IPEN POs Attend Fundraising Bootcamp in Francophone Africa

On October 20th and November 5th, IPEN Participating Organizations (POs) in the Francophone Africa region attended the Fundraising Bootcamp, a capacity building webinar given by Abena Lauber and Emilie Compignie.

The Fundraising Bootcamp program adopted a participatory and inclusive methodology for the participants. These capacity-building activities took place online via webinar. Two sessions of four hours each were spent going through the major points to optimize fundraising.

During the first session, the exercises focused on the essential steps of fundraising such as identifying partners, developing relationships based on trust, building loyalty, qualification, solicitation and strategy. Each time, the Bootcamp team insisted on the key messages that should be clearly evident at each step.

Moreover, the diversification of partners was presented as one of the best approaches to securing financial resources, with inputs from NGOs present. A list of probable partners was drawn up and contains more than fifteen foundations, institutions, NGO networks, embassies, and development agencies.

During the second session, emphasis was placed on the content of a better project proposal: How to position oneself differently? Why should your proposal be selected? What are the characteristics of a good project? What are the elements of a project proposal? How to be eye-catching and highlight key information? Why should one be meticulous in writing a proposal? All these issues and many others were addressed through individual and group exercises, brainstorming, and colleagues' experience.

The training ended on a note of satisfaction from NGOs that participated (about 20 in total from Cameroon, Togo, Niger, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, and Ivory Coast). All training materials were shared at the end of the training at the request of the participants.

We deeply hope that the added value that this training has brought us will contribute to having more successful proposals within the region. This was a good step in addressing issues that POs face with fundraising in Francophone Africa.

Website:

French: https://fundraisingbootcamp.ch

English: https://fundraisingbootcamp.ch/en/