Mo' Money Mo' Problems: NGOs, grants, and grassroots fundraising

This week I've watched all of the Star Wars movies in order in their entirety . Watching the Phantom Menace was painful, but I toughed it out. So while this post has a point and is important towards explaining my work in Kazakhstan, it is also full of nerdiness.

Warned you, I have.

A big problem for NGOs in Kazakhstan (and by extension, the PCVs whom partner with them) is raising money to pay for their employees and to finance their projects. This is hard because:

• It is very difficult to organize fundraisers to gain community support, mainly because very few people know about what an NGO is or does.

• Because of the first sentence, many NGOs in Kazakhstan are dependent on grants to survive.

Notorious B.I.G was right when he said "Mo' Money Mo' Problems". Money alone will not solve the problems for NGO's in Kazakhstan. However, money pays for food, rent, and gas of the people who work in them. Many of the grants I have seen in Kazakhstan allow for a certain percentage to be allocated toward salaries. I think this is fair; even I can't (and don't want to) work for free forever.

However, grant money is not free money. To get the grant, you usually have to do something. For NGOs, this usually means organizing a social project. Many organizations that finance NGOs usually have a theme, like helping youth, the unemployed, and educating people about about AIDS/HIV. So if you write a grant proposal and win, you are expected to do something.

So on one hand, NGOs have employees that need money to feed their families. On the other side, there are only a finite number of organizations that give out money in Kazakhstan. The number of international organizations that fund NGOs in Kazakhstan are shrinking, and while there are domestic donor organizations, there aren't a lot of them. This is because of many reasons, both good and bad. The point is that there is not enough grant money to go around for all.

This can lead to grant chasing, which is an awful problem. By my definition, grant chasing is when NGOs start applying for grants just because they need the money, and don't pay attention to their mission, vision, or goals. In the short term life seems easy, because the NGO gets money.and everyone is happy.

In the long term, grant chasing can be devastating. Grants are contracts, and if the NGO doesn't fulfill it's end, or does a bad job doing it, then they can get blacklisted. In Kazakhstan, blacklisted NGOs become dead NGOs. Donor organizations talk, and blacklisted NGOs are avoided like the plague.

The danger starts when an organization gets in "over it's head". For example, I've heard of an NGO in Kazakhstan that focused on HIV/AIDS suddenly win an ecology grant, just for the money. Instant disaster. I don't think they are around anymore. Grant chasing is risky. As Yoda said, "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." A great NGO director Yoda would have been.

Gold Leader cat seys:
Plz rite grants only 4 projeks u noes how 2 do and r in akkordance with ur missen and goals.
K thx by!!!!1

So the question is: How can the Local Community Fund (LCF) begin to reduce it's dependency on grants? In theory, community funds gather money from the community to use to finance local projects. A good community foundation should be able to run without grant support. The LCF doesn't do this. But how to get to there? I don't know the answer to this. Neither does the LCF. But we know people who do.

So we wrote a proposal to an international organization to send my director, accountant, and program manager to Ukraine to learn fundraising skills for community organizations. They will get a 3 day personalized seminar focused on how to begin to raise money from the community.They leave tomorrow which is why I'll have a lot of time on my hands in the near future.

What will I do with my free time while they are gone? I need to stay busy. In Kazakhstan I'm sort of like a purpetual motion machine, because staying active makes the time go faster, and it makes it easier to cope with homesickness, missing people in America, and my growing restlessness. So for the next 10 days, I'm going to do everything in my power to stay busy, beginning with hiking in the mountains near Almaty for squabbits so I can do this,