Potential candidates for your fundraising team are everywhere waiting to be contacted!
In regards to individuals who will be sharing their social networks with your organisation and act as ambassadors, you will find them in your community among those who are socially active. For instance, you could start by inviting members of existing associations and clubs to the organisation’s premises with the aim of introducing the NGO and its activities to representatives of the community.
You could organise a tour, you could prepare a presentation that clearly explains your goals and illustrates your achievements, you could organise informal or more formal meetings between members of the organisation and invited representatives of the community. By the end of the event, you will be able to understand who, among the participating community members, would be more likely to help you organising future fundraising events or to advertise the activities of the organisations in the community. You could approach them by asking whether they would be happy to advertise new projects and activities among their social circles.
You could also ask whether they would be happy to host fundraising events for the organisation or whether they could help you in compiling a list of potential donors among members of the community to be individually contacted by NGO’s fundraiser. Depending on the size of your community and the number of associations and clubs, you can decide to organise more than one event. For instance, you could organise one event for the sport organisations, one for the religious associations, one for the local book society and library members and one for the environmental societies and community gardeners. To organise these meetings for people who have already common interests will help the event to be successful. Participants will have the opportunity to meet likeminded individuals and to spend time together thus they will remember your organisation in a more favourable way.
Candidates for the apprenticeship programme needs to be carefully selected. To be sure, you will be able to tell whether there are potential candidates among the group of young people frequenting your organisation or participating in its main activities. You could approach these potential candidates by offering them the possibility to volunteer in the NGO while working on concrete projects, supervised, with the aim of teaching them the required skills to perform the job in the future. If there are no candidates among people participating in the NGO’s programmes, you could recruit local young people by visiting secondary schools and universities (if any).
You could do so while advertising new projects initiated by the NGO or while looking for participants for the organisation’s ongoing activities. Ideally, your fundraiser will work assisted by at least 3 to 5 apprentices. Volunteers can easily cover main administration tasks leaving more time for the fundraiser to focus on project proposals and submissions. Volunteers could also be asked to participate in events organised for young people working in NGOs thus increasing the possibilities of the organisation to benefit from new collaborations and partnerships established through networking.
