ILSS hosts conference on fundraising for social impact

Date : Jan 31 , 2020 | Event

FRC 2020 creates a space to discuss challenges, opportunities and strategies around raising resources for social purpose organisations

More than 180 leaders from the social sector, including NGO founders, CEOs, fundraising professionals and philanthropists, attended the first-ever ILSS Fundraising Conference – FRC2020, which took place in Mumbai on January 10. The conference, held in partnership with A.T.E. Chandra Foundation, Central Square Foundation and Tata Trusts, saw representation from around 140 social purpose organisations. 

As a part of ILSS’s continued efforts to create programmes and platforms for knowledge sharing and capacity building within the social sector, FRC 2020 brought together voices, experiences and learnings from various stakeholders in a day-long deliberation on the challenges, opportunities and emerging discussions related to fundraising for social impact.  (Watch: ‘FRC 2020 is a platform for social sector fundraisers’ – Ashish Dhawan)

The conference saw speakers, panellists and an enthusiastic audience discuss a range of topics and questions related to how social purpose organisations are raising funds, the sources they are tapping into, how they can go about it more effectively, and managing donor and stakeholder relationships, among others.  

Leaders from organisations that have built successful fundraising strategies shared their stories of what worked and what did not as their programmes and organisations scaled, thanks to the robustness, focus and intentionality of their fundraising. They also discussed their own experience with diversifying donor portfolios, accessing CSR funds, assessing the right kind of capital and donor, creating a connect with the retail donor, placing strategy at the heart of fundraising, putting effective measurement mechanisms in place, and so on. (Watch: ‘The timing for FRC 2020 couldn’t be better’ – Amit Chandra)

A donor panel, placed towards the end of the day’s proceedings, provided an opportunity for participants to understand the factors that influence philanthropy, the values and philosophies that  shape how different people and entities give, and some of the new directions in Indian philanthropy.  

The ILSS Fundraising Conference is envisioned as an annual event that aims to build fundraising capacity within Indian social purpose organisations, create a platform for important conversations around philanthropy and build a network of people raising resources for social impact.

See FRC speakers and agenda