Task 4 - Fundraising
Status: 
Time needed:
Two weeks or more
Step:
5
Crunch time! Hopefully we would have done a great job in Tasks 1 - 3 resulting in a "perfect" document to present to prospective donors. We will need to develop a fundraising pack in line with established practice, get this reproduced and sent out to a list of prospective donors that we would have compiled.
Project: Help Improve Notre Dame High School
Dear All
We need to prepare a letter that will go out for fundraising. We also need a list of what we are raising funds for including costs.
All help will be appreciated
Regards
Onye
Hi Onye
Who are you hoping to approach for funding? If you are intending to contact organisations who provide grants, many will have their own application form to fill in, or describe the format that they need. So it may not be possible to use a standard fundrasing letter, although it will be important to have gathered all the basic information to use as a start point.
If writing to e.g. local communitiy groups etc for small scale fundraising then I agree that you can probably use a standard format letter.
I may be able to help, but first we need to know exactly what Christopher is seeking money for, and how he wants to split that up and set priorities. I think the two of you are still working on that?
For some possible organisations to approach, have a look at
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgs9fnp6_0g5zp8p3n
Its also worth Christopher doing some research within Uganda e.g. finding out about funding offered by various foreign embassies as I know several run grants schemes there.
Mary
Mary,
Thanks for that advice to Onye. I really agree with you there are some foreign embassies here in Uganda running the small grants scheme. A good example of that is the United State Embassy that is currently receiving applications for the "Community Grants Program to Combat HIV/AIDS" and the "Ambassador’s Special Self Help Fund" until April 2010.
*Community Grants Program to Combat HIV/AIDS: Provides support to people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS as well as orphans and vulnerable children.
*Ambassador’s Special Self Help Fund: Provides funding to help community-based organizations launch small-scale sustainable development projects for income generation and quality of life improvements.
*Democracy and Human Rights Fund: Provides support for activities that promote political pluralism and human and civil rights. But this is currently not available.
Please refer to: http://kampala.usembassy.gov/applications.html for applications and guidelines.
--
Ojok Eric
National Focal Point-Uganda
Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS
P.O.Box 1464,Jinja Nawanyago
ojokeric@gmail.com
www.iAIDS.org | www.youthaidscoalition.org
Dear Eric,Mary,Onye and friends.
The information you give is very good.
We shall continue to try on all of them.
As you may not be remembering,building an electricity line worth 49.000.000 Ug shillings is soon getting completed.The line is for Notre Dame School.The grant was got from GTZ of Germany Embassy in Uganda,after a visit to Uganda of A Germany friend Eric Jahn,who provided to us the person to be contacted.
In the past we had been trying several of these embassies and not getting through and we had decided to give up.
But we shall try and try and try among others
Thank you very much for the contribution and for the information being given.
This evenning we are going for a meeting through which we shall determin our priorities after after refferinf to what KISOBOKA TRUST has offered to seek for help.
May God continue blessings you and all your works.
Christopher
LR MASAKA VILLAGE
NOTRE DAME HIGH SCHOOL
Hi guys
Thanks Eric, I remember telling Christopher about the American Embassy grants schemes earlier in the year. Christopher, did you ever follow up on this?
Christopher, its great to hear about the electricity! Hope the meeting goes well, once you have priorities it should make it easier to move forward as at the moment we don't know where to focus our efforts.
When you say that you have not been able to get through to the embassies, do you mean that you have not been able to find out which ones offer grants and how to apply, or have you put in applications but not been successful?
I suspect Eric will know more than me about who does what, but the British embassy has certainly had a Small Grants Scheme in the past (don't know if it is still continuing but it should be possible to find out), plus many others including Netherlands and Japan.
Mary
Dear All
We now have available the following:
1. Notre Dame Headed Paper
2. Project Brief on Notre Dame oys Dormitory
3. Draft Notre Dame Fundraising letter
I have attached them all to this post.
We need to review the project brief and draft letter to come up with final versions to begin the fundraising campaign.
In addition, I think it is better if we put together a list of organisations and/or people we plan to contact so that we can track our efforts once we start the campaign. Is there ayone who would volunteer to put this list together?
Regards
nye
Onye,
My comments on the letter-head attached with your post above:
The letter-head is in multiple colors - which means more expenses for printing. For an organization seeking donations, it is important to reflect an image of austerity in all operations. The letter-head is a symbol of the image of the organization, and great care must be exercised to avoid any impressions of wasteful expenditure. The cheapest is printing in a single color.
The address on the letter-head is merely a post box number. A post box number is to be used along with a 'physical' address. Organizations displaying only a post box number as an address (without any physical address) are usually not trusted due to obvious reasons. I find many villages on nabuur with only a post box number as an address.
Telephone numbers, with international dialing code, could be added.
Vijai
Hi Onye and Christopher
From today's post, I assume that the boy's dormitory is now the top priority?
I have no way to judge the accuracty of the figures in the budget. One thing I do notice is that a large amount of the cost is for labour. Is is possible for any of the building work to be done by school staff and other volunteers e.g. parents and guardians? Many donors will expect the community to contribute something towards the project either financially or by giving things such as labour and skills. It would be a good idea to explain that in the document.
Having looked through my info on potential donors earlier in the year and posted several possibilities under the http://www.nabuur.com/en/village/masaka/project/task/research-and-identi... task only to discover that nothing got followed up, I am not particularly keen to check everything out again unless I am sure that I am not wasting my time. My list is at http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgs9fnp6_0g5zp8p3n
You could start by checking out the American Embassy grants schemes that Eric posted about recently, as have I in the past. And finding out what similar schemes are run by other embassies, that will be much easier for someone in Uganda to do as you can call them and ask. Christopher, i guess ou are used to dealing with these as you have already had funding via the Germans.
You may find that it is a bit of a challenge finding money for dormitories rather than classrooms etc. Also, many of them don't fund construction projects. But some will.
If you are seeking some people to list as references, I would suggest that you ask people who have visited your school. Those could be people from abroad e.g. from that British charity who funded the water tank, or within Uganda.
As the majority of applications will probably be sent via email or using an application form, exact details of headed paper may not matter too much.
Mary
Dear friends,thank you very much for the contributions.
However,l want to inform you why we had given up to contacting embassies programs.
Embassies contacted year to year since year 2005,Usa,Japan,Britain,Denimark,France ,Germany,ltaly.
All these have guidelines,and we did contact all,but we used each year to speend much time and resources,but we could recieve not even a reply for either a grant or a regret.
Then we had decided to put a hold on these agencies.
But of recent,we got a grant from GTZ / German embassy for building an electrity line up to the school.
Mary as you suggested ,l am writting to people who have visited our school to do the refference,but we request that we shall be including you and Mr.Onye.
1.At one time ,l met with a friend at the cafe here and advised me that if possible we can even invite Volunteers who have knoledge with building that could come to Uganda and help us do this type of work.
Iam requesting that if any one knows such type of Volunteers,please send us contacts or else help and search for some.
She informed me that such organisations like HIRIZON & COINS can do such and that there are several of this type.
2.Please,Mr. Onye,if possible let us include on the website the topic for fundrising may be online.
3.Aso at one time i had that there are people who do fundrising for charities but for free or a small cost.
4.Dear other friends with enough experience with using internet may you check for us the links provided by Mary so that we can get some to contact.
We however,call upon all our friends not to get descouraged with these not easy programs,we have hope that small by small we can bring great changes to humanity.
I Know not very many can bring changes to humanity,but those that are few and dertermined can do so.
May God contnue to bless you and your works.
Yours
Christopher
Hi Christopher
When I suggested them, I didn't realise that you had already tried with the various embassy funding schemes.
I know that Esther, the facilitator of Kisozi village (also in Uganda) has been in contact with some Dutch volunteer organisations about finding volunteers for the projects in her village, I will see if she knows whether any of them may be able to send volunteers to you too.
Mary
Dear Mary,
Thank you very much for the message.
We shall be waiting to hear for the information from Esther for the volunteers.
W e wish if we can try all possible ways.
Fundrising is not very easy,and if it is mixed with Volunteers who can come down and do the work,then it may quickly bear some fruits.
Again l call upon other friends to come on board and contriubute to this cause.
l really do not what is happening to our programs here.Could be we have bad lack ? very few people do come on board to shear ideas with our Village.
Hope the Good Lord will only care and will provide some one or organisation to help us.
Yours
Christopher
Hi Christopher
I have been in contact with Esther, who hopes to be able to post here sometime over the next few days.
The whole Nabuur site is fairly quiet at the moment, not just Masaka village. One way to let people konw about the village (which might attract some new neighbours) is to post regular News items about what is happening at the school, including some details of what your needs are. For example I think your school year has (or is about to) end? So you could post a News item giving some information on what the school has achieved this year and your hopes for next year.
Mary
Hello Christopher,
Mary asked me about possibilities for volunteers and which organizations to contact.
We are working with Different Africa Connection, led by Dominique Cordier. You might have met her in Kampala in February. The advantage for us is that I am able to meet Dominique here face to face and have long talks with her.
It has taken quite a long time and quite a few long talks before Dominique finally said she wanted to work with us, but when she decided she was very enthusiastic. She is coming to see our project in February.
The two most important things are that there are enough acitivities for a volunteer to be involved in each day (teaching, counselling, constructing the buildings etc.) and accomodation. A volunteer should have their own accomodation that meets good standards.
Eddy and I have just started this whole process with Dominique, but Paul Bulenzi has already received volunteers through Dominique, so you may want to contact him too. We are ready to receive volunteers from April on, so we are just in the starting phase.
Contact her at info@differentafricaconnection.nl
Christopher, you can mention my name, but I am very busy with Eddy and our project and it takes a lot of time and energy, so I can only concentrate on the work that Eddy and I are doing.
I think it is very important for projects to set up a network outside Nabuur and to establish things with other organizations, so keep that up.
You asked me about the coins foundation and Horizon Holland.
Actually, I dont know the coins foundation, I dont think it is Dutch.
Horizon Holland is an organization that can help you direct to funders, assist you with advice and help to send volunteers. My experience is that you need to actively address them.
Hope this helps a bit, Esther
Dear Esther,
Thank you so much for the message and for the information.
Yes,l can remember,Dominique.Today lam writting to him.
The information is good and we shall benefit from it.
Thank every one that has contributed .
Yours
Christopher.
LR.MASAKA VILLAGE
Dear Esther,
Thank you so much for the message and for the information.
Yes,l can remember,Dominique.Today lam writting to him.
The information is good and we shall benefit from it.
Thank every one that has contributed .
Yours
Christopher.
LR.MASAKA VILLAGE