The Impact Compass
Welcome to the Impact Compass Podcast. In this podcast, we explore opportunities in the nonprofit and social impact space and amplify the impact of their leaders. We do this by finding amazing nonprofit and social impact organizations and their leaders, we share their stories, their triumphs, and their struggles in this dynamic, complex, and competitive space. By doing this, we hope to,
· Showcase how the work of these amazing leaders and their organizations is impacting and changing their communities.
· Second, Inspire a new generation of nonprofit and social impact professionals determined to create an even better world.
· Third, inform the sector of new and emerging practices from nonprofits and social impact practices in Africa. And,
· Make them findable so that they can be fundable.
The Impact Compass
Episode 7: Individual Giving with Mary Mulliken
Individual giving is an important source of revenue for running organisations. Whether it is a start-up or a mature organisation with a multimillion dollar budget, individual donors play an important role in resourcing. Individual giving can fund things that more structured funding cannot fund such as infrastructure, staff development, board development, and other OD things that are usually hard to fundraise for. Individual giving is an important source of revenue for running organisations. Whether it is a start-up or a mature organisation with a multimillion dollar budget, individual donors play an important role in resourcing. Individual giving can fund things that more structured funding cannot fund such as infrastructure, staff development, board development, and other OD things that are usually hard to fundraise for.
In this episode, Mary shares insights into sourcing individual donors, cultivating and retaining these donors and transforming them as advocates for the work. While fundraising is a daily grind like any other hustle, she asserts that the work can be rewarding. Individual giving is about shifting power and ownership to those who are most closest to the problem. It helps address global injustice or income inequality. At a personal level, the joy of translating relationships from formal to informal and forming deep personal friendships around a common mission to create change cannot be gainsaid.
“At a critical time when we are experiencing the loss of government funding from the US, we are shifting to a place where our reliance on individual donors and our reliance on grant organizations is growing, and that’s going to be true for all non-profits and especially those abroad. It’s a calling; we have to answer it.” Mary.