| We were delighted to receive this practical guide to Community Fundraising from the WED Trust in Madurai, India and hope that you will find this shared experience useful. Please contact Libby Brayshaw to share your experiences of fundraising within your community.
Women's Emancipation and Development Trust is a Non Governmental Organization with its registered office at Chellampatti of Usilampatti Taluk, Madurai District. It was founded in the year 1992 with the Vision of 'Building up a gender just society with self sustained, economically independent and politically empowered women'. We have been implementing projects to achieve our vision over the years by raising funds from both local and foreign agencies.
The projects we implement are for the benefit of the community we work with and it is quite understandable that the beneficiaries should contribute, to the extent that they can, to the project. The beneficiaries participate in the planning and implementation of the projects. By contributing to the project, they deserve rights on every stage of the project up to the evaluation. Our projects are based on human rights with more importance on women's rights and circle around the communities we work with. It is quite obvious that community contribution is a need for implementing the projects.
While developing budgets for the projects, there is a need to add local contribution and, on implementing the projects, we come across a few non budgeted items. A few projects such as educational support for poor girl children, support to the deserted women, elders and disabled children and free legal aid services have to be met from our own sources. To meet all these expenses we use Community Fundraising.
How we started
In the long run, we realized the increased importance of Community Fundraising and started a separate Department of Communication and Fundraising in our office with a staff in 2004. Unfortunately, it didn't prove as successful as we had expected and on studying the reasons, we found the following points: i) The staff couldn't approach the community for fund raising
We discussed elaborately on this subject and decided to educate our regular staff team on Community Fundraising and use them for this purpose. We arranged training for them by the Help Age India, Madurai and gained more on this subject. We now directly meet the well wishers in the community and explain our needs and the importance of their contribution. For this, we organize Community Fundraising Meet every six months where in we invite both the well wishers and the beneficiaries. The well wishers are mobilized to contribute by knowing our activities and the needs. We have registered with the Income Tax department under 12A and 80G, by which the donors enjoy full tax exemption in their income tax payment.
We have printed materials such as brochures and receipts to support our initiatives. In our monthly meetings, we keep this as a major agenda item and staff are motivated. We have planned to go to the villages every Wednesday to explain to the village leaders, well wishers and others about our purpose of Community Fundraising and make them understand the need for them to contribute for the same. We have proposed to start this campaign with more efficiency from the New Year 2007 and have high hopes that we can raise the funds we require on the Community's share of the budget. While collecting the contributions from the donors, we thank them duly by sending 'Thank You' letters with official receipts. We honour them in our public meetings and celebrations. We invite the donors to meet the beneficiaries and deliver the support they need directly in functions organised for that purpose.
Lessons Learnt
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