Delivering services to poor communities requires financial investments. As faith organizations attempt to ensure their financial sustainability, they are confronted to changes in funding sources. Suddenly, traditional faith-based donors break away. Countries graduate to middle-income status and foreign aid slowly withers. At the same time, local communities’ and philanthropes’ readiness to give increases.
In Kenya, Faith to Action Network has trained 11 local organizations on improving their financial sustainability from April 24th to 27th, 2018. In collaboration with Bread for the World, this 4-day course has helped senior managers, finance and resource mobilization officers understand the ingredients of successful resource mobilization for local organizations:
- Meeting the needs and requirements, and gaining the support of all stakeholders, particularly beneficiaries and donors.
- Demonstrating trustworthiness and technical expertise by doing good work, using funds effectively, and being accountable, well-governed and well-managed.
- Nurturing fruitful working relationships between an organization and individuals in other agencies, organizations and institutions.
- Promoting the organization with an effective public image which helps donors distinguish the organization from others.
- Developing a good command of the funding cycle, including prospecting for opportunities, entering partnerships, developing proposals and negotiating favourable terms.
Participants rated the workshop favourably. 85% of participants said they were very satisfied with workshop content, and 15% said they were satisfied. Participants used learnings to adjust their organizational resource mobilization strategies through hands-on action plans, whose implementation Bread for the World will monitor over time. Read more about Faith to Action Network’s capacity strengthening work here.
Participants quotes:
“The training has exposed me to the importance of relevance in attracting and maintaining donor relationships.”
“It has been an eye opener on what I should do which we never used to do.”
“Learnt much about re-arranging my relationships, and to prioritize those that are most important.”
“I now better understand the resource mobilization cycle.”
“Generally good training, offering lots of insight into resource mobilization and info obtained will be used appropriately to further empower the organization.”
