A letter about Events, Venues and Funding

[Singapore Connect]

Hi,

The main purpose of SingaporeConnect is to organise events for our members, i.e. "fun, food, family, and friends".

A long term goal is to get our overseas Singaporean community to embark on projects that involve Singapore, for the benefit of them  individually and for Singapore.

As you know, SingaporeConnect has organised a few dozen events in the past couple of years. You can visit our web site (which has an email archive), or our Facebook group page, to browse through past events.

We have learned that the three main components of an event are:

1) An Organiser

2) A Venue

3) Some Funding

Why are these components important and where do you, as a member, fit in?

1) Organiser

All events start as ideas, example, "potluck, sports day, hiking, panel discussion, Q&A, cooking class, etc." They need an organiser to "put things together", be it picking a location, putting together a programme, coming up with key contributors (i.e. instructors, leaders), or just showing up a little earlier at the event to set it up and get it going. 

As a committee, we come up with these ideas, and try nominate a committee member to be the leader organiser, while the rest of us all chip in. Certain support functions, such as IT support and publicity (i.e. web site registration system, marketing emails) can be more centralised but chiefly the organiser injects his or her direction to the event.

It is without saying that the key to any event is an organiser. Within the committee, each of us all have certain thresholds for how often we can take the lead to organise events, maybe twice a year per committee member. All of us also have some sort of interest level for each kind of event, i.e. if we've done one type of event we're less likely to want to do the same thing again the next year.

In order to have more events, and more variety in events, we have and will be contacting you, our members, to consider leading an event. We don't think we're asking a lot. With 330 members on our mailing list and 270 members on our Facebook group, if every member were just to lead one event in their lifetime with SingaporeConnect, we'll be pretty set.

So just to let you know, we will be reaching out to you personally. We hope when we do so, you keep in mind that events are like a chicken-and-egg situation. You can't have events (the eggs) without organisers (the chickens). So please don't too easily "chicken out" when we reach for you. You know, the committee members also have personal lives. We want to emphasise that the committee will be behind organisers all the way: and frankly we find the opportunity to work with a new person or two very rewarding as well.

You are of course more than welcome to reach out to us on your own accord! The more eggs in the basket, the better!

2) A Venue

A lot of times we get past step (1) and then get stuck at step (2). There are basically three choices for venues:

a) a public space.

b) a private house.

c) a function room.

To elaborate:

a) would be like parks and plazas which are open to the public but large and open enough where we can have an event as a group without bothering other people's space. 

b) would be someone's house or part of (i.e. garden, backyard)

c) would be a conference/meeting/function room of sorts that usually belongs to a hotel, school, church, company, or condo/apartment but can be rented out.

Sometimes the venue is obvious from the event, i.e. say a tour of a particular company is going to be at that company. 

But most often we are flexible on the venues, and more limited by their availability. For example, potlucks and cooking classes tend to be best held in b) or c). 

It should be obvious where you can help. If we approach you asking if you have a venue that you can help with, do try and see if you can make something work out, even if it's takes a little legwork, asking around, or creativity. For example, perhaps your condo or company may have availability.

3) Some Funding

By far and large our events have been either run at a loss or break-even. The slight loss comes from incidentals (i.e. utensils for potlucks) and transaction fees (i.e. for accepting credit card payments). To give you an idea it can come up to say a loss of $50 an event, which have been borne so far by the committee members.

A few events in the past have had sponsors, but these have always been done on a per-event basis.

We are acutely aware that the popularity of an event is highly dependent on the price, and that most of our members would prefer to attend an event that is cheaper than what it actually costs to hold. (i.e. you may be interested to come to a luncheon networking session at $2-$5, when in reality the restaurant would charge us $15-$20 per person.) Bear in mind the reason for the $15-20 charge stems from more than the food component only, but because the restaurant is reserving the entire location for our event so they need to recoup back the opportunity cost of having other diners. 

Additional funding can go towards subsidising the costs of holding the event, especially the venue and event setup. Obviously, your committee members aren't too keen on subsiding SingaporeConnect to the tune of several hundred dollars a year, as much as we love the idea of SingaporeConnect.

As such, SingaporeConnect is looking seriously into increasing our active solicitation for the sponsorship of events and our overall mission. We believe there is an opportunity for us to take on a volunteer to contribute as a fund-raiser. Let's not mince words: we expect fund-raising to be time-consuming. This means contacting companies and writing proposals. But we think it will be rewarding enough that you can put it on your resume -- as being able to successfully raise funds and make many corporate and government contacts along the way, that may be of help to your career. At the risk of being stereotypical, we wondered if there would be housewives out there who would be a good fit.

Please write back to us if you have interest in working for us as a fund-raiser; or as a sponsor!

Overseas Singaporean - Youth Grants

Now, with that introduction, we'll like to send out this YGC grant letter that came our way.

It says, "We would be grateful if you could also help to promote the OS-YCM scheme to 

SingaporeConnect (California Bay Area) and encourage members to apply for the project grant."

So, fair enough, since the scheme is open-ended whereby the likelihood of something happening is greater if more people know about it, we're sending it out to the community. 

If you're thinking of something along the lines of the OS-YCM scheme but want to join forces with some others, our Facebook group wall can be used for discussion. Or feel free to reply to this address and we'll put the interested parties in touch. 

As of now, SingaporeConnect hasn't had much of an idea what to do with these set of NYC grant and programmes. If you'll like to lead something under the auspices of SingaporeConnect, do share! (by the way, "youth", according to the NYC, is defined as 35 and under. So you might still be young!)

Thanks for reading. 

Just to let you know, our event "ideas" in the pipeline-discussion-process (need variations of (1), (2) and (3) to gel together) are:

Dec 2011:

Thanksgiving/Christmas Potluck

Jan 2012:

Chinese New Year

March 2012:

Entrepreneurship Discussion Event

Whenever!:

Cooking class

Whenever!:

Hiking

__________________

on behalf of

the SingaporeConnect Committee

Begin forwarded message:

From: siti habibah <sitihab...@gmail.com>

Subject: Overseas-Singaporeans Young ChangeMakers and other National Youth Council-administered Grants and Programmes

Date: October 2, 2011 7:41:54 PM PDT

To: singapor...@gmail.com

Dear Mdm/Sir,

National Youth Council is the Advocate, Connector and Enabler for Youth. Together with Overseas Singaporean Unit, NYC develops a vibrant and supportive environment for youth who are inspired to dream and committed to action. We are writing to introduce to you a funding scheme known as Overseas-Singaporean Young ChangeMakers (OS-YCM) Grant, which sets out to achieve the following objectives,

a) Engage our overseas Diaspora and encourage them to connect with their peers
b) Promote active citizenry and volunteerism amongst Overseas-Singaporean
c) Help to create interest and awareness of Singapore in the host country

2. OS-YCM aims to allow Overseas-Singaporean youths to get started in owning the community by embarking on short-term one-off community projects. Seed funding capped at $3,000 or 80% of project cost, whichever is lower, is available for community projects that benefits the Overseas-Singaporean community and/or the local community of the host country. In addition, non-monetary support in the form of peer mentorship and guidance is provided to successful applicants in the implementation and review of their projects.

3. OS-YCM also transforms grant-making by empowering youth as decision-makers. Grant decisions are made by young people based in Singapore, who have been at the receiving end of seed funds, and who have the real life experience of writing grant proposals and making presentations to secure funding for their own community projects. This lends authenticity to the youth-for-youth scheme as they are in a better position to mentor and guide other young people just starting out on community involvement. More information on OS-YCM can be found in the attached fact sheet and the YCM website (http://www.ycm.nyc.sg).

4. We would like to take this opportunity to get to know how we can provide support and funding for
SingaporeConnect (California Bay Area)'s activities through NYC’s programmes and funding schemes. In addition, we are also keen to know if there are any potential platforms to publicise these rewarding schemes through SingaporeConnect (California Bay Area) perhaps through website, handing out collaterals during relevant events or conducting sharing sessions about the scheme during NYC’s overseas trips. If possible, we would like to request for a meeting with your kind self and members from your association to provide more information on OS-YCM and other NYC-administered grants and programmes.

5. We would be grateful if you could also help to promote the OS-YCM scheme to
SingaporeConnect (California Bay Area) and encourage members to apply for the project grant. Application will be open throughout the year. Attached in this email is a copy of the application form and the OS-YCM E-Direct Mailer has been sent to you seperately for your circulation.

6. If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the Secretariat at DID: +65 6309 4061 or Email: Patric...@pa.gov.sg.

7. We look forward to your support for this rewarding scheme. Thank you.