Online Fundraising for Sustainability

Overview

Do you need to broaden your understanding of fundraising and appreciate its more meaningful, holistic and strategic context? This course will provide you with an opportunity to deconstruct the term ‘fundraising’ and view it from the angle of organisational development and sustainability.

Fundraising, it is said, is not rocket science. Yet it requires the right skillset, mindset, tools and techniques to get the desired results. It is also said that the approach to fundraising does not necessarily need to be structured, strategic or follow an organised process, so long as an organisation knows and can communicate what it needs money for and how it is going to make a difference. This might work for some organisations, particularly those that are small and lacking resources and that do not necessarily plan to grow in income or scale. But for the many organisations that wish to grow and increase their impact, the need for structure, process and strategy are key if they are going to be sustainable in the longer term.

Fundraising for sustainability is more strategic, more flexible and is built around the aim of reducing an organisation’s exposure to risk whilst increasing its ability to pursue strategic goals. It puts the organisation’s case for support at the centre of any income generation or profile raising activities, and aims to achieve greater impact and value for all of its stakeholders. This approach examines all sources of income – gifts and donations, grants, contracts, trading and enterprise and loan finance – along with marketing, communications and financial management. It also considers the importance of ethics and organisational values and culture.

Objectives of the course

By the end of the course you will:

• Have a raised level of awareness and knowledge about fundraising and its real role in the development of civil society organisations
• Identify the diverse ways in which fundraising could be developed as part of a good risk management strategy
• Recognise the main sources of income and their characteristics
• Understand how to achieve an alignment between an organisational strategy and fundraising strategy
• Learn ways to improve an organisation’s financial health
• Understand the power of storytelling to develop a strong case for support
• Set priorities, goals and objectives as part of planning for growth and sustainability
• Create effective action plans that will support the implementation of the fundraising strategy
• Examine the symbiotic relationship between fundraising, good governance and leadership
• Identify the skills and culture required to achieve more sustainable approach to fundraising

Core content areas

• Jargon busting: definitions used in fundraising
• Purposes of fundraising
• Dependencies for achieving good fundraising results
• How fundraising fits with organisational development and sustainability
• What makes a strong case for support and how to use it
• Core elements of a fundraising strategy
• Planning and monitoring the fundraising strategy
• The role of ethics, values and culture
• Effective and purposeful reporting
• Closing the loop: ensuring fundraising is closely connected with the organisation’s outcomes and impact and engages internal and external stakeholders

Course format and costs

Our approach to e-learning provides approximately 25 hours of training over 5 weeks.  The training consists of a blend of real time webinars led by our highly experienced trainers, individual and group activities, opportunities to interact with participants on the course through discussion forums on the INTRAC learning platform and individual coaching to enable attendees to apply the learning to their work.

This course provides flexibility and enables you to take part in an INTRAC course with others without travelling. The timing of the course is adapted to the location of participants. You are expected to spend around 5 hours a week of learning.

Course schedule

All live webinars will take place at 3pm UK time

Welcome webinar - Monday 25 September

Webinar session 1 - Monday 2 October

Webinar session 2 - Monday 9 October

No live webinar - Monday 16 October

Webinar session 3 - Monday 23 October

Webinar session 4 - Monday 30 October

End of course and deadline for assignments - Friday 3 November