Fundraising Plan Development

From March 18-20 a workshop on Fundraising Plan Development was held for 21 ART partners, including NGOs and clergy. Actually the workshop was the follow-up of the previous Fundraising training. The workshop was organized and conducted by Programme Officer Alla Sarkissova taking into consideration the requests of ART partners. The workshop methodology included lectures, discussions and presentations, exercises and examples, case studies, and experience sharing. Handouts and printed materials were provided during the workshop.
The goal of the workshop was to introduce the concept of a fundraising plan; funding sources and methods; asking, acknowledging and reporting; the importance and need of strategic planning and writing proposals and budgeting and elaborating fundraising plans for the participant organizations.
The program consisted of two parts: theoretical and practical and was designed to equip participants with practical techniques and skills in addition to the compound theoretical background for becoming creative and successful fundraisers.
Upon the completion of the training, the participants learned to creatively research and identify the diverse sources for funding a project and other activities within an organization; increase their influences on decisions of donors; understanding their motivations and interest in funding their projects; increase the impact and success of their projects and fundraising through detailed planning; increase their skills in planning of existing and important resources, activities, events, preparation of a fundraising plan; establishing personal links and building relationship with founders; recognition of supports and analyzing fundraising, and finally the participants learned to enjoy the fundraising process.
The workshop was concluded with finalized development plans introduced by twelve organizations, and was very effective in terms of the partners’ exchange of experience on plans elaboration, peer education participating in such training for the first time, as the participants were helping each other and making additions to finalize the plans.
As a result of the workshop, all the participants will finalize Fundraising Development Plans elaborated during one month period and will present them to ART staff for comments.