IFC launch fund to support fundraisers in developing world
Howard Lake | 17 September 2008 | News
While fundraisers know that people give to people, today the Resource Alliance is asking fundraisers to give to fundraisers. The civil society capacity building organisation is announcing The Fundraisers Fund, an initiative to provide training for fundraisers in the developing world.
It is asking fundraisers in developed countries to give direct financial support to their colleagues in the developing world.
Although civil society is expanding in many parts of the world, there is still a lack of capacity and funding in many civil society organisations to access fundraising training. There are still too few people with the skills to tap into the resources available from an expanding middle class, from nationals living in developed economies, and from the corporate sector.
Advertisement
The Fundraisers Fund
Supporters of the Fundraisers Fund will be able to contribute through the website to a pool of money that will be used to provide bursary places to Resource Alliance conferences and workshops. It will also enable the provision of professional development opportunities through other routes, such as local courses and workshops in fundraisers’ home countries.
Resource Alliance CEO Simon Collings said:
“The central proposition of the Fundraisers Fund is that the people most likely to understand and support the needs of fundraisers are other fundraisers. And only other fundraisers will see any value in providing the means to develop their skills”.
Partly developed by The Good Agency, formerly Cascaid, the Fundraisers Fund is similar to the idea behind microfinance website Kiva, which allows people to lend money directly to social entrepreneurs in the developing world.
The Fund will be officially launched to the global fundraising community at the International Fundraising Congress in Holland in October.
Immediate targets are to recruit 100 donors giving an average of £10 a month by the end of the year but quickly progress that to 2,000 active supporters.
The Fund has grown out of the Resource Alliance’s Guy Stringer Bursary Fund, which provided bursary places for the IFC and the International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation, held every year in the southern hemisphere.
- Resource Alliance announces Springboard Fund to ‘restart the IFC’ (21 October 2021)
- In memoriam bursaries available for IFC 2018 (26 July 2017)
- Resource Alliance launches initiative to help smaller organisations attend IFC 2019 (16 September 2019)
Related posts
Bursaries for International Fund Raising Workshop
IFC delegates plan to expand impact of Guy Stringer Bursary Fund
Fundraising Appointments offers bursary places for the International Fundraising Workshop in Amsterdam
Speaker proposals open for the 2018 International Fundraising Congress
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.