Archives December 2018

https://www2.fundsforngos.org/featured/why-do-donors-hate-me/

“Why Do Donors Hate Me?”

OK – so this isn’t me personally asking the question. That’s the title of the article, so that’s where I’m starting from here. I see a lot here that I have observed in many organizations, and I think that it’s an important discussion to have.

I will highlight just a couple here.

1. You have low capacity to fundraise. 

“If you don’t know the basic techniques of fundraising like proper donor research, engaging and networking, and developing high-quality proposals, you will not succeed.”

I would add here that mechanisms around data collection, donor relationships, communication, volunteer recruitment/utilization/retention and others all have been low in various organizations that I have seen recently. Fundraising is not just writing a proposal – it’s having systems in place to show donors what you are doing, seeking feedback, regular communication and other things.

2. You are not putting in the hard work.

Fundraising is not rocket science, but it does require constant effort. You may be tempted to take the easy way out or focus more on other things. There are no shortcuts in fundraising and you will have to allocate significant time and effort to it to get a grant. You can also not outsource the hard work to someone else/

I think that this is a critical piece. Shortcuts (eg “please fund us because we are a nice organization doing good work and we are nice people”) has left great organizations falling seriously short of what I think that they are capable of in terms of fundraising capacity.  Somewhat unfortunately, because this works some of the time, organizations seem to be discouraged from doing the hard work to improve their systems, which perpetuates the problems, leaving them with a bit of funding, and weak systems.

How can a small organization be encouraged to make changes, if taking shortcuts works some of the time, and they don’t realize what they are missing out on by not changing systems and structures?

Thoughts?

Glad to see a bit more coverage on this issue on CBC. It’s an important discussion, and particularly timely, I think, with winter and the holidays coming up. 

Food production is responsible for up to a third of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. A recent blog post from the World Resources Institute, a global sustainability think-tank, warns that agriculture alone could raise the Earth’s average temperature more than 1.5 C above that in pre-industrial times if we don’t change our eating habits. (Bold mine)

So, here are a few of my additional thoughts.

• The article points out that these are options that “do not involve going vegan.” I appreciate that they are looking for additional options – however, going plant-based (either partly or completely) is a really important part of the discussion. Let’s see this as “more options in addition…” instead of and either-or discussion. 
• Protein (See quote below): Only thing I would add is that, in my experience, most people who eat plant-based are doing just fine for protein, even though it wasn’t noted in this study.
• Agree that those of us in cold-winter climates do not need to be eating green salads in winter.  Potatoes and other winter veggies make great soup!

Veeramani’s research found that people eating all non-vegan diets in the study — including vegetarians — were consuming 150 per cent to 250 per cent of the recommended level of protein, and 60 to 80 per cent of it was dairy, eggs, fish and meat. (Bold mine)

That’s been backed up by other studies. According to the World Resources Institute, the average person in more than 90 per cent of the world was eating more protein than they needed in 2009, and the proportion of animal-based protein in people’s diets has been growing dramatically.

This is a problem, because animal-based proteins consume more resources and generate more greenhouse gases than beans, nuts and other plant-based proteins. Producing beef uses 20 times the land and generates 20 times the emissions as producing beans, per gram of protein, the World Resources Institute reports. (Bold mine)

Here is one of the legumes that is common in our household (which I started using when I was first in the Middle East). 10 grams of protein per 1/4 cup dried. 18 grams of protein per 250 mls/1 cup cooked.

http://www.phoeniciagroup.com/en/Prod.aspx?ProdSubCatid=11&ProductID=161 

Happy sustainable eating! Thoughts?