Fund-raising & Resource generation strategies for NGOs

I have recently been working with a number of NGOs and Not-for-profit organisations in the area of fund-raising and broader, resource generation activities. During these projects I was able to successfuly use more traditional marketing tools to help identify firstly "what is the product that these organisation offer the Irish market place (i.e. what is the value to the Irish customer/ supporter/donor)?"


Once we were able to define this "product" it was possible to use more traditional business and marketing tools - such as identifying the USP [Unique selling point]; Market segmentation (identifing target markets and potential niches); preparing both a product-based marketing mix (Product; Price; Place; Promotion) and a service based mix (marketing mix plus People; Process; Physical Evidence and Packaging).

This is a great example of using proven business technique for the benefit of non-traditional businesses (i.e. Irish NGOs) and helps these organisations to try and make best use (i.e. best return) for the limited financial resources.

What is Knowledge Management?

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know." [Donald Rumsfeld; Former US Secretary of Defence]

Knowledge is the inherent wisdom that people have, coupled with the facts that people can gather from the internal and external environment.

• facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education;
• the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject;
• what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information;
• awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

The common thread through all of these definitions is that knowledge is gained through the capture, understanding and interpretation of facts, as gathered and assessed through human intervention.

John Poindexter explained the role of Knowledge Management in his presentation to the International Risk Assessment & Horizon Scanning (IRAHS Symposium, Singapore) in March 2007. “Sense-making & path-finding” outlines the Poindexter model :

So the primary source of knowledge (interpretation of facts) is people. And is often the case, particularly in services, the knowledge on how to deliver these services resides within people.
Knowledge management looks to harness this “people knowledge” so that it can be accessed and shared across the organisation

And to paraphrase Donald once again “…because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Principles of Performance Management and Personal Development in an organisation

I recently completed a review of a performance management and development system within a public sector body. As part of the project I undertook a review of the relevant literature and was able to identify a set of core principles that under pin performance and personal/team development within a public services organisation.


These principles are equally as applicable to any not-for-profit organisation as they are based on aligning performance to the service that is being provided to the customer/ beneficiary.