Fundraising Strategy

Fundraising concentrates its efforts in Grant Writing and Donor Seeking. Through our efforts we are able to finance the everyday operations of AguaClara. More recently we have been investigating Microfinance as a new area of concentration for Fundraising, however we have yet to reach a conclusion as to the viability of Microfinance in our organization.

Below you will find a summary of our fundraising efforts in each of the areas of concentration. You will also find an explanation of Microfinance as well as the benefits it can hold for AguaClara.

Grants

As members of such a unique organization, we must look at a wider gamut of grants than a traditional Outreach team. Due to the uniqueness of AguaClara, we look for grants that satisfy individual parts of AguaClara. We are also able to adapt out grants accordingly by virtue of being so unique. For our current efforts in please look at the Grant Text Modules under the Grants webpage.

We search for potential grants using a variety of websites such as:

• The Foundation Directory
• Grants.gov

A Grant Short List is then created, showcasing the most current grant applications that the team is working on

Aside from ensuring that the grants we seek are in accordance with AguaClara's ethical code, the Fundraising team has also written guidelines for grant writing, facilitating the grant writing process for future Outreach members.

Microfinance

What is Microcredit?

The provision of small loans or microcredit to poor people to help them engage in productive activities including growth of very small businesses is called Microcredit. The term may also include a broader range of services, including credit, savings, and insurance.

Organizations that currently offer Microcredit in Honduras?

Name Website
Adelante http://www.adelantefoundation.org/
Finca Honduras http://www.villagebanking.org
Finsol http://www.finsolhn.com/
Fundahmicro http://www.fundahmicro.hn/fundahmicro/
FUNED http://www.funedvf.org/ingles/
ODEF http://www.odef.org.hn/
Worldrelief https://community.wr.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=609

Microcredit projects that already exist in Central America

In general Microcredit projects can range anything between lending to an individual to implementing a project which would help the whole community at large (generally with the aid of the government or a Non-governmental charitable institution). The current Microcredit projects in Central America are mainly concentrated on Small size businesses. Microcredit in Central America has been growing at a steady pace of 20% in the last decade with Honduras among the lower end of growth spectrum.

How Microcredit works?

All the Microfinance organizations in Honduras seem to follow the Grameen model for lending purposes, in this model an organization assigns a number of officers to a community to familiarize with the situations on ground and gather loan applications. Once the loan applications are reviewed they decide on potential borrowers (usually the limit is 5 people) and form a group of with all them as members. Then they give money to 2 members of the group (the loan could range from anything between $50 to $5000) and monitor repayments for a two year period. If the two borrowers do return the money on time they extend the loans to everybody else in the group, this dynamics creates a peer pressure among the borrowers to make payments on time.

How Microcredit can be used to help AguaClara?

The best way would be to convince different villages in Honduras to form commercial Water boards and use them as representatives to apply for the Microcredit loans in lieu for paybacks based on the collection of water taxes from each individual family in the village. Since many of the Honduras villages already have a water board and most of them keep tax records it would be easier for the Microcredit institution to verify their credit worthiness and provide them the initial investment required to build the water treatment plant and pay the AguaClara/APP employees working on the project.

Outreach

The Cornell Annual Fund plans on including information about AguaClara in their mailings and hopefully we can get a link about AguaClara on the Cornell Fund website. Other ideas for outreach for fundraising purposes includes posters on campus and continued contact with previous donors.

To develop a solid external face we need to do a good job of developing the wiki and finding someone to devote  whose sole job is to work on making the wiki more accessible.

We will to sign up for the following events:

Reunion: Sign up is in the next two weeks for a table this June

Homecoming:

Trustee Council Meeting next fall

We need to make presentations at Cornell clubs in NYC, Syracuse and other places. When people go home for breaks or if people have jobs over the summer they can make presentations at their local Cornell clubs. We can have a training session at the end of the year or before spring break to encourage this. In order to set this up we will contact the alumni affairs liason from each club and ask them about the most effective time and places to makes these presentations.  

Contacts

We should continue to actively explore personal and professional contacts as ways of gaining information about potential funding sources. We should makes contacts with the Honduran and possibly other Central American embassies in Washington D.C. We should also meet with the USAID mission and U.S. Embassy in Honduras to explore possibilities.

We  need to work with alumni affairs and development specifically Jessica Traynor the alumni affairs officer for enginnering. She will help us use the alumni network. We will specifically look for Cornell alum working for foundations and other potential donors agencies.

We will schedule meetings with people at Cornell ranging from professors who may have contacts at donor agencies to people who work in alumni development to obtain advice and ideas related to outreach and development. 

We will develop a generic form letter and marketing that we can start sending to companies, foundations and alumni. 

We will get in touch with Johnson School's Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and let them know what we are doing. We might be able to get some money/advice from them

We will explore ways to find MBA students to work on the projects. One possibility might be Park fellows who are MBA students who do a project with a focus on sustainability. They get to choose a project to work on so we could present to them and hopefully we can get one to help us out.Clint Sydel is the director of the Park fellowship and may be a helpful contact