Increasing Fundraising Capacity for Parent Run Organization in LMICs

At the 2017 SIOP World Congress in Washington D.C., Maheen Hamid of ASHIC Foundation presented at the Childhood Cancer International track for parent run organizations. She talked about how parent run organizations in LMICs can expand their fundraising capacities in creative ways.

Background & Objective

LMICs struggle with a multitude of indigenous socio-economic issues, making it difficult to raise the fundraising capacity for small parent-run organizations focused on a specific cause such as childhood cancer. In a country such as Bangladesh, malnutrition, education and communicable diseases receive the lion's share of public funding and attention. Specialized causes such as childhood cancer are forced to resort to private sources of funding. Unequal distribution of wealth keeps more than 90% of the country's wealth in the hands of the select few, who make their own decisions on what projects to fund. Most have causes in their own communities or extended families that they choose to support, and as a result specialized programs such as support for childhood cancer gets ignored.

Maheen Hamid presenting at SIOP 2017, in Washington D.C.

Methods

With a track record of swindlers in the community, individuals are also slow to trust private non-governmental organizations (NGOs) unless they have a personal connection with the administrators of the organization. Formed in 1994, ASHIC Foundation got its start with 100% of its small budget funded by private funds from the founders of the organization. Maheen Hamid, daughter of the founders Afzal & Salma Choudhury, shared the family's journey over the last two decades. This includes relationship building with the local medical communities, tapping into international networks/ partners, building credibility of ASHIC Programs by being consistent and dedicated service providers and many other factors that have helped to build the trustworthiness of the organization.

Results

Today, the organization gets about ∼70% of its current ∼$100,000 annual budget from private donations, including those from individuals and institutions.

Here is the presentation in a video format: