In the last ten years the number of organisations seeking to raise funds in the South has grown rapidly. There has also been a dramatic increase in the numbers of civil society organisations whilst funding patterns have altered significantly. International donors have been decentralising funding decisions to their regional offices and increasingly funding via Southern governments. Private foundations and International NGOs have also decentralised, and there have been shifts in thematic and geographic focus for aid. Social enterprise, corporate social responsibility and private/public partnerships have all been on the rise. In some cases international NGOs are starting to compete for local funding with indigenous NGOs as they seek to expand beyond their crowded home markets. In all of the countries where this is happening there is a huge shortage of professionally trained and experienced fundraisers. Training which is available tends to be brief, not systematic or sustained, and of variable quality and appropriateness. The lack of professionalism in fundraising creates problems for NGO credibility.
Since 2008, AWDF has supported a minimum of 100 women leaders from grantee organisations across the continent to the International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation (IWRM) organised by the Resource Alliance UK and with administrative support from AWDF. The primary aim of the IWRM is to provide an opportunity for people who work in the not-for-profit organisations to receive training in practical fundraising skills and other aspects of resource mobilization such as writing grant proposals. It also focuses on helping delegates to diversify their funding base to become more sustainable and less reliant on donor grants.
This year AWDF will convene thirty (26) fundraisers from grantee organizations in Kampala in May in a practical workshop on the development of a resource mobilization strategy document. The development of this strategy document forms a critical part of grantees’ effort at mobilizing resources for their organizations. And as part of AWDF’s core mandate of ensuring sustainability of women’s right organisations, it is important that we put in place measures that will move grantees to the next level of developing funding strategies in support of their resource mobilization efforts especially after sponsoring these organizations to the IWRM and GIMPA courses.
In this workshop, AWDF will be targeting about twenty-six (26) fundraisers from grantee organizations who have been trained at the IWRM and GIMPA but have not been able to develop a resource mobilization strategy document. Participants will be drawn from organisations from grantee organisations who have participated in the IWRM or GIMPA courses.