There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you don’t do them. Building a donor base for The Rotary Foundation or any service activities is one such thing.
Developing a good public image and an effective public relations programme for Rotary is the basis for developing a long lasting donor base for The Rotary Foundation.
Non-Governmental Organisations and service organisations such as Rotary had an image. They were seen as marginal to the Indian society dominated by the Government.
People believed that Government should and could discharge all major social tasks and that the role of the service organisations, if any, was to supplement governmental programmes. That was the public image of Rotary years ago.
Today, we know better. Today, NGOs and Rotary are central to Indian society. People know that the ability of the government to perform social task is limited. We have seen Rotary discharge bigger jobs and take care of specific needs.
When there was a resistance by the minority community to the polio immunisation programme, the government could not change their attitude. It needed Rotary to come up with the brilliant idea to form the Ulema Committees in Uttar Pradesh ,Bihar and Malegaon. Because of this, the resistance to the immunisation programme was eliminated and India became polio free.
The building of check dams to provide drinking water to an entire village by Rotary, laying of drainage system in another Panchayat, rehabilitating the Tsunami affected communities, setting up hospitals, schools, colleges and many more permanent structures for the welfare of the people are examples of how Rotary is addressing the specific needs of the people. Most of these were considered to be the work of the Government.
Rotary does something very different from a business enterprise or government. Business supplies either goods or services. Government controls. A business is discharged when the customer buys the product, pays for it and is satisfied. Government has discharged its function when its policies are effective.
Rotary neither supplies goods or services nor controls. So what does Rotary do? What is its product? Rotary’s product is a changed human being. Rotary’s product is a cured patient, a child that learns, a youngster who grows up into a self-respecting adult and a nation that has rid itself of diseases such as polio.
What will a strong Foundation do? Firstly it can make more people to join the movement and secondly it can bring in more philanthropists into the fold of Rotary.
People will join Rotary and give their resources when they are personally touched or motivated by the organisation’s programmes and service opportunities. People will join Rotary when they are inspired by what the movement does. People will judge Rotary by how hard it works to prove its values before joining it.
There is a saying that good intentions don’t move mountains; bulldozers do. For Rotarians, the plan to build a good public image is the good intention. Strategies are the bulldozers. This will result in funds being raised.
In purely marketing parlance, the current demand level of people wishing to donate to The Rotary Foundation is below the desired demand level. This is described as faltering demand state. Hence, we have to ‘revitalise demand’ and remarket The Rotary Foundation.
While talking about building the public image of The Rotary Foundation, we should understand that there is no such thing as a product or service which exists by itself in space, independent of the consumer.
For The Rotary Foundation to exist and grow it should find a place in the individual’s perception of service to humanity. This perception is subjective, governed by the individual’s values, beliefs, needs, experience and environment.
Positioning The Rotary Foundation as a credible Foundation capable to doing good in the world, in the mind of the public is the first step. The mind of an individual will be already cluttered with numerous names of service organisations. The first task of The Rotary Foundation is to situate itself as a brand in the minds of people.
Building a good public image for Rotary and The Rotary Foundation is no garden party and a precipitate entry into the thicket without preparatory build-up of the club’s capacity for projecting a good image constantly may not ensure bliss.
Service organisations, including Rotary, are not entitled to support. They must earn it. Fund raising is not raising money. It is raising friends. The Rotary Foundation needs money. Big money. To eradicate polio. To help people affected by natural disasters. To educate children. To feed the hungry. To eliminate illiteracy and infant mortality. To give shelter. To give the gift of sight. To perform heart surgeries on children. To work for world peace and for many more noble causes including tackling pandemics such as Corona which may come up.
We cannot raise big money by just going outside and asking for donations of Rs.10,000 or even Rupees One Lakh. Probably these small donations may just help us in a small way. Raising big money is a different proposition. That is why public image is important.
Small money is just for a short cycle – a month or a year. It is like going to a vegetable mart and buying vegetables for a day’s meal. Raising big money is like growing our own food and then preparing every meal. This means we have to clear the land, plow the ground, plant the seeds, cultivate the crop, harvest the yield and store it.
If an organisation does not have the attention of people and other institutions capable of making a large donation, then it simply cannot expect to receive them.
But attention alone is not enough. Rotary must develop the interest of the public who are the potential major donors. Big donors don’t give to institutions. They invest in ideas and people in whom they believe. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s grant is one such example.
Hence, it is no more fund raising. It is fund development. We cannot find major donors from far off places. Money usually stays close to us. Don’t expect it to come from individuals, foundations or corporations that knew nothing about Rotary before they were approached for a donation.
Can we assume that we are not able to increase the contributions to TRF because we have not cultivated a big donor base that will support year after year? The answer is yes.
This translates to the fact that the public image of The Rotary Foundation has not grown the way it should have. The big corporate in our country have little or no knowledge about what The Rotary Foundation does. They do have funds for philanthropic activities. it is just not flowing through Rotary.
We find that NGOs are able to raise enormous amounts of money from donors directly. For example, in India, few years ago, over 22,000 NGOs declared that they had received over US $1.92 billion as direct foreign contributions.
During 2012-2013, 18,300 NGOs filed their income statement to the Government about the direct foreign funds they received for various community service projects. The amount was a staggering US $1.82 billion. NGOs in a single state in India received US $91 million in direct foreign contribution.
The Rotary Foundation in India is able to raise about US $20 to 25 million annually now and the TRF worldwide is able to raise about US $250 to US$300 million.
This amount is insignificant considering the inflow that come to NGOs even in India. Every country has NGOs who are collecting enormous amounts of money for social causes. If NGOs are able to do so, TRF must also be able to raise huge amounts of money.
If this was possible for NGOs in India why not The Rotary Foundation? The answer is that no club has a donor base.
I built a small donor base and with constant and credible feedbacks about the money they gave, developed their trust in our programs. They continue to give till now.
So my friends, you are leaders of your club in various avenues and nothing of that will matter till you deliver good projects to the public.
Do not fritter away your resources for the old out-dated theory that it is service through fellowship. That concept is alien to our culture and in India service and sacrifice always go hand in hand.
You may ask then how did we work for polio eradication? Remember it was a Government of India’s programme where we pitched in with resources.
How many Rotarians went house to house with the health workers to find the children who were missing on NIDs? How many of us were ready to work in slums amidst the most unhygienic conditions and enter a hut to give that polio drop to the child which was probably not well?
So developing a donor base and making sure that the money is accounted for and reported properly plays an important part in fund raising or fund development as we call it now.
I suggest that the TRF Chair of your club and the entire Board of the club must be assigned the task of finding out about the NGOs who work in their area and how they collect huge funds from donors within the country and abroad and for what projects.
This may give us an insight on fund raising. TRF can also ask other knowledgeable Rotarians to be a part of the fund development task force for at least three years.
It is said that if we keep on doing what we have always done, we will keep on getting what we have always been getting. In order to get to the next level we have to change our fund raising methods.