Global Giving in Nairobi

As a fundraiser, it’s always great when you are offered an opportunity to network with other organisations and share ideas. That is what happened on Tuesday 6th of April when Marc Maxson of Global Giving hosted a workshop in Nairobi.

Apparently there was an unexpected high demand for places at the workshop – to the extent where 2 additional sessions had to be scheduled to accommodate everyone. I’m not sure whether this was due to the reputation of Global Giving or the downturn in the global economy causing nonprofits to take every possible opportunity to fundraise or learn about tools for fundraising.

Having succeeded in a Global Giving open challenge last year, Vision Africa now has two projects listed on both the US and UK websites. For those who are new to Global Giving, it has been described as a market place where donors can shop among nonprofits which have been vetted by Global Giving through their strict entry requirements. In our case, this means that donors who come across our projects can choose from a variety of items such as setting up a business for graduates from our vocational training program, buying fabric or stationery for a student, buying milk or paying salary for the matron of our abandoned baby unit. Nonprofits are able to list items which are currently required by their projects and donors can look for nonprofits or projects which are of interest to them.

After a brief introduction to Global Giving and how to register an organisation on their system, it was time for a question and answer session with a panel from organisations already listed on Global Giving. I was asked to be one of the panel members and we shared our experiences of the application process, the open challenge where people compete for places on the website and the best ways to use Global Giving for fundraising. There were a lot of questions on these topics and a lot of audience participation as people challenged each other and shared their own experiences.

Another item on the agenda for the workshop was a presentation by Melissa Tully about Ushahidi and Map Kibera. Again for those who are not aware, Ushahidi is a mapping platform that can be updated by sms and was used to plot incidents in the Kenyan Post Election Violence and the Haiti earthquake where it was able to provide real time, accurate data to rescue services and humanitarian organisations. Map Kibera is an organisation which has produced the first detailed map of Kibera and hopes to make it interactive and a useful tool for the local community. My colleague, Vincent, who was also at the workshop and lives and works in Kibera was able to see great benefits in this map and how it could be used to promote events held by Kibera Mpira Mtaani.

After lunch, there was “unconference time”. This was an opportunity for networking and sharing ideas. Those who wanted to discuss an issue marked it on a paper and everyone was invited to attend one of the discussions. I attended a group discussing ICT (Information Communications Technology) and networking. This was chaired by Melissa Tully and covered topics such as websites, twitter and facebook. What was encouraging was that this was the largest of all the discussion groups and many people are recognising that networking through these sites can only benefit nonprofits as they look for partners, donors and supporters. Vision Africa was mentioned as being an organisation which uses these tools well. 

This was the first time that Vision Africa has been represented at a Global Giving workshop and we look forward to making more friends at future events.

You can join @VisionAfrica on Twitter and Facebook. We'd love to hear from you.