On 6-7 April 2022, in Pristina, EU TACSO 3, in cooperation with the CSO Actions for Mothers and Children (AMC), organised a national P2P On-demand event on “Building fundraising capacities for grassroots and community organisations”.

AMC has a strong mission to save the lives of mothers and their children in Kosovo, and is very active in educational, supply, research and advocacy programs as well as involves itself in raising standards for better care and health of children in hospitals in remote areas. The organization as well as many similar community organisations and grassroots do fundraising, mobilise volunteers and collect donations in order to sustain their activities.

During the pandemic, lots of organisations lost their sources of financing and needed to find new donors and possibilities to stay active. Therefore the need was to provide new ways of fundraising that are less used in Kosovo, such as developing a project and applying for bigger grants. Therefore the event was designed on the challenges of grassroots and community organisations as there is a noted lack of funding opportunities for community actions at the local level. For this reason, organisations struggle to develop proper fundraising strategies that would make them sustainable, fully functional, and operational for an extended period. Thus, the event aimed to empower and enhance the skills of the community and grassroots organisations in developing fundraising strategies.

The training focused on donor relations, project proposal writing, and collaboration with the private sector (companies). On the first day, the participants had the opportunity to learn about philanthropy, fundraising and types of donors, as well as establishing relations with the donors and how to keep them engaged. The online fundraising was a concept that raised interest among the participants, as a practical and efficient channel.

The participants learned all the details in project proposal development and the complex application process: from brief fundraising plan, planning and project proposal writing, log frame creation and got direct insights from examples of project-winning proposals.

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* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.