Fund Raising Challenge
Abdul Sattar Edhi devoted his whole life to support humans, regardless of ethnicity, class, and background. He took the initiative to start an ambulance service to rescue people during disasters and extreme conditions. Now Edhi Foundation is working in every sector of life to serve humanity. But after his demise, Edhi Foundation is experiencing funding issues. So, Amal Academy in collaboration with Edhi Foundation took the initiative to start a fundraising campaign. We all Amal fellows took this noble cause, as a golden opportunity to play our part in.
“My religion is humanitarianism, which is the basis of every religion in the world” ― Abdul Sattar Edhi
Funds Collected
we as Circle #2 are able to collect Rs. 16550/- by fundraising, by hand, and by online social media platforms, such as Facebook and WhatsApp.
Planning and method to collect funds
Due to COVID-19, it was very much difficult for us as a circle to make good strategies for fundraising. So, for this purpose, we initially collect ideas and strategies from all the circles of our batch. Then we point out the best strategies. Every circle of the batch used these strategies for fundraising. The first strategy was that we collected funds by hand from our neighbors and close relatives. Every Member of each circle reaches out to their closest relatives and neighbors and asks them for funding. We also used an online social media platform to fulfill this objective. We make posters and also upload them on our social media platforms to increase awareness. As online fundraising, we used different money transfer means such as Jazz cash, Easypaisa, and bank accounts.
We decided to work as a team and collect Funds. In a team, we actually realize the real meaning of Aik Aur Aik Gyarah. In a group, more ideas and strategies can make the impossible possible.
In a group, the tasks have been divided into fellows and there was not any pressure on any member of the circle. We gave Moazzam and Tashfeen the accounting department to make the record of every transaction, while all other members tried their level best to increase awareness about the Edhi Sb foundation and also increase fundraising. Every member of the group faced many difficulties in collecting funds, but as a group, we all supported each other and also increased the morale of each other. All the funds that we raise are just because of our teamwork and effort.
Challenges faced during fundraising and solutions to overcome them
One of the very first challenges that we faced while raising funds for the Edhi Foundation was Covid 19. While planning the strategy to raise funds, we decided to organize donation camps outside some hospitals and reach out to shopkeepers in Lahore. But due to this pandemic, we were not able to do that.
As we couldn’t raise funds through donation camps and in-person meetings, the best way for collecting funds was social media. We designed posters and generated captions along with account details and shared these on Facebook and WhatsApp. But on the very first day, we didn’t receive any payment. Then we decided to reach our friends individually in the WhatsApp chat. The challenge was to convince people to donate to the Edhi Foundation. For that, we generated a voice note in which we described Edhi Shb, Edhi Foundation, what services Edhi Foundation is provided, and the difficulties this foundation is facing. This plan worked out and we started getting donations.
Another challenge that we faced was, people, didn’t have access to digital banking. Most of them didn’t have any Easypaisa or jazz cash account as well. We advised them to go to a nearby retailer shop or they can ask one of their friends or family members who has any of these accounts. We know this is a hectic task for a donor, so we decided to approach our neighbors and described the services that Edhi Foundation is providing, and asked them for donations. A large part of our total donation was collected by hand approaching the neighbors and friends personally.
As other circles are also raising funds for Edhi Foundation and they have designed their posters and followed the same strategy i.e., to raise funds through social media platforms. And every circle has accounts with different titles. This forced one of our contacts to ask me why she is seeing different accounts if you are raising funds for the same organization and why you are not using the official account of Edhi Foundation. So, the challenge was the diversity of accounts. We convinced her by assuring them that we are using our personal accounts, but we will send this money to Amal and the Amal team will send the collective money to Edhi Foundation. We added that she could also donate to the official account of the Edhi Foundation, but in that case, she had to send us a snapshot of the transaction.
When we shared the poster and caption for the donation of funds, the language used was English and nobody paid attention to it. so, we had to face the challenge of the language barrier. To overcome this barrier, we decided to design the poster again in Urdu and wrote the caption in Urdu. And it really affected the audience to grasp our message and they started replying to our requests.
We were given a limited time of 2 weeks to raise funds. Within 2 weeks we were supposed to plan, execute, and manage all the things. We made some strategies and assigned them to the members of the circles. As the time was limited, we had to make different plans in case the first plan failed, we could execute the second plan so that we can convince maximum people within minimum time. Everything went well. We were able to convince most of the people, some of them said ‘ok we will do’ but we didn’t get any response from them again. And some of the people ignored our messages.
Acceptance of Failure
As this particular project was really helpful for us in many ways, one thing we specifically learned was the “acceptance of our failures”. As we were working for the first time for a social cause on such a big level the first time, we were really enthusiastic and motivated. We made different strategies, divided our tasks, assigned different duties, and started working on them with full confidence. But soon at the end of our first day of the campaign, we realized that things are not that much easy as we thought when we failed to collect money on the very first day not even one rupee. It was really disheartening as we didn’t expect it but we didn’t lose hope. We accepted our failure and alternated our ways and again started working.
The second failure we faced that we were unable to convince people that it’s a reliable platform and they can trust us. People were more comfortable by giving money directly to the Edhi foundation and not through us and we discussed this with each other and accepted that we failed to convince people and our strategy was not that effective. We again made changes in it from the lessons we learn to that point.
But the biggest failure we faced was we weren’t able to collect the targeted amount for this campaign which really disappoints all of us as we thought that our group didn’t work effectively in this campaign but when came to know the collection of other groups we realized that we set the bunch mark really high and it was somewhat impossible to collect that much money. We accepted our failure in setting the target wrong. It was not that we didn’t make an effort but we assumed per person collection was a little much higher and when we started collecting money we realized our fault and learned a great lesson from it. From now on we will set achievable and realistic targets.
Experience in collecting funds
We are all learned and experienced a lot, after collecting funds for Edhi Foundation. By doing such a holy endeavor, we achieve internal peace from the creator. Our state of psychology and spiritual life becomes calmer and relaxed in a vigorous juncture by helping mankind. We became more conscious and realized the purpose of our life. We experienced inner peace and a sense of freedom.
We are all so proud and feel delighted to be part of this little bit of kindness to build a bridge between donors and welfare organizations. Most people in our society are unfamiliar with the role and significance of many NGOs, so we collect funds by telling people about the mission and importance of NGOs. We feel happy by convincing them to cooperate.
We all come out of our comfort zone and try our level best to take part in this initiative. We faced different problems, and also made solutions to those problems. We make new connections with people and also learn to convince others. When we work voluntarily to collect funds for them, we realize the problems and challenges faced by different non-profit organizations. Our respect for Edhi sb foundation much more increased after doing this sacred work.
