Philanthropy for Equitable Justice and Peace

The starting months of the year 2020 proved to be a crisis not only to one country but the entire world. The horrid impact of Corona Virus spread across the world and the terror hit Nepal in March soon after it got out of control in India. The nature of the virus confused everyone and left people in Nepal including Tewa unable to continue normalcy of activities as planned within the organization.

Due to Covid-19 and official lockdown for almost 3 months starting from March 23, the day-to-day lives of the people are impacted and affected. The professional working hours and spaces are also affected. Tewa adapted to work remotely, which Tewa had never initiated before.  Our programs were also adversely affected. The pandemic had equally affected our local fundraising. During the crisis and economic upheavals due to lockdown, it was difficult for us to raise funds locally and approach our donors, let be the new potential donors. Tewa has planned and strategize to change the fundraising model. The philanthropy team came up with Peer to Peer Fundraising. The concept is to approach 10 or more potential donors who will be interested in donating a small amount of donation (USD 5). We will also request them to look for other potential donors in their network who will agree to contribute to us even in a smaller portion. This concept is to create a chain of interested donors. By creating a pool of donors who will contribute a smaller amount will lead to collecting a large fund.

Along with this, we have also planned to stay in touch with our regular donors through a  virtual space. As most of the organizations are organizing discussion meetings through a virtual coffee meet-up, we have decided to use the virtual space for a coffee and lunch meet-up with our donors. This would support us in approaching our donors in a more personal way as well as give a sense of priority at this critical hour. These new approaches and strategies are developed and adapted by Tewa to contribute to its fundraising event which would continue to promote local community philanthropy in the people. These strategies will have its own set of pluses and drawbacks. But with minimum donation criteria, we have the hope that we will achieve our goal.