Fun(d)raising

Fundraising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving – Hank Rossa

Let me begin with an interesting incident. We live in a newly-formed gated society of over 250 households, most of whom are upper middle-class owners. One would believe that we don’t have any significant number of nit-pickers or street fighters in our midst. Discussions are generally constructive, healthy and sensitive, and actions are oriented towards safety, social responsibility, sustainability, etc. Last Diwali, some owners proposed that we give ad hoc one month’s salary to the housekeeping and security staff (40-45 members) – a good thing to do for people who are serving us throughout the year,  being deserving and needy too.

Surprisingly, a section of the members opposed it strongly, citing that we have a negotiated contract with the contractor and we should as a society avoid paying any extra money directly, which sets a bad precedent for all times to come. A couple of days of WhatsApp warfare ensued and the Management committee was in a fix. Then, one of the more benevolent members declared that he would start  an informal fund specifically for this purpose and gave Rs 1 lakh as his contribution. What happened thereafter was quite interesting – in just 48 hours more than 50 members pooled together twice the target money and arranged to distribute the same among the staff. An significant lesson in proving that success in any fundraising process is not about just transactional and operational effectiveness, but very often creating an emotional connect and outpouring too!

I had a unique experience in being a volunteer when  I was abroad. I was visiting my daughter in the USA when Bala Mandir Trustee (Mr. Natarajan) called me up and nominated me as a volunteer for the ‘Crowdfunding Campaign’ for their Kinship Care programme which I accepted after some thinking. The most obvious challenge was the time zone difference between India and  San Diego

(13 and a half hours ). This restricted communication to virtually email and WhatsApp only. The other handicap was the fact that Bala Mandir at that time, was not registered to receive overseas funds and that meant canvassing for contributions from friends and relatives living in North America were totally ruled out. So, the locational disadvantage affected both parties.

Also, since I was travelling in Canada, I had to miss the briefing and kick-off sessions. My own campaign started late – by nearly a week (of this two-week project) but in the end, it didn’t affect the final result since it was also extended by a week.

Crowd Funding Concept: Donation-based crowd funding involves raising money from a large number of donors whose individual contributions while small, tend to become significant when aggregated. Very similar to the impact of ‘Ripple effect’ as primary waves give rise to secondary and tertiary waves. The essentials involve sufficient number of volunteers (who are often donors too) who will actively solicit funds from their family and friends, acquaintances and business contacts. This will then spread into secondary and tertiary campaigners, which will provide a beneficial outreach for the project itself. Importance of a robust reliable, easy access, platform for payments with swift and accurate acknowledgement and accounting system is essential as the campaign itself is meant to be short term, high intensity and focused.

Criteria for success:

-The underlying project should have a good appeal with the potential donors – The selection of volunteers (sounds oxy moronic but true).- Proper briefing and comprehensive campaign material- Robust fundraising platform.  All of this appeared to be in place in this project though we did find that there were occasional instances of failure of the payment gateways leading to some dropouts.

Personal Learning:

– As you sow so you reap – திணை விதைத்தவன் திணை அறுப்பான் – வினை விதைத்தவன் வினை அறுப்பான்

The Tamil proverb is equally appropriate ! – The contributions that came from people who at some point of time received some pro bono help from me during the last few years surprised me. Perhaps, I should avoid such people in future as quid pro quo should not be underlying consideration at all in a campaign like this.

• Expect only about 15- 20 % success (hit) rate. Out of the 100 people I approached only about 20 finally came forward with donations. Even in the Diwali Gift story I started theblog with, the success rate was about the same. Useful index for future planning while campaigning.
• Present yourselves as the lead and face of the campaign. Your focus audience will be willing to donate only because you are actively supporting and contributing. As  a note of caution, even though the cause is good, they will be sceptics because there are enough scandals and scams going around.  People generally tend to ignore appeals from unknown sources however credible the campaign material is and however noble the cause is.

At the end, I was happy to be part of a campaign which was a great success and met its goals. I understand that this is the first ever crowd funding experiment for Bala Mandir. It was for their new Kinship care programme, a unique project to support children who lost one or both parents from the socio-economically weak section during the pandemic . I am glad that the crowd funding initiative has given the institution the confidence to expand the programme to cover a wider geographic region which will enable more such children to benefit from it.

Kudos to Bala Mandir !

Finally let me end with a quote:

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill