Month: November 2022

With international funding slowing and domestic fundraising taking off strongly, local NGOs have to up their game to win hearts, minds and donations from local companies. A five-day workshop from 26th to 30th November, 2019 by Smile Foundation in association with Wilde Ganzen’s Change the Game Academy in Chennai seeks to help organizations crack the local fundraising.

Chennai, November 27, 2019: With its commitment to work towards ‘Civic Driven Change’, Smile Foundation has teamed up with Wilde Ganzen’s Change the Game Academy to bring in best practices and help grassroots organizations take forward their development mandate. Through a unique classroom learning course, NGOs get to hear from experts on how to tackle fundraising issues and comply with the processes of due diligence from stakeholders to avoid abrupt shutdowns.

This is particularly important in today’s context as over the past decade or so dependence on foreign funding for national NGOs has been erratic and is on a slowdown. As per a recent report, there has been a decline of 40 percent in foreign funds for NGOs over the past five years. This coupled with global economic slowdown and emergence of corporate social responsibility and individual giving, local organizations are looking for new ways to raise resources and support for the causes they champion within the national markets.

Only recently, around 1800 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India have been banned by the government from accepting foreign funds for allegedly violating norms of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). “In our experience of over 16 years in the sector, we have realized that most of the time, the smaller organizations lack the basic know-how of dealing with funds,” said Santanu Mishra, Co-founder, and Trustee, Smile Foundation.

“Sometimes they don’t know how to raise resources, and many times when they have funds, they don’t know the compliance processes. Foreign funds are shrinking due to valid reasons –corporates are more systematic in how they want to invest, NGOs by and large lack the skills and the attitude to complement the policies of Government in place by either improving or setting them anew,” he said.

“Self-Sustainability is a big question for these smaller NGOs. Change the Game Academy (CtGA) addresses these issues through its Classroom Course approach by focusing on the aspect of local fundraising. The course brings forth a paradigm shift to the participants that local fundraising is a more sustainable option in the long run and they leave the room equipped with skill-set, ready with an event plan to fundraise,” said Gargi Kapoor, In-charge, CtGA, India.

“These workshops help civil society to rethink their business models, think strategically about its financial models and adopt new and innovative approaches that will help the sector maintain its independence and still be sustainable. The idea exchanges that happen through the workshops empower these smaller units with long term and short-term fundraising goals,” she explained.

There is a growing trend in donations by individual philanthropists. They have ensured that the role of private funding continues to grow despite slowing foreign fund inflows. Similarly, funding under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is maturing, which has seen a growth of 12 percent in recent times, but local NGO’s need to explore ways to also find alternate means of fundraising.

The answer for smaller NGOs is on finding financial stability, which is basically about diversifying financial resources to have a healthy mix of long and short-term funding, CSR donations, foreign and local donors as well as internally generated resources by events, fundraisers, etc.

With most organizations that are working at the state level and rooted in the community, the understanding of financial stability is poor and lack of mentoring makes is difficult to sustain with changing scenarios. Change the Game Academy (CtGA) through its classroom course program aims to empower smaller nongovernment organizations in methods to become self-reliant and sustainable, and help them understand the dynamics of being self-sufficient and self-reliant.

About Smile Foundation: Smile Foundation is a national level development organisation reaching out to more than 600,000 underprivileged children, youth and women directly every year through more than 250 welfare projects on subjects such as education, healthcare, youth employability, and women empowerment across 25 states of India. Adopting a life cycle approach of development, Smile Foundation focuses its interventions on children, their families and the community.

With international funding slowing and domestic fundraising taking off strongly, local NGOs have to up their game to win hearts, minds and donations from local companies.

A five-day workshop from 26th to 30th November, 2019 by Smile Foundation in association with Wilde Ganzen’s Change the Game Academy in Chennai seeks to help organizations crack the local fundraising.

Chennai, November 27, 2019: With its commitment to work towards ‘Civic Driven Change’, Smile Foundation has teamed up with Wilde Ganzen’s Change the Game Academy to bring in best practices and help grassroots organizations take forward their development mandate. Through a unique classroom learning course, NGOs get to hear from experts on how to tackle fundraising issues and comply with the processes of due diligence from stakeholders to avoid abrupt shutdowns.

Source: https://chennaipressnews.blogspot.com/p/national-ngos-look-at-leveraging.html

Films from Sweden, Germany and the Czech Republic will take centre stage at the upcoming edition of the Smile International Film Festival for Children and Youth (SIFFCY).

Organised by Delhi-based NGO Smile Foundation, the festival that opens on December 9 at Siri Fort Auditorium here will feature 150 titles from 50 countries in over 30 languages.

“Bringing good cinema to children is more important than ever before. With internet penetration and easy technology access, online videos both good and bad are increasingly the most consumed medium by children these days.

“Film festivals like ours bring them select, age-appropriate content from all over the world. This exposes them to good content and helps them differentiate it from all that’s not right for them,” said Santanu Mishra, Executive Trustee of Smile Foundation & Chairman, SIFFCY.

The week-long festival that will see internationally recognised artistes promoting and sharing their love of cinema and the process of filmmaking, organisers said, is also expected to see participation by over 20,000 children and youth.

“SIFFCY 2019 is going to be an absolute feast for everyone, irrespective of their age, as the event would alchemize and produce an ideal combination of varied genres and niches including family, passion, kinship, self-assurance and others.

“A major part of the festivals and corresponding panel discussions will focus on climate change, environment and cleanliness,” said Jitendra Mishra, Festival Director, SIFFCY.

Supporting various allegiances, the event would represent collaborations with the leading film festivals of Europes – BUFF Malm, Sweden, Schlingel IFF, Germany and Junior Fest, Czech Republic. The festival will celebrate its partnership with all three countries by dedicating a day in their honour.

The festival will also host the European Children Film Association award that gives “special attention to quality films for a young audience and shines a spotlight on European children’s films”.

SIFFCY 2019 will come to a close on on December 15.