the same donor. Thats why joint proposals are important. Fundraising Committee: Establish a fundraising committee and a clear plan for resource mobilization.

Desperate: Avoid sounding desperate to a donor because donors may consider you to be having inadequate capacity to handle funds once funded or mismanage. Embassies: Utilise embassies for more information about funding opportunities or about particular funding. They are in position to support or recommend you for funding from other donors. Reference: Ask for and attach reference contact details on your proposal to avoid donors to doughty your capacity, integrity etc.

One Individual: Donors fear to fund one individual owned organization. One should be in position to explain the capacity of running the organization, beneficiaries and partners. Jargons: One should use the donor jargons often. You should dance to donors tune than one to force donor to dance to their tune. The use of creole language may not work out there like mthing or mi instead of Me, them men where they may not understand.

Limitations for Organizations.

Great Competition: Donors receive a lot of proposals for funding yet they may not fulfill all their needs. Lack of Accountability: Lack of proper accountability, credible references, resource transfers, registration issues limit organizations to access funding.

Heavy work Load: there may be heavy work load in funding, monitoring and evaluation of large number of small organizations than small number of big organizations.

Lack of necessary structures: There may be insufficient structures that may not fulfill funding priority area therefore limits funding opportunity.

Common funding mechanisms/Jargons RFF-Request For Funding. RFP-Request For Proposals. FOA-Funding Opportunity Announcements. LOI-Letter Of Intent/Interest. CFC-Call For Concepts. Scholarships

Key steps
Proposal writing is a step by step process that should be well managed. Planning Writing Submission Follow up to find out if awarded or rejected.

Direct Letter
This is request of funding that can either be of urgent or long term but its mostly appropriate with urgent needs like in disaster times, calamity, sickness, etc that can catch donors attention to give at any time.

SCPDA, South Rupununi, Region #9 20th Nov 2012 Canadian Disaster Fund Canada Embassy I am Samson Esudu, Fundraising & Public Engagement Advisor, SCPDA. Best regards go to you for the support you have always rendered to the people of Guyana especially in responding towards disasters. Much as many agencies are on the frontline in disaster management, its also of our sad note to the people of Aishalton village who have been cut off by the flooded river for a period of 2 months and lack immediate alternatives to access basic needs like food items, their homes are also flooding which has inflated prices of all commodities. They have lost hope for the next year. Over 1000 people are in this area and there is immediate need for food and non food items which is worthy US$500,000 for the first 6 months period. By then floods will have reduced. Thanks for your commitment and partnership in working hand in hand for the disaster response. Yours in Partnership

Concept Paper/Note
Catch attention during opening. Tell what the gift will do. Be personal; give names. Highlight volunteer aspects of the work. Describe the real gaps to be met. Offer hope/solutions. Show appreciation well in advance. Base the appeal on past success. Present a permanent solution. NB: KISS (Keep It Simple and Short)

Families & Foundations/Individual Donors.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ford Clinton Foundation George W. Bush Foundation Presidential Malaria funds. Google www.foundations.org

INGOs & Church Agencies.

Conservation International World Wildlife Fund Forest Peoples Programme Catholic Relief Services VSO/Cuso International

Multi-National /UN Agencies

United Nations Childrens Education Fund(UNICEF). World Health Organisation.(WHO) United Nations Development Plan (UNDP) United Nations Human Rights Commission.(UNHRC) World Food Programme(WFP)

Government Agencies.
USAID-USA DFID-England JICA-Japan CIDA-Canada SIDA-Sweden GTZ-Germany AUSAID-Australia etc. especially at their embassies.

Multilateral Development Banks

World Bank International Monetary Fund(IMF)

Service and Membership Clubs

Rotary clubs.

Other than money; Ask for equipment like computers, printers, Scholarships Recommendation letters Board membership.

Roles of Managers/Staff Initiate meetings and partnership with donors. Identify and solicit for resources. Plan and coordinate with donor agencies.

Assignment/Exercise
Reflect over your project Qn 1 Which donors should you target? 2 Why? 3 What strategy will you use to bring these on board? 4 What are the challenges? 5 How can they be over-come?

Project Proposal
This is a deliberate expression of intended activities in order to achieve the target goals and objectives at specified period of time.

Contents of a proposal
1. Executive summary This answers the questions what is the project all about. This is a critical section of the proposal. It is read first or may be last. Donors may not have time to read entire proposal which is bulky and compose of statements that they may not be understanding or not connected to each. When writing executive summary, it must be short and clear to the point comprising of what is in the entire proposal.

2 Profile. Who are we? This section describes your organization/group/association/company. Its credibility (Audited financial statements and references add value). Also provide information about the nature of your organization, size of its annual budget, your major funding sources, institutional goals etc. Outline the track record of your organization, experience in planning, managing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating similar interventions.

 Discuss your achievements in similar area. Include a short resume or c.v. of key staff and show how wonderful and trustworthy a pair of hands you are as in a team. Sustainability of the project should clearly be elaborated.

3. Problem Statement This answers the question Where are we? It covers the background as well as an analysis of the need to be addressed by the proposed intervention. It should be confined to the aspects of the situation that are relevant to the situation and intervention you are proposing.

Explaining the following; How you or organization got involved in identifying the problem. Was it through a baseline survey? Explain the nature of the problem. Explain the magnitude and relevance of the problem. Do the analysis of unmet need. Relate the problem to national/international policies/focus especially the millennium development

4. Goals & Objectives It answers the question Where do we intend to go? GOAL this highlights the reason for the project or rationale for hiring the project. The project may have only one goal. The goal is affected by other projects. The project may not achieve the goal in its lifetime.

PURPOSE - what the project hopes to achieve by the time it is finished? What change has occurred as a result of this project? A project may have only one purpose. OUTPUTS - What will project leave behind when it is finished? Concrete, practical things left in place by the time the project in finished. Sometimes referred deliverables. Can be used as milestones of what has been accomplished at various stages during the life of the project. ACTIVITIES - How the project will achieve its outputs and what the project will actually do during its lifetime.

ASSUMPTIONS AND RISKS - conditions that exist beyond the real of control in a project and conditions that threaten the potential for achieving the project purpose. Which route shall we take? This refers to the design of the interventions that will meet objectives and contribute to the attainment of the specific objectives. The strategy is the core of the project design. It may consist of a single or a number of simultaneous of sequential interventions.

5. Implementation plan. How shall we travel? This is a core section of the proposal that describes what is going to be done like how activities are to be carried out. Having described where you want to go and what route to take.

6. Monitoring and Evaluation How shall we know that we have arrived? Show the prospective donor the system for M & E at the design stage. Clearly state roles and responsibilities. Note that donors look for results therefore show Result Oriented Monitoring.

7. Budget How much will it cost? Enumerate anticipated costs of the planned inputs and activities. Please note that budgets are forecasts not definitive statements of costs. Budget calculations should be clearly shown.

8. Appendices Evidence of your descriptions. This is composed of any attachments like Certificate of registration, Recommendations from other partners/donors, audited reports, Bank statements etc. These add value to your proposal for funding. They show evidence of maturity in the same areas.

30 Reasons why your proposal request was not honored.

These comments have been gathered from proposal reviews over the last 15 years. They highlight the most common errors proposal writers make in developing and writing their proposals and illustrate by negative example what reviewers look for in winning proposals. All of these errors are avoidable.

Deadline for proposal submission was not met

Guidelines for proposal content, outline and length were not followed. Overall the most striking reason for low marked proposals was the consistent failure of NGOs to fully responsive to what was asked for in the request for proposals.

Proposals are not organized so that their distinct sections can be easily matched against the RFP evaluation criteria

The project, although good, was not a priority topic to the sponsoring agency.

Proposed project design and implementation were completely traditional. the proposed project offered nothing unusual, intriguing, or clever or it seemed to lack significance.

Proposal was not clear in describing one or more elements. or the proposal was not complete. For example, the proposal did not describe how the project would be managed, how activities would be monitored and results evaluated and reported.

The writer /agency does not seem to know well the subject matter .For example, sources cited were out of date, or the proposal writer overlooked important reference materials previous studies and projects.

Proposed project appeared beyond the capacity of the individual or institution to implement.

Method for conducting the project was not explained or seemed unsuited to the project.

Budget was too high/too low.

Costs appeared greater than the benefits, or it was un clear who would benefit.

Constrains most likely to be encountered in carrying out the project are not considered and there were no tactics for overcoming them presented.

Rationale for choosing a particular approach as the best solution to a problem was missing or not very well thought out.

Lessons learned from previous projects are not shown or are not made relevant to the proposed project.

The proposed beneficiaries of the project had no role in identifying problems and solution, therefore, it seems unlikely that benefits will be sustained.

Work plans are too vague .they lack specifics on what activities are to be done, why, how, when, in what sequence and by whom.

Weak evidence is presented of ability to meet schedules

Management responsibility and capability are not clearly demonstrated in terms of planning activities, budgeting funds, providing commodities, keeping records and

The quality of the writing is poor. The proposal is hard to read, uses sweeping generalizations and jargons, is excessively repetitive and too long.

The proposal contains an unreasonable number of mechanical errors (e.g. typos, pages, upside down out of place) showing an inattention to detail and quality of work.

The project as proposed is overly involved with too many elements under simultaneous implementation.

The problem seems premature and warrants at most only pilot projects.

The problem as stated seem more complex than what the writer appears to realize

The problem statement is not of sufficient importance or is unlikely to produce any new or useful information.

The project as proposed is overly involved with too many elements under simultaneous implementation

The institutional setting is unfavorable

The project proposes to rely on too heavily on insufficiently experienced staff.

Absence/reallocation of funds by the donor. This may be due to an urgent need or calamity (earthquake)

Lack of follow-up with the donor after submitting the proposal.

Your proposal was not received

Get to groups and write proposal on areas of group priorities.