Welcome! This page is an introduction to fundraising and our work around it at oikos.
Authors: Stephen Snider, Carolin Lemke Involved: Everyone Linked Circle(s) & Roles: Fundraising Support Circle, Fundraising Focus Circle Latest Update: November, 2023
Fundraising at oikos in the past has been typically centralized around one or two people. To make the work easier for everyone and more central to our work a new Fundraising Focus Circle has been created. This Circle hosts representatives from each of the oikos Initiatives, plus our Volunteers and Board Members that are interested in helping us fundraise.
The Fundraising Focus circle is an attempt to bring all of us together, making things transparent, keeping everyone aware of what is going on, sharing responsibilities, and making things less centralized. We use our Fundraising Circle to coordinate and meet together twice a month to advance the many fundraising efforts we have in place to support our programs. This Circle touches each of the other organizational circles of oikos.
People belonging to this circle are usually engaged in the following fundraising activities:
Lead research
Grant writing
Corporate fundraising
Alternative fundraising
Learn more about how we got here in this slide show: Fundraising Finance Basics Process Structure - Focus Call
The Fundraising Support Circle belongs to the wider Admin & Support Circle. It is meant to enable successful fundraising for the whole team. It is needed to have someone to host the team, keep an overview and keep up the energy for the team.
Responsibilities of the circle are:
Hosting the FF circle meetings and the team
Strategizing and inviting the rest of the team for it
Providing structure and processes with the help of the tools available to us (Airtable, Google etc.)
Managing fundraising volunteers
It currently contains of 1 co-president, 1 board member and 1 employee.
Fundraising work streams or areas of focus can include the following areas:
Foundations & Grant Writing
Large foundations
Medium-sized & smaller foundations
Best practices
Businesses, banks and other private institutions
oikos has worked with a few larger Swiss or European foundations to fund major oikos projects. Grants have been recently written to groups like P4NE and Movetia with a larger budget and in-depth programming, using grant-specific applications. These foundations are oftentimes either governmentally funded or consolidate smaller foundations/donors under one roof. Grant processes are usually more formal, require detailed information and thus, take more time. Though once received, the funding can secure our activities over a longer period of time. Furthermore, detailed reporting on our impact and how the money was used is usually required. For a successful grant application, work closely with the program’s circle to design an application that meets grant characteristics. There are a couple larger foundations out there to apply to, be targeted and well-researched, and develop relationships with the foundation personnel. See our Current, Research & Past donors for more info.
(2.1.2) Medium-sized and smaller foundations
Next to the larger foundations out there, the foundation landscape is broad. Foundations can take any size, grant requirements, potential funding sums & criteria, so there is a huge diversity and no "one-size-fits-all" answer to the perfect grant proposal. For medium-sized and smaller foundations, the application processes are oftentimes much less formal. In some cases, they might still have an online portal or documents to fill. Others require you to send a self-made project/program proposal including a budget via email that meets the descriptions of oikos projects and goals of the organization. These processes are less formal, take less time, though also the funding sums are usually smaller. Especially tor these grant applications, we have fliers and other materials that can be used to apply.
Applications to smaller foundations, corporations, and partners may require simpler, non-formulaic applications that meet the descriptions of oikos projects and goals of the organization. Recent proposals included funding for Basecamp, sustainable finance programming from Aviva Investors, a budget for Camp 2023 from Isaac Dreyfus, and the oikos Academy. Often times you’ll need to create a flier with your proposal, a document describing program specifics, and a budget. The level of detail depends on the relationship and needs of the organization.
Check out the Partnerships Circle and User Guide for more information on how relationships should be managed at oikos. With applications, you’ll want to develop connections through email and calls to ask questions, review proposals, facilitate donations, report on programming, and hand over projects. Check out notes on AirTable, Salesforce, and in the project, documentation to track important information. Check out our map of Donor Relations on Miro for more (LINK) and our Drive for Outreach Support.
Learn more about it here:
Workshops/Training
We’ve been trying to provide opportunities for internal workshopping, learnings, and improving the process we work with. There are lots of resources available online that might be of use Communities for Future, Opportunity Desk, Funds for NGOs, and others. Check out our Fundraising Google Drive for Trainings and previously used resources.
There are many roles you can be involved with to help move fundraising forward. Some are below:
JOIN the FUNDRAISING CIRCLE - Every two weeks we meet to talk specifically about fundraising efforts and provide updates to each other. Here is a great chance to work on the things most important to our circles' fundraising efforts. The event is always on the oikos calendar and our meeting minutes are below so you can follow along.
RESEARCH LEADS - Lots of help is needed to check the many potential fundraising opportunities that we come across on a regular basis.
Review AirTable for background information and add research notes you find.
Check SalesForce for past connections to individuals/companies.
Browse the organization’s website and determine if its values align with ours.
Find key individuals on their website and on LinkedIn
Read about their Sustainability and Impact in any useful Reporting you find
Suggest leads that are good for outreach to and document what needs to be submitted for a successful application.
MAKE OUTREACH - Connect with potential donors and partners to request support. Utilize the resources that each initiative and circle at oikos creates to tell the stories about the work we do. You’ll see some resources below on fundraising specific to our different programs.
Connect through:
Grants and Applications
Direct Contact and Email
Proposals and Fliers
**Please coordinate with your teammates and the fundraising circle to inform others on what outreach you are making.
DONATIONS - Donations to oikos can be made directly to us using our bank details or through our donation pages. Also, we are often running crowdfunding campaigns that
TO DO - ADD LINK FOR DONATION PAGE -
IMPACT and RELATIONSHIPS - oikos has a pretty big community and part of our work should include developing these connections to be supporters of our work. There is also a network of partners
NOTE - What areas are we forgetting about that you can help us with?. –
oikos has a pretty big community and part of our work should include developing these connections to be supporters of our work. There is also a network of partners to develop connections to and from.
What is needed for our donors
Demographics & impact Data!!!
Impact Matrix
Engagement Data ← should go on Impact Matrix
Social Media - click through rates, followers, engagement
Website - views, connections, SEO ratings
Newsletter
ADD EXAMPLES -
Alumni
Spider Humans Airtable and past LEAP Participants Airtable
ADD AIRTABLE LINKS -
REPORTIN
Airtable Database
Our Airtable databse is accompanied by a Fundraising Shared Drive.
Google structure principles for fundraising
Once an organization reaches the "in research" phase, the organization has to have two things on Google: 1x folder and 1x factsheet
The organization's folder in the Fundraising Drive is the main folder for that organization. All fundraising-related documents need to be saved or linked via a shortcut in this folder. There might be exceptions if a previous non-financial partner is becoming a financial donor but generally, we want to avoid having information spread across 5 different shared drives.
OLD:
In the G-Drive you’ll find supporting information for the Leads we are currently working on. And any additional info saved from past research and leads that were not successful. Check these folders out for lots of helpful information.
Generally, we can think of our donors as three buckets.
Current donors - those that have given funding to us in the past two years and we have a current and active relationship with them
Leads & Research - here are organizations that we are in the process of determining if they would support us. Will include any ideas and contacts to be explored.
Past Donors/Closed Leads - those that do not align with the oikos mission and have been closed. Be aware of the orgs that are interested to work with us in the future but just not right now and keep developing a relationship with these
There are several points in time and reasons to archive an organization
Common reasons to discontinue a lead and archive them:
We realize ourselves the organization is not a fit. It may be their strategic focus, funding criteria, regional focus etc. that is not fitting to oikos International. This realization can happen at any time during the process, ideally we should notice during the "in research" phase, though it can also happen "in conversations" with them or anywhere in between.
The organization doesn't see the fit
During the "In research" phase, we realize it will not be worth it to put more time and energy in this lead. We archive the organization.
How to update a lead stage?
LEAD STAGE | Description / definition | Steps to take |
---|---|---|
Fundraising can be a complicated process and it can be quite scary starting out. Give yourself some time to learn about the organization and learn to be comfortable trying new things. It is very helpful to review documents that have been previously used to fundraise and learn how to talk about oikos in general. You’ll also find plenty of resources on how to research leads, identify contacts, and propose funding opportunities. Good luck. And remember to have FUN with this.
New
Any organization someone in the team got to know about
They haven’t been researched yet on whether or not they could be fitting to oikos for our fundraising purposes
They don’t necessarily have an owner/host
Add the organization to the Airtable via this form
In research
We switch from “new” to “in research” if someone in the team decides to pick up this organization and dive further into it
A host/owner is added to the organization
This stage is before a decision is taken to either select them for fundraising or archive them
Make sure there is a Google folder for the organization in the correct lead stage folder on Google Drive. Use existing organization folders or create a new one if necessary.
Ensure there is a main document (factsheet/ongoing notes) for the organization. If none exists yet, use this template to document your research and add it to the folder.
Airtable
Update the lead stage and further information for Airtable via this form
Selected for fundraising
YAYY - Our initial research showed that the organization seems to to be a fit. The host who researched the organization either decides for themselves or consults the team to select the organization for a fundraising approach (and not to archive them)
Outreach/application preparation
We are starting to prepare reaching out to this organization or preparing a grant application (in case of a foundation)
In conversations
We are in conversations with the organization, maybe have a first call with them (more applicable for businesses/potential sponsors)
Applied/funding requested
We have officially applied for a grant or requested funding and are waiting for a response
Donation confirmed
SUCCESS - Our application/request was successful and the organization confirmed a donation
Find here a collection of arguments to convince potential donors of the value we bring as an international sustainability NPO.
Perspective | Arguments |
---|
Stakeholder Perspective |
|
Human Resource Perspective |
|
CSR/Sustainability Perspective |
|
Marketing Perspective |
|
oikos is exploring others means to fundraise that complement offers from the community to support the way we work. Crowdfunding on Global Giving has become a major area where projects seek individual gifts from people we get connected with. Alumni fundraising is another new area we are experimenting with. An example is Benoit Pitaser’s cross-country, matched-donation, fundraiser. Many creative ideas can be proposed here and some help with infrastructure projects like oikos registering to TGE (LINK) to start offering tax-free donations. Google Drive
We are hosted on the following donation platforms and we have different campaigns/users that use them.
TGE Platform Page - European donation platform that allows Europeans to benefit from tax incentives from their residential country. As of 11/22 countries available are France, Spain, Germany and Belgium.
Global Giving Platform - Crowdfunding platform w/ matching promotions during multiple campaigns throughout the year.
All Alternative fundraising activities are recorded on this Airtable including all donor information, research of new alternatives fundraising opportunities
The database of our contacts is available for review on AirTable
>>> AirTable Database - please request access from it@oikos-international.org
Prior engagement history and the contact details of individuals and organizations is stored on SalesForce. This database is a legacy storage of messages since 2010.
>>> SalesForce Login - please request access from it@oikos-international.org
Also, don’t forget that there might be FactSheets available if we made prior proposals to the organization. This can be extremely helpful if reapplying to an organization. See them in the Leads and Research folder on the G-Drive.
WHAT’S MISSING? QUESTIONS?
SETTING A TIME WITH GREG
SUBMIT THROUGH THE FORM/RESEARCH
HOW TO MAKE CHANGES
To Help Make Sure You Are On The Same Page Here Are Some Starting Resources
Who is oikos? - on-boarding from Greg Vrient
How is oikos working? - Intro to oikos and User Guides
Be sure to check out
How to get access and start fundraising:
Email - Get your oikos address it@oikos-international.org
Miro - Sign up and join the HomeBase
Discord - communication channel Request Invite
Website - short-bio and picture Add Website -
AirTable - research Submission Form
AirTable - update Leads and Research
SalesForce - review for prior contacts Login
Read about oikos Fundraising Ethical Principles
Learn about details and process for Fundraising with our Field Guide
Check out some General Fundraising tips to help you
Airtable - Fundraising Leads & Field Guide-Air Table Fundraising User Guide
SalesForce - Past Contact Info & Field Guide- SalesForce Notes
2022 Circle Notes - Fundraising Focus Circle - Continuous Meeting Minutes FF Circle
Volunteer Check-Ins - Volunteer Fundraising - Continuous Meeting Minutes 2022
Alternative Fundraising Meetings - 2022 Alternative Fundraising Strategy
Co-President Check-Ins - Fundraising Support - ongoing minutes
> Role Descriptions - Fundraising Volunteer
> Onboarding Checklist -Volunteer Onboarding
> Applications - Airtable of Volunteers
> Job Portals:
LEAP Tracks Advance, Researchers, Life
Transforming Education
oikos Budget Docs oI Budget 2022 and oI Budget 2023
Salary Tracking oikos Salaries 2022 and ADD 2023 DOCUMENT
Projection of Cash FlowsoI Gross Monthly Costs (multiple years)
Now You Should Have Sufficient Background To Start Fundraising
For More Details Check Out The oikos Fundraising FIELD GUIDE