When we think of fundraising we think of Canada, the United States and probably the United Kingdom and Europe.

But fundraising is alive and well in the rest of the world too…

Fundraising around the World

India has a middle and upper class of over 60 million people; that’s close to double the population of Canada. Fundraising is growing by leaps and bounds there. Greenpeace raises all the money it needs for India within India, and World Vision and other international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are moving in that direction too.

Fundraising in the developing world is fun and exuberant; sometimes similar to ours and sometimes different. In the Philippines, the postal service is not reliable, but virtually everyone has a mobile phone. In Manila, UNICEF holds phone-a-thons for support. When a donor says ‘yes’ someone on a motorbike goes out and picks up the donation, same day. In Argentina, the postal service is unreliable too, so a huge chunk of fundraising is done on the web.

Some of the poorest countries in the world, in Africa for instance, can do little fundraising because there is a limited middle and upper class, so they do what we call resource mobilization. They support their organizations through grants, product sales, providing paid services, or whatever they can dream up!

Fundraising can exist in any country that has a civil society like ours or the beginnings of civil society. Civil society simply means a place where citizens are free to create organizations to do good works. We take this for granted. There are still a few countries in the world, such as North Korea, where all such organization is banned. No civil society, no possibility for fundraising.

Who Brings it all Together?

For many years I have had the pleasure to be involved with the Resource Alliance. Headquartered in London, England, it runs the International Fundraising Congress every year in Holland – the world’s best fundraising conference.

The money the Resource Alliance makes from the conference is used to support our programs in the developing world, which these days is called ‘the global south’, compared to us being the ‘global north.’ The Resource Alliance carries out training, runs the International Workshop on Resource Mobilization among other conferences, have award schemes and promote the creation of, and support the development of, local fundraisers’ societies.

If you want to learn more about fundraising in the global south, and the Resource Alliance, go to www.resource-alliance.org.