MSF
FUNDRAISING WORKSHOP
Fundraising can form an important method in ensuring funding diversity – therefore supporting overall sustainability – within operations of humanitarian organisations. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), one of the AHA Centre’s key working partners, holds a great array of experience in the field of fundraising, and undertook a workshop on the topic during May 2019. The initial idea was raised during meetings between the AHA Centre and an MSF delegation during mid-2018, as both parties explored options for support in the operationalisation of the One ASEAN, One Response declaration. The workshop concept was then further discussed with the AHA Centre in Geneva during the UN Humanitarian Partnership Week in February 2019, with the AHA Centre enthusiastically accepting the offer to learn from MSF’s experience.
Ms. Jenny Tung, the Director of Development and Fundraising from MSF’s Hong Kong chapter lead the MSF delegation for implementing the workshop, and also facilitated the half-day event at the AHA Centre headquarters in Jakarta during May. A large number of AHA Centre staff participated in the workshop, which provided frank and open discussions resulting in a number of lessons, strategic ideas, and valuable insights for all involved. Alongside members of senior management, the AHA Centre’s Executive Director Ms. Adelina Kamal also took part in the workshop, highlighting its strategic importance when she said, “the AHA Centre needs to re-think our financing and resource mobilisation strategy so that our operations can be self-sufficient and we will be able to help realise the ASEAN’s vision of becoming the future global leader on disaster management by the year 2025. We want to learn from the best, those who have done it successfully, like the MSF. We learnt from the MSF that the majority of their funds comes from diversified and unrestricted private individual funds, allowing MSF to have predictable and sustainable income and achieve operational flexibility, independence and impartiality. While the nature of the AHA Centre is different from MSF, we learnt so much from their financing strategy, and could use and modify it to suit our needs”.
Written by : Carla Budiarto | Photo : AHA Centre
