If you start a micro-charity, the easiest thing to do is to increase your overhead. You have found an issue that is overwhelming. For every person you help there will be 100,000 people you can’t. There will be pressure to increase the number of people you are helping. There will also be pressure to expand the services that you are providing to those in your program.
You have to resist these pressures and remain small with a low overhead. You must ensure that the program is financially sound and will survive before you grow it. Every time CLEW admits a new student it is an instant four year commitment (more in some circumstances). It would be a nightmare if we had to terminate the program and/or send some students home in second or third year with no chance to continue their education.
The problem is compounded if you have targeted a country which is a U.S. dollar economy. Cambodia is such a country. Obviously, we raise funds in Canadian dollars. Over the past year, our overhead has climbed by 33%, due solely to the decrease in the value of the Canadian dollar. I was speaking to my advisor at BMO which has projected that the Canadian dollar could fall as low as 62 cents, which will increase the financial pressure on us further.
Fundraising is difficult. The charitable space is crowded and it is hard to establish a presence. There are at least 80,000 charities registered with the Canadian Revenue Agency. Charitable fatigue certainly exists with so many charities competing for donations. Many charities address domestic issues right here at home. Yours will be a small charity, addressing needs in a far-away country which few have visited. We have been asked many times why we are helping people on the other side of the world instead of helping people in Canada. I respond that everyone can find a way to help as there are so many worthy causes. Each of us has to find his/her own cause and ours is CLEW.
The issue is how do you make people care and empathize with those you are trying to help in a country far away? We try to personalize CLEW by telling the stories of our students and their accomplishments. We tell people where they come from, and how their lives have been changed along with those in their communities. It is a positive story about empowerment.
We find that people who have travelled to Cambodia readily understand what we are trying to do. These travelers tell us about one or more experiences they had in meeting Khmer people in the provinces and most of them are pre-disposed to support us.
We have been supporting students since 2008 and fundraising since 2010. It is important that you obtain CRA registration as a charity as you then can issue tax receipts for donations (but not for attendance fees at events). It will take longer than you think to get the charitable objects properly described and to meet all of the requirements that the CRA has established. It took us more than a year to get our registration.
We have two events a year, a golf tournament and a dinner/dance. The picture above is of Elizabeth Bennett-Martin and Ruth Gastle, CLEW’s co-chairs, taken at our dinner/dance in September 2014. It is remarkable to see how these events have evolved. We have a regular group of people who come to the events (some to both, but not many). The fact that we are in contact with a significant number of people generates donations from those who are unable to attend the events. This really helps because the entire amount donated goes directly to the students.
We developed our mailing list the old fashioned way – we approached friends, family and clients of the firm. What has surprised us is that we are hearing from more people as a result of word of mouth. We have been lucky in that articles have been published about CLEW in the Lawyers’ Weekly (2009), the Globe and Mail (2014) and the University of Toronto Law Alumni magazine (2014). We have made further contacts as a result of each publication. We were also fortunate to establish a relationship with the Rule of Law Committee at LexisNexis. I will explain in a future blog how important LexisNexis has been to us.
One challenge that you may have to overcome when you reach out to potential donors is to convince them that you are a legitimate charity and/or that you are not being taken advantage of by a fraudulent charity abroad. Cambodia is developing a reputation for questionable charities that appear to engage in questionable practices.
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However, trust is a two way street. Landlords in Cambodia are wary of leasing to a non-governmental organization because many of them are here today and gone tomorrow. The point is you have to build credibility not only in Canada but also in the country where you intend to operate.
Another problem is that people are concerned with how much of each dollar goes to the benefit of the students and is not spent on administration. We are concerned that potential donors might think that CLEW is the Bennett Gastle travel fund, which it is not. We assure donors that 100% of the funds raised go to support the students. Bennett Gastle pays the administrative costs, including accounting and legal, the salary for our one staff member in Cambodia, and all travel costs among other expenses.
Notwithstanding our efforts, we are currently facing a funding gap which has occurred particularly as a result of the drop in the value of the Canadian vs. U.S. dollar. We will be soon starting an institutional fund-raising campaign to close this gap.
To ensure that CLEW will continue, Elizabeth and I guaranteed that we would pay for any shortfall in funding so the program will never fail.
Chuck G.
Some of our students in front of the Royal Place in Phnom Penh, July, 2014