Blog Post 8: Fundraising

Last week in class, Social Work in Organizations and Communities, we talked about fundraising. I thought this class was interesting because I never thought about how important fundraising is within Social Work. The text book states "few social workers begin their careers with the clear goal of becoming fundraisers." Before last class, I had never thought about how one day I could be involved with raising money for an agency or organization. I have always thought more of social workers helping people through direct work. Fundraising is an important part for all agencies because they all need financial resources to be able to operate. It was interesting to learn about all the different ways funding can be provided. For example, in class we talked about how Safe Place receives some funding by other organizations offering an employee to work for them. I realized how important it is for agencies to collaborate with different organizations to be able to function in the best way possible.

We did an exercise in class so we could better understand this topic. Our class was split into two groups. One group pretended they were an agency that had to ask for money. They pretended to be Safe Place. The other group was a foundation that was told to come up with about ten different questions they would like to ask the agency before they gave any money away. This group was the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. This foundation's main focus is to benefit children.

I was in the group that acted as the foundation. Some of the questions we came up with as a group that we thought would be important were:

• What would you do with the money? 
• How are you breaking down the money? 
• What else does your funding come from? 
• What is your end all goal? 
• What is your mission statement? 
• What is your target population?

The other group acting as Safe Place wrote down things the agency provides and focused on the populations they provide for. There was an overlap between population and what the agency might do with the money. There was a little bit of clash because Safe Place does not only provide for children, but also for women. One thing I noticed was that many of our questions had to do with asking what their specific project or their end goal was when the might not have a specific end goal or project they want to use the money on. Another thing I had never thought about was that many foundations do not want to be the sole provider for an agency so it is important to ask to make sure the agency can provide for their clients in the future without help from them. It was interesting when we discussed  how the agency's goal is to look appealing to the foundation without changing too much about them.

Observation:

This past week I noticed many people within the School of Social Work coming together to help the victims of the flood.