Social Ch@nge

Guest writer Sven Haertig looks at European fundraising both on and offline. A committed human rights activist based in Warsaw, Sven is the leader of Amnesty International Poland’s international volunteer group. Want to connect with him about non-profits in Europe? You can find him on Facebook where he’s working on Amnesty International Poland’s Page, or Twitter him as @SvenHaertig.

Original Photo courtesy of Flickr user wallyg (CC Licensed)

Have you ever experienced that dreamy, hungry look on the face of non-profit organizations’ staff when you say: “I have experience in fundraising”? No matter whom you speak to, be it directors or campaigners, the chances are good that you’ll grab their attention. Better yet, if you offer to help their fundraising efforts as a volunteer, they will veer between the wish to hug you and the attempt not to seem too enthusiastic. But once you go into detail, talking about fundraising strategies, possible financial sources and so forth, this lovely atmosphere might be replaced by misunderstanding. There are certainly various ways to raise funds in Europe; and depending on where you want to get your money from, “experience in fundraising” translates into very different skills.

Issue No. One: Grants vs. Individual Donors

My experience in Europe is that fundraising is usually understood as grant writing. By contrast, the idea of developing a strategy to obtain and enlarge a basis of individual donors is met with scepticism. Instead, organizations prefer to put this effort into creating a project proposal from scratch within a few days.

In her book Fundraising for Social Change, Kim Klein breaks the myth that most of a non-profit’s funding should come from foundations or corporations. Instead, 75,6% of contributions  to successful non-profits stem from individuals. Many people in the US and Canada will already know these stats. But then again, the book is written from a American perspective, where community fundraising is a traditional, successful tool  for various reasons – one being a historial lack of social services provided by the state. So what about Europe?

With the welfare state in place and the European Union and many foundations offering grants, individual charity might be much less important. NGOs – particularly small NGOs – often focus their fundraising activities almost exclusively on project grants. This holds especially true in new EU Member States, where European Structural and Cohesion Funds are available (see also a Wikipedia article on these funds). This results in a focus on constant “project work” with no possibility to develop longer-term strategies.  It also sets up a  culture of looking down on fundraising as an “Anglo-Saxon” approach, one which does not work in Europe. Because of this, organizations are increasingly lacking funds for overhead costs. This has been affirmed by Blackbaud’s survey on the European State of the Not-for-Profit Industry 2008. The survey among 466 non-profits in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands shows that 54% of respondents in the UK and 48% in Germany respectively (but only 13% in the Netherlands) are having trouble getting funds for general operating purposes.

I contacted Kim Klein to ask how she would handle this situation. When confronted with this European perspective, she suggested a little more reflection: “Do people in European communities support a church or other faith based institution? Do you ever see people give money to someone who is homeless? Is generosity considered a virtue?” (For the record: the answer to all three questions is “Yes”.)

And she continued: “Usually these questions cause people to realize that money is being raised and money is being given away, even if it is not as common as it would be here in the USA. When I have travelled and gotten these objections, I have reminded people that the history of grassroots fundraising in America is full of these objections: in the 1940’s, many people said ‘Americans will never respond to mail appeals. They are invasive and it is un-American.’ By the 1980’s, most donations were made by mail. In the mid 1990’s, many people said, ‘The internet will never work for fundraising.’ Today on-line fundraising is the fastest growing area of fundraising.”

Issue #2: The Internet

One would expect internet fundraising to be met with the same scepticism as fundraising in general, because after all it also asks for individual giving. But on the contrary, online fundraising  in Europe is up and coming. The survey mentioned above shows that about 50% of organizations already use online fundraising and that this is expected to grow further. Donation buttons seem to have become a standard feature on non-profit websites, and during the last week, I spoke with people from three different  European organizations who were psyched about creating their first Facebook presences, welcoming social media and its possibilities.

I wondered where this seeming contradiction comes from. On the one hand, it could simply be that the young employees and volunteers of these organizations personally like using Facebook and the internet. But on the other hand, today’s patterns of involvement in charity could make online fundraising the appropriate reaction to a more sporadic civic engagement and a reluctance to become actively involved. Clicking a button is easy and the effect of giving money for charity seems to be the same. (Actually, I’m convinced it is not the same – but that’s a story for another blog post… )

In any case, solutions for an effective use of the internet for communications and fundraising are still desperately sought after by many European non-profits, with only about a third of the Blackbaud’s survey respondents considering their websites effective.  The possibilities of online communications channels to the general public are only vaguely recognized. Usually, Facebook presence or other online activities are managed as an afterthought to other duties, or by volunteers.

I’m guessing that you’ve all already thought about these two fundraising issues. So what is your advice to the Europeans? Does individual fundraising make sense in (Central & Eastern) Europe? Are there alternatives to grant writing? Do you know of good examples which can serve as models for European online fundraising efforts? (As far as I know, fundraising via Facebook is not possible for Europe. Yet.)

Please let us know through your comments.