How I crafted my personal donation program.
In my previous articles on “What are the 5 Crucial Pieces of Advices for Starting Your Own Charity in Asia?” and “The 3 Reasons Why You Should Get Involved in Charity”, I wrote about practical suggestions that I received in the earlier stage of starting a new project, as well as some reasoning behind my decisions.
Today, I’d like to introduce the more practical aspect of what CHANGE Education Fund does and how I crafted its core donation program in the very beginning.
Starting Small — “The $100 Nonprofit” Concept
As a one person charity(*), I decided to start small. Something manageable and sustainable.
So, I simply decided to give a donation of RM400 (roughly 100 US dollars or a little less depending on exchange rate) each month, to different nonprofits primarily in Malaysia.
Through this method, I could also get to know local organizations and people involved and child relationships with them for possibly larger collaborations in the future. $100 a month was something quite doable, a small investment to try out.
An American author Chris Guillebeau once wrote about starting a business with just $100 in a book “The $100 Startup: Fire Your Boss, Do What You Love and Work Better to Live More”. Chris encourages people to take a small step forward to minimize risk and try out something new.
So, I thought “If a $100 startup for-profit is worth trying, then why not starting a $100 nonprofit”. That was the concept. As small as possible. And see how it goes.
After experimenting this concept, my conclusion is that starting a $100 nonprofit startup is quite worth it. It allows you to test out what you want to do on a very small scale. It introduces you to new people and organizations that are working towards similar goals.
(*)Later in 2020, CHANGE Education Fund welcomed a pro bono member, so it grow slightly bigger than one person charity.
Giving a Name to Your Activities
Giving a name is giving identity. It’s giving existence. As we know “In the beginning was the Word”.
In order for other people to recognize your activities, it has to have a name. Although it may just be a personal project, giving it a name is important for the growth of your brand in the future.
I scrabbled a countless number of words on many pages of paper that related to the aim of the activity. Education, Giving, Donation, Ability, Inspired, Children, Opportunity, Envision, Fund, Grant, Small, and Change, etc.….
Then I circled a few words that resonated with what I was planning to do: Ability, Change, Fund, and Education, but that was still too many words for a name. So, I decided to abbreviate the goal of the charity “CHildren’s Abilities aNd Goals Envisioned”, CHANGE for short.
This is how it gained its name.
If you are about to start something, I highly recommend you to give it a name. Because once it has a name, it can be remembered by others and to invite others to work together.
Problems vs. Solutions
Some people might think that they have to identify specific problems to tackle.
However, my mentor once suggested on how to start a charity as follows.
“You don’t need to look for problems. Actually, all the existing problems of the world have already been identified with a gigantic research initiative by the UN. Now it is available as ‘UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’. What you need to do is to provide solutions for these issues. Then others will follow your leadership. You should focus on providing solutions, rather than searching for problems. Problems are already identified and easy to find. Those who provide effective solutions are strongly needed in today’s world.”
So, I browsed here and saw 17 different goals.
My passion is for education, so I see the Goal #4, Quality Education.
I am also interested in #5 Gender Equality and #11 Sustainable Cities and Communities.
The solutions that CHANGE will be carrying out are a) Grant-making, b) Consultancy and advising, and c) Creative educational activities. These are something that I learned during my career course and I am confident that these can serve communities better.
With these concepts in mind, we put our thoughts into words.
So here is a little about us, our main goals, and eligibility requirements to join us.
About Us
Founded in February 2020, CHANGE Education Fund is a personal donation and consultancy program. It aims to support education and sustainability empowerment in Southeast Asia. Prioritizing tailor-made learning activities that suit the educational needs of under-resourced communities in Malaysia, a micro grant will be awarded to each selected nonprofit organization (NPO) and social enterprise.
Main Goals of the Micro-Grant Program
1. To support and provide customized collaborative learning activities — with great emphasis on creative and fun educational methods for non-profit organizations and social enterprises that advocate education and/or sustainability empowerment.
2. To provide pro bono consultancy for program building, organizational management, logic model (Theory of Change), assessment, leadership training, etc.
Eligibility Criteria
1. Founder / Head of organizations must be or preferably
a. Below 40 years old
b. Either at start-up or mid-career stage
2. Establishing good communication between funder and founder / head of organization
3. Strong accountability and transparency in the use of funds
4. Must conduct few times pre- and post- activity meeting (online / offline) and site visit (offline)
5. Must submit short and concise reports (texts and photos)
An Extra Explanation: Ecosystem of the Field
Although this might sound a little too technical, it is very important to recognize what your role and position are in the market ecosystem.
The ecosystem of charity or impact oriented charitable activities are modelized as seen in this chart in the photo below. The arrows signify flow of asset/fund/money/support in any form such as grant, loan, equity, etc..
We can categorize stakeholders into four categories depending on their roles in the system. These are: Asset Owner (A), Impact Fund (F), Enterprise (E), Beneficiaries (B). The asset/fund/money/support flow from Asset Owner, then to Impact Fund, then to Enterprise, and at the end reach Beneficiaries.
You need to decide which position/role you are taking.
CHANGE Education Fund’s positioning/role can be understood as Asset Owner (A) and Impact Fund (F) combined, although it is to a small scale.
List of Micro-Grant Receivers
Finally, here are the nine nonprofit organizations and social enterprises that CHANGE Education Fund supported in its inaugural year 2020. For some of them I donated directly, while some were done indirectly through a donation drive.
[MALAYSIA]
Dignity for Children Foundation
[INDONESIA]
[JAPAN]
In each Micro-Grant donation, our level of involvement varied. For some, we conducted collaborative educational events together. For others, CHANGE just transferred the donation fund and let the organization utilize the fund as necessary.
In my next articles, I would like to introduce the former: collaborative educational projects that CHANGE Education Fund and grantees have organized together. So, stay tuned!
Thanks for reading! I hope my articles can provide practical information that those who are interested in donation and charity can make use of.
