Anyone who has been in the nonprofit or development sector for anytime at all knows the ugly truth about “good” work: it just does not pay. Sometimes it doesn’t pay much, sometimes not at all. And sometimes, you have to shell out to help out. Sure, there’s the intangible compensation of creating significant change in the world; that’s wonderful. But my question is not whether this work is worth it (if you are here reading this, I am assuming you have already made that judgment call) – my question is how to fundraise online, on facebook, or where-ever, for a volunteer position or job that doesn’t put money in your pocket.

I am currently in the throes of fundraising for my upcoming work as a Kiva Fellow, which I start on the first of June. I am thrilled- honestly, elated- to have the privilege be a part of Kiva and the life-changing work they do all over the world. But like other nonprofit organizations the strength of Kiva comes from its unpaid volunteers; Kiva Fellows must fundraise to support their time working in the field and to make Kiva’s work possible. Therefore, I have developed a five-step approach to fundraising for my fellowship, which will be my primary tactic in not going hungry by week ten of my fellowship.

Step 1:

Roll up those sleeves and brace yourself for some groveling at the feet of family and friends. Solicitations for private donations can entail sending brochures, letters, and emails with varying degrees of flashiness; making good use of that wedding registry or birthday invite-list; appealing to people through your personal blog or with video, or fundraising through online-giving websites like Razoo and IndieGoGo (both offer fancy graphics and come highly recommended to anyone fundraising through a 501C3). Some tips include using an incentive system for people to donate- “I’ll send you a photo of the house I build in Guatemala when it’s done!”- and not selling yourself short- if you think your Uncle Barney will donate at the most $100, ask for $100, and then, stop. Don’t say anything else, especially not, “even two dollars helps!” Unless you want to fundraise in $2 increments.

Though I use the term “groveling” flippantly here, in all seriousness, fundraising through private donations can be hard and in fact, a little scary. But please, be brave and don’t feel guilty! Remember, you are (presumably) fundraising for a noble cause, and people will feel good about donating to you. You are actually doing them a favor by helping them give back a little.

Step 2:

There are a surprising number of foundations and charitable organizations in the world willing to give you money to do nice things. Typing “foundation grant” into Google is the easiest thing you can do to set this process into motion- the tough part is narrowing down the grant or stipend that is right for you. Another challenge can be finding individual sponsorship resources, which are rare. Spend some time prowling the internet for such grants, and apply for literally as many as you can. Alternatively, a number of corporations are willing to give employees paid sabbatical for a few months (especially if you can find a way to justify the experience to your current job). The key to unlocking the lean, mean fundraising machine within: simply prove to others that it is in their interest to give you money.

Step 3:

Prepare yourself for a further suspension of your dignity and start baking muffins: in past efforts to fundraise, I’ve done bake sales, movie nights, 10Ks, pub-crawls, you name it. A few tips: do not forget to be pragmatic when planning these activities (this I learned after planning one memorable “Discount Night at Cold Stone Creamery” event in January in snowy NYC). More importantly, fundraising events really don’t make sense unless they are conducted on a fairly large scale- they take a lot of planning and you usually have to lay down some money to make it happen. Unless you are expecting a large turnout, this may not vale la pena (or, be worth your while).

Step 4:

Turn to the good, socially conscious people of the world-wide web. I take my cue from a  former Kiva Fellow who fundraised for her trip using nothing but social network and online fundraising tools. Not only did she fundraise over over two thirds of her total budget, but she knew less than half of her donors personally. In the words of this former fellow, “How is that for faith in humanity?”

Step 5:

The last and certainly least glamorous step to “fundraising” your own salary: working your butt off. I usually take issue with working one job (or in my current position, four jobs) to pay for another- a friend recently pointed out to me that I have turned down jobs in the past on this principle. But this is where we circle back to the beginning: some jobs are just worth it. To do truly enjoyable and meaningful work, you have to make other sacrifices, and sometimes that sacrifice is a paycheck.

For more on work as an unpaid volunteer, check out former Kiva Fellow and La Vida Idealist blogger Sebastion Kindsvater’s post “If I Won the Lottery Tomorrow: Why Everyone Should Volunteer.” For more fundraising tips, read “Organizing Fundraisers at Home and Abroad” by Kim Friedland; “How to Fundraise With No Funds” by Andrea Vogler; and “Need Some Cash? Top 10 Ways to Fundraise” by Laurie Norton.

Kate Bennett spent several months in Guatemala last year studying nonprofit sustainability and is currently living in New Jersey. To hear more about her experiences in Guatemala or her future plans in Ecuador with the Kiva Fellows Program, check out her blog. This is not is not an official Kiva Fellows blog. The views and information presented are Kate’s own and do not represent the Kiva Fellows Program, Kiva.org, or any of its partner organizations.

After combing the city for months looking for a health-oriented NGO, a friend pointed me towards Acción Solidaria, which focuses on providing education and resources to combat VIH/SIDA (that’s HIV/AIDS to all you English-speakers) in Venezuela and other Spanish-speaking countries.

Nestled in a large house in a neighborhood in the heart of Caracas, the cheerful headquarters contains both staff offices as well as medical examination rooms, where people can enter for discreet and anonymous testing and examinations.  Apart from treatment, the NGO’s large focus is on education, promotion of healthy lifestyles, and stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in Venezuela.  While I’m looking forward to getting involved with these aspects of the organization, I”m currently wrapped up in another facet of NGO life: fundraising.

Acción Solidaria does not accept government support (a wise decision in a country where money is less-than-transparent, and support usually comes with strings attached) which means that the organization relies heavily on grants and donations.  One of the largest fundraising events it orchestrates is an art subasta, or auction, organized every other year.  The silent auction features pieces donated by Venezuelan artists, many of international renown, with base prices ranging from about USD$450-$20,750.  The auction, which runs for a week and a half opened on a Sunday; the packed salon attracted the upper crust of Caracas, media coverage, and some celebrities.  How was I supposed to know that the well-dressed, blond-haired man I placed a red-ribbon sticker on was the dress designer for Miss Venezuela, and therefore hugely famous here?

The silent auction wrapped up on a Thursday evening, giving way to a traditional auction a few hours later.  Those who bid on works throughout the eleven days of the silent auction came back to defend those pieces.  While we volunteers bustled around packing and labeling the art to be sent home with their new buyers, white-tuxedoed waiters walked among the attendees offering platters of hors d’oeuvres, champagne, and whiskey (Venezuelans love their whiskey).  The auction itself lasted over an hour.  I’m still waiting on the final tally for money raised, but the whole event was a rather smashing success!

Lianne Gonsalves is currently a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at the Centro Venezolano Americano. To hear more about her experiences, check out her blog. This is not is not an official Fulbright Program blog. The views and information presented are Lianne’s own and do not represent the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

1. Establish what the needs and interests are within the community. As Kati Mayfield pointed out, communities may have a logic in setting priorities that isn’t immediately obvious. Take some time to get to know the place before expending resources on a project that may not get earnest community backing, while also acknowledging your own interests and unique skill set.
2. Create a project that is appropriate for your timeframe. Whether it is maintenance of a garden or construction of a house, you can’t necessarily count on future volunteers to sustain a half-started project.
   

   WorldTeach program site in Colombia

3. If it is a long-term project, establish means for its sustainability. Identify a local team willing to oversee the project’s continuation. If you anticipate excess donated funds, those are best entrusted to an organization with oversight and accounting safeguards rather than to an individual. Also, what challenges may arise in the future? For instance, a photocopier may be a great addition to a school, but in the future will teachers be able to acquire and afford toner?
4. Write a proposal. Clearly outline materials and manpower necessary with precise cost estimates, and set a timeline. If you will be actively soliciting donations, the proposal shouldn’t be so limited that the funds cannot be applied elsewhere if you overfundraise or end up with too little funds to start the project. That may be deceptive to donors. At the same time, alternative plans should be germane to the project’s primary intention, be it adding to a school library or creating a safe play area for kids. If you are working within a bigger volunteer institution, make sure you understand their guidelines for donations and projects.
5. Get your community back home invested and informed. Keep a blog, write a newsletter, start a penpal exchange. Remember that in-kind donations (shipping is the biggest one) can be as valuable as cash, but understand donor expectations (can you provide a tax-deductible receipt? Do they expect one?).
6. Have fun!

Flora Lindsay-Herrera is currently a Fulbright Fellow in Montevideo, Uruguay. For more about her experiences, check out her blog. For more resources on community development, check out Idealist.org’s Community Action Center.

How do you make your program more interesting to this potential sponsor than the tens of hundreds of other child-sponsor programs? How do you convince someone that the needs of your kids are great enough to warrant their attention, and their money?

The usual routines, which I’ve seen used, are to take photos of children when they’re looking especially woebegone, poverty-stricken, or sad. And offer those children up to be sponsored. You describe the economic climate of the area you’re serving, focusing on how desperate and without resources it is.

You emphasize how poor, and how without all-the-things-that-children-merit your kids are. You emphasize how important your project is to the future of these children.

I didn’t think about any of these things as I wrote my letter to my friends and family asking them to donate or become a sponsor. I just wrote about how hard life is for some families here in San Pedro La Laguna, especially for single mothers, or women who’ve taken in the child of another family member (daughter, sister, brother). And how appreciative the moms are for the relatively small basket of food we give them every six weeks; how excited the kids are to have new pants, shirts and shoes for Feria. I wrote about our classes to teach the children to draw and paint, encouraging their imaginations and creativity while increasing their self-esteem, as well as future potential earning-power in this town known for its artists.

I talked about the life these kids lead—helping their mom carry wash to and from the lake, where the family bathes; carrying firewood from the mountains to feed the cooking fire; living in one room with several family members. Very few kids in this pueblo use outhouses or fetch water from a community tap, as occurs in the nearby pueblo of my other project. But toilets can be makeshift structures behind a curtain off the kitchen or patio; water in the tap is cold and not really clean. There’s mold on the walls of the rooms in the rainy season, and leaks in the roof. (Heck, I have those in my rented house!)

I wrote about the things that touch my heart. And I took photos of the kids that delighted me: Romeo hunched over his drawing board seated on top of a rock by the lake; three girls sitting in a boat while they painted; a boy in rapt attention while our director showed him a drawing technique.

I love these kids. They are as bright and sweet and sometimes sad, or as pesky as any kids anywhere, and they deserve an outing at times, a refreshment, a chance to stretch their wings. They deserve to learn and be appreciated.

I hope that love comes across.

I hope it’s enough.

Mira Talbot-Pope is currently volunteering with Ayudame a Pintar Mi Futuro.  For more on her adventures, check out her blog. For a different take on the ethics of poverty marketing, read “Photo Project Puts Poverty Into Perspective.“

I talk about Guatemalan culture and history, and tell stories about my life and the people I’ve met here. And I talk about the projects and what they are doing for the people they benefit.

I love the buying, selling and the talking about what I see and feel in Guatemala; so in many ways it’s no effort, except for hauling around the full suitcases, through airports, taxis, bus and train stations.

I’ve done small benefits at house parties and church service social hours, and last year we threw a big benefit dinner in conjunction with the students in the high school Spanish classes — good food, first class service and live music to boot. From this dinner and the sales, we were able to buy a photocopier for the office of the school – a huge boon to the teachers, who had been copying work for the students by hand.

My last visit home we did an art show at a local restaurant– with paintings by the painters I work with in APMF — as well as two house parties, a church social, a booth at a fair, and a sale at a bilingual preschool Mother’s Day event. My goal was to get enough donations to build a climbing structure for the preschool classrooms in the barren yard next to the classrooms and the director’s office. And joyfully, we met that goal.

It seems as though the consistency of my appearances in my hometown, the feedback and thank you letters I write to donors, and my ongoing work in these two projects in Guatemala has had some effect. After this visit to the States, one person who has helped considerably with the benefits is offering to make APMF a project of the NGO she’s connected with, which also helps in Belize and Haiti. This will enable us to have official status, give tax deductions for larger donations, and perhaps to receive funding from other organizations. This is very important for us as it would cost us nearly $1000 to do this for ourselves in Guatemala.

Then another friend has offered to push forward a “Friends of…” group in our hometown, to help us raise money more consistently, and encourage sponsorships for the kids in our program.

I am really excited about both these steps forward, which can only allow us to give better services to our client families in San Pedro and the children of the San Pablo preschool.

So I guess my message is, stick with it. Consistency and duration pay off.

Miranda Pope is currently living in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala and is volunteering with Pedagogia Basica, Estamos Listos, and Ayudame Escribir Mi Futuro. For more on her experiences, check out her blog. For more on fundraising, read “Organizing Fundraisers at Home and Abroad” by Kim Friedland; “How to Fundraise With No Funds” by Andrea Vogler; and “Need Some Cash? Top 10 Ways to Fundraise” by Laurie Norton.

I. Fundraisers from Abroad

a) The Pub Quiz

The idea of a Pub Quiz, or trivia night, is very popular in the English pubs around Cusco, and when used as a fundraising tool it creates a symbiotic relationship between pub owner and NGO worker. Here’s how it works:

Lauren and I create the quiz. This consists of five categories with ten questions each, with genres including history, current events, and pop culture. We publicize the event by posting flyers in bars and restaurants, and charge five soles ($1.75 USD) for each person to play. Be sure to make a short spiel before the quiz that introduces your organization and outlines its work. Pub owners like the event for the free publicity and the crowds it brings.

Peruvian goods to be auctioned off for donations.

b) Newsletters

Periodically sending out email updates to family and friends regarding the progress of your work abroad is a good way to spread awareness and raise interest in your cause. We do not use the newsletters explicitly as a fundraising tool, but it does sew the seeds to inspire donations later on. In the newsletter we include sections regarding recent happenings of GirlSportWorks, student spotlights, and new additions to the program.

II. Fundraisers from Home

a) The Gala

We will hold a fundraising gala upon our return to the States. Family, friends, and acquaintances will be invited. Here we will hold a silent auction, have a donations box, and provide food and the opportunity to purchase drinks. Speeches about our work, a slideshow, and Peruvian music will set the tone. To fund the event we will contact local restaurants and establishments and ask for food donations or items that we can auction off.

b) The City Fair Booth

Every fall the City of Berkeley holds an event called the Solano stroll, a massive street fair with parades, food stands, and various booths. For one hundred dollars we entered to have a GirlSportWorks booth. We expect that the donations we receive will make this fee a worthwhile investment. At the booth we will offer a variety of Peruvian goods for suggested donations, and will display a picture album and information pamphlet.

Hopefully these can inspire other fundraising ideas, and please feel free to help me out with suggestions!

Kimberly is currently serving as Program Manager for GirlSportWorks, a US-based NGO that seeks to enhance the lives of Peruvian girls through athletics. For more on fundraising, check out “How to Fundraise With No Funds” by Andrea Vogler and “Need Some Cash? Top 10 Ways to Fundraise” by Laurie Norton.

Shoveling is hard work. You bury the shovel in a mountain of mud, lift, dump into a bucket and repeat for hours on end. An odor lingers – a blend of death, decay and destruction. There are those rare moments when life resembles one’s favorite novel. In the past week, Love in the Time of Cholera has had more of a literal effect on my life than I ever would have expected literature to effect.

Relief workers aid the clean-up in San MIguel Escobar, Guatemala after Tropical Storm Agatha.

On May 15, I climbed my first active volcano, marveling at the sight of lava flowing down slopes. Less than two weeks later, with very little warning, this very volcano erupted and rivers of fire destroyed nearby villages, while blanketing Guatemala City with ash. Then Tropical Storm Agatha arrived – and did not stop pummeling our rooftops until, as of June 3rd, it had taken the lives of 150 people in Central America. The dawn of June 3rd found 108,000 homeless, 136,413 evacuated and 32,000 destroyed homes. 

The sun shone with an incongruous brightness on the morning after the storm. Armed with galoshes and shovels, aid workers poured into the hardest hit villages. Rescue workers pull out a grandmother and her child – both, unfortunately, dead because of a sudden mudslide. Mud reaches the level of the kitchen counter and buries wiring, computers, furniture and children’s toys underneath it. Health teams administer tetanus shots. Two days later, we add surgical masks to our uniform – an ominous sign that disease has arrived. Typhoid fever outbreaks and rumors of cholera, the results of a limited and contaminated water supply, complicate the act of shoveling.

With a specialty in conflict management, capacity building and women’s development work, I was a stranger to relief work. Relief work requires both empathy and the ability to distance oneself from the overwhelming pain. It demands every ounce of physical energy and every last grain of positivity. It is a quintessential team sport – one whose results will not show until days or months, making every lift of a shovel at turns disheartening and frustrating.

And in the disarray, hope emerges. The determination of the aid workers, the resilience of the locals, the random acts of kindness, the relentless teasing of one another about who smells worse or whose mud stains look more like face paint lighten up the load. Knee-deep in mud, inspired by the optimism, energy emanating from the shoveling crowds, it is hard to ignore the grave reminders of the storm – and even harder to not feel one’s own faith in humanity surging to new heights.

For a photomontage of relief efforts in Guatemala and information on how to donate to the victims of Tropical Storm Agatha, please visit Roxanne’s blog.

The event had to be simple because of our limited resources and short amount of time to prepare. Some of the older children from the orphanage and some of the volunteers provided the music;  we offered cheap food options such as chilaquiles and enfrijoladas; and we spread the word via hand to hand flyering and word-of-mouth. Everyone decided that come what may come of the event – at least we were going to have a good time!

Not worrying about every expense and the amount of people who showed up was a huge help. As the sun shone down, we laughed and played the day away while eating good food and listening to music. The next day we learned, to our surprise, we had helped raise 5,000 Mexican Pesos for the Ixaya School!

It was incredibly encouraging to see how much can be done with pure energy and dedication, and how successful fundraisers can be, even if they’re thrown together at the last minute. And don’t be put off by the idea that you won’t be able to raise as much money in a Latin American country – every little bit helps and it’s great to get the local community involved. Think of a coffee shop that might be down with letting local musicians play a benefit night for the organization you’re volunteering with. Or find a public park where you can do some street theatre, and with a big sign advertising that says the money is going to a good cause, watch your hat fill up.

Anyone have creative, low-preparation fundraising ideas while one’s on the road?

For more tips on putting together a low-cost fundraiser, check out “Need Some Cash? 10 Ways to Fundraise.” For more traditional money-making ideas, check out Idealist.org’s Community Action Center.

Over the past two and a half years, I have really come to understand philanthropy on both a personal and societal level. Neatly packing up my content life in Los Angeles and shipping it on the adventure express to the Western-most corner of the Iberian Peninsula, I slowly settled into a very different sort of existence in Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon.

Why Lisbon and what spurred the move is pretty irrelevant. For lack of a more exotic answer, I was just ready for something else, and that something was the slightly mysterious and little touched corner of the Iberian Peninsula which spoke a language I wanted to learn and was a mix of what I envisioned to be Latin, European, and Arabic influences with a bit of salty Atlantic sea. What unfolded was a journey in learning Portuguese, making friends, working and supporting myself on local currency, and all the while being an observer of the Portuguese culture, with my eyes and ears privy to a bit more local access than the average, thanks to my acquired language skills and job stints at Médicos de Mundo and International House language school.

There is much to be applauded about this humble, fairly homogeneous culture that has somehow steered clear of Western consumerism and nutritional excesses, maintaining their local traditions and honoring their sea-faring ancestors by living off a healthy diet of fish and non-processed foods. But the living experience (which for the sake of this particular argument) was really just a foreign context – it could have been any – for gleaning insight on another culture, which in turn, shed light on my own. As I struggled to plan fundraising events for the foreign humanitarian organization I was working for while trying to understand their relationship to philanthropy, I began to better understand my own country’s thoughts on the matter. Having traveled for pleasure and work all of my adult life, I’ve had plentiful experiences in the Americas and Europe, chances for both insight and participation. But it wasn’t until I was truly part of somebody else’s system – visa and social security number to prove it – could I understand, and more importantly, appreciate, what was so special about my own.

Growing up as a middle-class Californian girl, I was taught to share with others, expected to give of my time and energies for fundraising events andcommunity projects, learned that I had the power to initiate and create opportunities that would impact someone other than myself, and then also learned how to nicely package it all up in documented form as part of an unspoken admissions requirement to get into a good university.

The fact is, we Americans grow up doing just that. Giving, lending, sharing, partaking, creating, and organizing: all for a greater good. (Of course there are plenty of other motives too; we could all write a piece on the “Me generation” so just stick with me on this one.) We do not wait for someone else to instruct us about what to do, how to start, or where to take initiative. We founded our own system by joining forces with each other, volunteering, and gathering as individuals to build something for the larger community’s benefit. Now that the system is in place and age has shown its wrinkles and ailing parts, we – through organizations, community partnerships, and individual action – fill in the gaps and mend those broken parts. The scale extends from small to large and community threads are patched together thanks to the free-willed help of many. Cultural institutions are built due to the initiatives of individuals and meanwhile the state has its citizens to thank for a job well done.

Recently settling back in my own culture, I find myself in the middle of the job search like so many others out there. What keeps my spirits high in this gloomy economy are the amount of amazing organizations out there mobilizing people and their energy to tackle these little and also really big issues that affect all of us on a daily basis. (And yes, volunteerism is on the rise thanks to unemployment.) What I am really getting at here though is our deeper-seeded relationship with the culture of philanthropy. I know that even for myself the common definition has probably strayed a bit from its origins. It’s not about giving money or handing out charity. Philanthropy is about private initiatives for public good in order to improve the quality of life. As the name well embodies, it’s about loving (philos) humankind (anthropos). And it is in action all around us, all the time.

This weekend I was privileged to be in company with a group of about forty women writers in a WriteGirl volunteer training session for their upcoming year activities. Uniting to pool their talents and resources for a community in greater need, these women showed their commitment not just for a day of service, but they committed for the upcoming nine months of events. The group committed to each other and the community they were to serve as if it were a job, their duty. The return on their investment? Immeasurable social benefit for all parties involved.

As we moan and complain about the current state of affairs, raise hairs over the future of this health bill and shake in fright and disgust as the school system erodes on a daily basis, we have the power to take action and do what we can to contribute to something better. Idealist.org recently launched their proposal to facilitate a massive community network of idealists, using the brain power and resources we already have to address the gap between our desire to influence change and our action.

So all I am sharing here is that we’ve already got what it takes. As the daily news focus seems to consistently thrive off of the lack, the broken, the corrupt, let us not forget we do not need to wait for the help of the state to take a small action of responsibility for our future and the betterment of humanity. We created this nation, and we have set an example to the rest of the world of how individuals, working together outside of the traditional workforce, can make a difference. But we need to keep our model strong by taking initiative now so we can access and enjoy all of the human potential that is waiting.

The world is a big place!

I try to help out as much as I can. Listed below are the most important things you can do to get them started with a volunteer experience abroad:

1. Be upfront about costs. While not impossible, it can be difficult to find an organization that will pay for your housing and/or cost of living. People say, “Hey, well I want to do it but I don’t have the money.” They need to know this is an obstacle and that saving a lump sum of money beforehand may be required. Not an insurmountable obstacle: there are sites such as CouchSurfing that can help with free lodging.

2. Lend your English skills. A lot of organizations, as well as sites that locate volunteer opportunities, have the majority of their volunteer positions listed in English. Be a translator, and help them articulate what they want and what they can offer an organization via phone and/or email.

3. Assist with researching visa requirements. Getting a visa can be extremely difficult (especially for Colombians). Make sure they can find all the information they need regarding forms, ID’s, etc…

Did I miss anything? If anyone has any additional tips, please post them in the comments.