Fundraising Advice
10 November 2011
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6 Comments
How can you be better at fundraising when faced with limited resources? Fundraising specialist Lisa Bates is here to take your questions.
As Lisa says “Seeking advice can be the first step in demystifying a challenge, so I invite you to send me any questions that may have been holding you up in your progress with fundraising of late.”
Read her Generator article and exercises on fundraising, then ask your question using the comment box below. Lisa is available until Friday November 18.
Comments
Welcome to Q&A fundraising style, looking forward to receiving your queries:
Lisa, How important is costing everything out? Some creative projects have unforseen costs in production; i.e. filmmaking. And, also, do you know if funds given to a short independent film project can be a tax-write off for the giver?
Hello John,
Creative projects need to be costed out as well as any business proposition. You should put a contingency line into your budget to cover unforseen costs. An average figure to use for this would be 10%.
33% of donations can be claimed back if they are given to a Charitable Trust that is registered with the Chairties Commission. So your donor can only claim back if you are a registered as a non-profit charity.
Hi Lisa,
How do I go about co-ordinating a funding strategy so that I don't compromise sponsorship by approaching both private and public sources of funding?
Good morning and thank you for your excellent question.
For an effective overall strategy you need to plan your approach carefully and include both private and public sources, but for different areas of support.
Ways to avoid compromising sponsorship:
Create a chart and assess the value and appropriate partner for each of the fundable items in your budget.
Some of them will sit nicely as items for funding applications and you should save those specifically for that purpose - eg a new laptop could be achieved from a gaming trust application, but not administration costs.
You will be left with a section in the chart to which it looks as though no one may fund eg salaries are the most tricky to find a partner for.
If you have a potential sponsor and an extensive database that they would like to have access to, then they are likely to consider an untagged payment which you can then allocate to those hard to fund items.
Once you have done your fundraising chart the strategy will appear quite clearly.
Great question - does anyone have another question they would like me to answer in this area?
Hey Lisa,
I really liked your comments on crowdfunding -- do you think a New Zealand platform is the next step for crowdfunding in this side of the world?
Anna