What is this federation all about?
eyebright
and how etc.
I have already been helping most of you the best I can with advice and
guidance. And that is a good thing, but it can only go so far. I
want to be able to help you in a more effective manner. The power of
the group can do help achieve that.
What exactly we do with this group depends on you and your needs, and
preferences. What would help your project the most?
Here are some ways that a federation can be useful:
1. Saving money by buying things together
For example the Foundation Directory Online. This is a directory of
foundations that give grants to organisations like yours. One of the
simplest ways to find the right organisation to send funding proposals
to is to look up in that directory. But the directory costs money.
You could buy an individual membership, or we could get together and
buy a membership together saving a lot of money for each of us.
2. Learning from each other
I can give you some advice, but how much more can you get through the
advice of all the other people in the group who have been through
similar things? This Googlegroup is partly intended for that purpose.
3. Revolving Loans
If we have projects that will be financially self sufficient then
instead of seeking grants we can look for loans. Loans can be
difficult to get, but one easy way is to give loans to each other. We
each put a little into a central bank account, and then one person
takes a loan from it. Everyone else helps them be successful and then
when they have paid back the loan the next one takes a loan and so
forth. Slowly the loan fund grows and we can take bigger and bigger
loans.
4. Advocacy
People do not understand enough about the importance of community
development. A federation can work on creating more public support
for community development so that it is much easier to raise funds for
your organisations.
5. Umbrella organisation
Instead of doing all the work managing and administering each
organisation separately we can make one organisation that does those
aspects centrally. Saving you a lot of time. For those of you whose
organisations are not yet registered charities it is possible to
register the federation instead of the individual organisations and
save a lot of money and effort.
That's all I can think of at the moment, but I am sure there is more.
What assistance does your organisation need?
Alexander