fundraising

Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other opportunities for Ashoka Fellows and leading social entrepreneurs.

NEW! The Fellowship Bulletin is now called The Ashoka Advantage, and it is available to view, download or send to others online on Scribd.com.

View The Ashoka Advantage for January, 2010 (also available in Spanish and French)

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Seize the opportunity, and keep up the good work!

Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other resources for Ashoka Fellows.  These opportunities are typically open to all sorts of social entrepreneurs as well. Download the December 2009 version of this list here. (Also available in French and Spanish).

Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other resources for Ashoka Fellows.  These opportunities are typically open to all sorts of social entrepreneurs as well. Download the November 2009 version of this list here. (Also available in French and Spanish).

Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other resources for Ashoka Fellows.  These opportunities are typically open to all sorts of social entrepreneurs as well. Download the October 2009 version of this list here. (Also available in French and Spanish).

This post contributed by Linda Peia

1. Look for a PARTNER, Not a Donor

If you are going to invest time in grant proposals, get the biggest bang for the buck. Seek out those institutions that have the potential to offer you more than a simple check. Besides weathering you from impersonal, shortlived donor relations, a partner-type relationship also allows you to differentiate yourself from the hundreds of other candidates, and gives you more leverage at the negotiation table.

So, first ask yourself:

A few weeks ago at Twestival Singapore, I came across a booth with a very interesting initiative - fund-raising through Facebook. It was the Give.SG booth and they weren't collecting donations or anything like that. All they asked for was that people with a Facebook account become fans of their Facebook page. This aroused my curiosity and so I went to investigate more. 

What the Give.SG team did was gather sponsors to agree to donate NT$10 to the Morakot survivors in Taiwan for each new fan on their Facebook fan page. The money will be given to Mercy Relief in Taiwan and World Vision Singapore to provide clean water to the survivors.

They were aiming to get 10,000 fans to raise NT$100,000 and today, they've crossed the mark! This is really a fantastic campaign that harnesses the power of the Facebook community not only to generate awareness but to raise funds in a low-cost, quick and easy manner. 

What's next? The team is now looking for other initiatives which they can help raise funds for. If there's a cause you would like them to know about, drop them an e-mail at info@give.sg. In the meantime, join their Facebook fan page and help them raise more funds!

By Su Yuen, CHIN (suyuen@gmail.com)

Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other resources for Ashoka Fellows.  These opportunities are typically open to all sorts of social entrepreneurs as well. You can download the September 2009 version of this list here. (Also available in French the Spanish version will be available soon).

If you're a social entrepreneur, you are fundraising. Even if you've found a model to make your social business sustainable and profitable, chances are that you will need venture capital. Tools like the Latin America Donor Index that Avina and the IDB created for identifying donor sources for LatinAmerica are really helpful. (By the way, it's a web-based tool that make information and markets more transparent and accessible, which is a trend that we have observed in many of our posts). In the US we know there are some other similar tools like like the one led by the Foundation Center, but this is one of the first efforts that we know of in LatinAmerica. And it is indeed very friendly and easy to use. You can search by issue, donor, country or keyword. You can track past giving trends. It's available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. And it yields useful information. Do you know of equivalents efforts for Africa, Asia or any other region?