Donation Campaigns – From the Inside Out

October 5, the last lecture-practical meeting was held for the participants in this year’s youth project “Active Youth for a Sustainable Future – the NGO sector as an opportunity for development”, who have so far learned about all the steps to turn an idea into reality.

This time we introduced the youth to the final elements of the process of creating a product/service with a cause, presenting it and organizing the right type of event, namely how to find the funds and the right partners.

• How to finance an NGO
• Donation/Charity campaign/initiative – how to plan, organize and report
• Project activity and how it contributes to cooperation between the government, non-government sector and business
• Transparency of NGO activity and community trust
• Presence of NGOs in social networks
• Fundraising is the end result of good communication.

Fundraising is the end result of good communication.

Veneta Mileva, Marketing and Communications Manager and Darina Raykova, Project Manager from the “Development” team at Karin Dom, introduced the young people to what their work consists of, the importance of proper communication and what are the mandatory elements when communicating the NGO’s activities.

As experts with many years of experience in the fields of project activity, fundraising, organizing, conducting and reporting campaigns and events, etc., their insight and advice were valuable and useful to the project participants and caused serious interest, many questions and active discussion.

Some of the issues they touched on are:

• What is this funding thing and how does the NGO sector differ from business
• Project-based funding – the opportunities it provides and the limitations that need to be taken into account
• Donation campaigns and individual donors
• The challenges of Covid
• Corporate social responsibility and partnerships

One of the most interesting moments for the participants was the shaping of CSR and the development of partnerships with the corporate sector. In a company, in addition to caring for the worker/employee, the company’s attitude towards vulnerable groups, participation in solving social problems, supporting causes is also indicative. This is the basis of CSR, and now a lot of large companies have planned activities directed outward to socially significant problems – financial support, volunteering, provision of services according to competences, etc. Partnerships develop over time and are based on mutual trust and transparency on the part of the organization and sharing about every aspect of its activities – both successes and challenges and difficulties. This helps with the trust of the community, where the media also plays an important role and it is important to be very open and honest about the things that happen in the organization. Transparency is also regulated by internal organizational rules, to which special attention should also be paid.

We also talked about the importance of clear gratitude to partners and donors – collaboration between sectors, recognition to the donor, an example to others in the business sector and in the NGO sector to be open and open to others in the community. The individual approach and efforts to maintain partnerships can be seen in the way events are organized specifically for businesses and donors, conferences and other forms of informal meetings.

Important for young people is the fact that there is an increasing demand for personnel, familiar with the NGO sector, which is also indicative of the opportunities for development from volunteering to a future profession.

On the topic of Campaigns and how to successfully organize your initiative. As an example, the Christmas campaign of Karin Dom was used, which for another year gathers in one place the talent of artists, designers, photographers, and of course the participation of children.

• The idea
• Target audience
• Design
• Publicity, advertising
• Ending and report
• Accountability to the community and thanks

What are the steps in preparing and organizing a campaign and how to measure its success, the project participants also received as knowledge to apply in the future.

And when we talk about the NGO sector, it is important not to forget that doing something for other people, quality is one of the mandatory elements and we cannot and should not underestimate the final step, where the end comes not with counting the items sold, but with sincere thanks to everyone who took part in our initiative.

The project is supported by the “Youth Projects 2021” program of the Municipality of Varna and aims for young people to see opportunities in the non-governmental sector for personal and professional growth, for changing attitudes, to improve the environment, to advocate and an active civic role and position.