Finding support for our initiatives & operations
As oikos International is a non-profit organization, fundraising is one of our key operational topics. We continuously offer our events and programs to our community members (mostly without a participants’ fee), therefore building up donor-grantee relationships with individuals, companies and foundations is an essential activity.
With many grants being specifically directed towards a certain event or initiative, the responsible persons for these initiatives usually also take a lead on grant applications and donor management.
The co-presidents are constantly involved in these efforts and take care that the energy directed to the topic brings the outcome we aim at. Additionally, we have one board member who focuses on new and old fundraising activities and our overall fundraising strategy. This person is stewarding our fundraising volunteers.
In 2021, we introduced the Finance & Fundraising Circle which is helping us to coordinate all we do in fundraising with all of our initiatives and for oikos as a whole. In our bi-monthly meetings, we get together to exchange with (min. 1) representative per sub-team, talking about current developments, opportunities and things we want to work on.
In a supportive role, several fundraising volunteers are focussing on topics like foundation & private donor process support (scanning & contacting potential donors), alternative fundraising (all approaches beyond the traditional foundation-approach, eg. crowdsourcing & philanthrophy) and supporting grant applications of the initiatives in the process.