Crowdfunding Training Project for Civil Society Organizations in Pakistan

Lahore: Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are valuable development partners that help to promote citizen participation, enhance sustainability, and alleviate poverty to accelerate progress towards the Agenda 2030. However, access to finance remains one of the main challenges for CSOs and NGOs. This obstacle is to a large extent associated with the lack of information on different funding mechanisms, the weak visibility of CSOs projects, and their campaigns shared with potential donors.

Filling this gap, the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISFD), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are launching the Tadamon Crowdfunding Academy in Pakistan. The program is going to be run online in partnership with Kaya platform, a global learning platform of the Humanitarian Leadership Academy, and Cirrus Pakistan. This online training programme will enable civil society organizations (CSOs) to learn how to raise funds using digital crowdfunding platforms. The mission of the program is to provide visibility to CSOs` projects and activities, support them to have better access to alternative finance, and connect them to potential partners and supporters.

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 To invite CSOs to apply for the Tadamon Crowdfunding Academy and help them with the application process, UNDP Pakistan and Cirrus – the local implementing partner, conducted a webinar on “How to Crowdfund Your CSO in Pakistan” on 19th May 2022.

 During the webinar, Assistant Resident Representative/Chief Development Policy Unit at UNDP Pakistan, Ms. Ammara Durrani talked about digital transformation, “The Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions have transformed the way we live, learn, work, and stay connected for better opportunities, and we must leverage these transformations to improve and amplify the impact of our work. UNDP’s digital strategy of 2022-2025 captures this opportunity of digital connectivity and transformation, as it opens up a multitude of possibilities, like crowdfunding and alternative financing mechanisms, as provided by this initiative.”

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 The CSOs that get selected for training will also participate in launching their own crowdfunding campaign using e-learning tools and knowledge provided. The training is designed to be interactive and engaging, whereas the modules cover the key steps in designing a crowdfunding project – from building a campaign and communications strategy to learning how to set your financial goals, storytelling and preparing visuals and videos. The program brings together national and global experts in crowdfunding, media/PR relations, social media copywriting, design and much more.

“The civil society in Pakistan has been playing a significant role in Pakistan’s development progress for several decades. Being the local implementing partner for Tadamon Crowdfunding Academy is our chance to give back to these changemakers and we look forward to this opportunity of learning and growing with the CSOs in Pakistan as we work on rolling out their crowdfunding campaigns at a mass level.” Ms. Ayesha J. Shahid, Chief Strategy Officer, Cirrus.

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 Project ideas can be submitted to the Academy until 30th May 2022 by signing up on the Tadamon platform. For more information you can visit: https://tadamon.community/cfa/pakistan