May 2005
April 2005
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April 2005
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Issue 40 |
In this issue
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Editorial |
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FR Snapshot Cry Telethon raises Rs 1.04 crore in 7 hours On January 26, 2005, India witnessed its first ever fundraising telethon, organised by Child Relief and You (CRY). The telethon, aired live on Sony Entertainment Television from noon to 7 pm, involved the entire nation in the movement for Child Rights on Republic Day. The objective of raising awareness on children’s rights to survival, development, participation and protection, was successfully met through the mammoth event. “The telethon was our attempt to include as many Indians as we can in this freedom movement for the rights of our children. The money we hope to raise will change the lives of thousands of children forever,” said Ingrid Srinath, CEO, CRY. Virtually the whole staff of CRY was involved in this event, across all locations of the organisation, contributing towards the planning and execution of the telethon. A core team of about eight people had been coordinating the event since late 2003/ early 2004 and struck a deal with Sony TV to give them the platform. With active planning for this event, CRY has reached out to millions of viewers across the country. The actual implementation and heavy coordination began four months prior to 26 January, the telethon date, while the initial discussions and plans had begun a year before. UTV handled the show logistics for CRY on a contract basis, but majority of the celebrities who participated, did it free of cost, through CRY. The seven hour telethon was hosted by Mini Mathur and Alyy Khan, who were able to bring key issues affecting the country’s children to the fore. Other noteworthy people who campaigned were Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, Olympic silver medallist Lt.Col Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Javed Akhtar, Shah Rukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Bose, Abhishek Bachchan, Pallavi Joshi, Raveena Tandon. The various issues covered were child labour, importance of a happy and carefree childhood, equity for all irrespective of caste, class and religion, gender discrimination, the importance of a normal childhood, and girl children. Artist Ms. Anjolie Ila Menon painted a canvas with children from CRY projects across the country and viewers participated with mobile text messages and dial-ins on the call centre number, raising over Rs 1 crore for CRY. The organisation plans to use a part the funds for Tsunami relief, while the rest will go towards funding the 157 projects that CRY supports across 16 states and 2400 communities. Top |
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News in Brief What's happening in communication & fundraising? Open source at Asia Source Nearly 100 voluntary organisations came together between 28 January and 4 February 2005 at Bangalore, for Asia Source, an eight day hands-on workshop aimed at building the technical skills of voluntary organisations in South and South East Asia. The workshop, which was the first regional event of its kind, saw a convergence of voluntary organisations and technology support professionals associated with these organisations, from Africa, Europe, North America, and Latin America. The focus was on free and open source software (FOSS) and its deployment in a social context. The event was co-organised by Mahiti Infotech Pvt Ltd (Bangalore) and the Tactical Technology Collective (Amsterdam) and guided by non-profit and FOSS professionals. For more details visit www.tacticaltech.org/asiasource Contact. Communicate. Fundraise You can do just that, with MCC's revised version of Contact, a basic database management framework, which helps you maintain your donor information in an organised manner. Contact provides you with many user-friendly features like multiple types of data storage and retrieval, printable reports, online help, printing of address labels. You can now maintain a lifetime of warm contacts! Contact is priced at Rs 750 and runs on Windows 95 and above, using an MS access database. Those of you who have already placed orders, your copies have been dispatched. Others can order the software by mailing database@fundraising-india.org New initiative to promote philanthropy amongst Asians in Britain Bina Rani and Bala Thakar of Asian Foundation for Philanthropy (AFP) visited Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi in January 2005, to informally launch AFP to the voluntary sector in India. The foundation hopes to provide a range of services to increase philanthropy amongst Asians in Britain, towards causes in Asia. While getting a feel of the Indian voluntary sector, they looked at organisations they could partner with too, such as Charities Aid Foundation, Delhi, Freedom Foundation, Bangalore, Give Foundation, Mumbai and Dream-a-Dream, Bangalore. GiveIndia raises over Rs 2 Crore for charities in Mumbai Marathon On 16 January 2005, Mumbai hosted the second International marathon. The event had runners raising funds by getting supporters to pledge funds for a charity. GiveIndia, the official Charity Partner of the Mumbai International Marathon raised funds from three target segments. The Dream Team consisting of senior executives and celebrities, who each raised a Lakh for a cause of their choice, had 80 Dream Teamers running.The second category consisted of corporate teams of about 30 runners each. There were about 40 corporate teams. Each corporate had to contribute Rs 1.5 lakh and the employees were also encouraged to raise funds. The third category consisted of the normal runners who chose to raise funds for any cause. GiveIndia raised just over Rs 2 crores for various causes this year - four times of what was raised last year. Among those who ran and raised funds were Sachin Tendulkar, Jaaved Jaffrey, Ashutosh Gowarikar, and Tara Sharma. MCC's own Bharati Ramachandran ran for a Bangalore hospice. If you have any news or announcements pertaining to communication and fundraising, do write in to us. Thank you. Top |
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Tip of the month Ten ways to use the data in your database of warm donors: 1. Send a greeting card (with an appeal on the reverse) on birthdays, anniversaries and other special days. 2. Choose donors city-wise for any fundraising activity that you might be conducting in a particular city. 3. Select donors from specific professions for any specific activity you are conducting. Eg. You could ask doctors for help with a medical camp. 4. Check if any donors have specific skills to help your organisation with. Eg. Someone may be well versed with legal issues that you may need help with. 5. The next time you send out an appeal, you can address the donor and his family by name, making the appeal more personal. 6. You know which donors are more likely to donate, if you have track of their giving frequency. 7. Your direct mail appeal for certain projects can be specifically targeted at donors who have earlier donated to similar projects. 8. Donors who show willingness to volunteer can be asked to volunteer for different activities. 9. You can segregate donors by gender and choose to approach only women or only men for some specific activity. 10. Donors can be asked for donations in kind if you know more about them. Eg. A rice trader may be requested to donate the monthly supplies of rice for a children's home. |
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Interview of the month D K Srinivasan – a non-medico visionary, Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Hindu Mission Hospital, Chennai, has used innovative methods to raise funds for the hospital. He speaks on his unique method of using the Chennai telephone directory as a database of potential donors. 1. Why did you think of using the Chennai Telephone directory as a database to potential donors to fundraise from? A. This is the most freely available, valid, primary database giving fairly up-to-date and reliable information, with addresses for the entire targeted area of the city and suburbs. Moreover it is a large database that is updated each year at no cost to us. 2. Over the years what tracking system have you used to track responses? A. We use 3-4 methods availing of their cumulative benefits. 3. How long does it take you to go over all the addresses in the telephone directory once and how many times a year do you send appeals? A. To complete full directory once it takes three months and we do this four times a year. 4. How do you keep in touch with warm contacts? A. To donors above Rs 1,000 we send regular reminders, utilisation report, invitations to our functions and seasonal greetings. To donors above Rs 10,000 (1600 donors) we send the annual report and balance sheet every year. 5. What are your typical spends and returns on an activity like this? A. Our expenses are less than 20 per cent of returns. Top |
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Please feel free to forward this newsletter to your
friends, associates and anyone who might be interested. And do send in
your queries and suggestions to training@fundraising-india.org MCC-- Murray Culshaw Consulting Pvt Ltd serves the voluntary sector in India. We offer training and direct support on communication and fundraising, undertake research on related issues, publish books and maintain a database of about 8,000 organisations in India. Contact us at: 2nd Floor Vijay Kiran Building 314/1 7th Cross Domlur Layout Bangalore 560 071 India Tel: 91-80-2535 2003/ 5115 0582 email training@fundraising-india.org website: www.fundraising-india.org |
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