Sunday, September 28, 2008

THE FOUNDATION AND GRANT WRITING

"We started our foundation because we believe we have a
real opportunity to help advance equity around the world to
help make sure that, no matterwhere a person is born, he or
she has the chance to live a healthy, productive life."
- Melinda Gates

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF) is the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates in 2000 and doubled in size by Warren Buffett in 2006.

The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance health care and reduce extreme poverty, and, in the United States, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology.

The foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, is controlled by its three trustees: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. Other principal officers include Co-Chair William H. Gates, Sr. and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Raikes. It has an endowment of US$38.7 billion as of December 31, 2007.

The scale of the foundation and the way it seeks to apply business techniques to giving makes it one of the leaders in the philanthrocapitalism revolution in global philanthropy.

Read more here.

The Grant Writing Workshop by John Silva

My revamped grant writing workshop fits with the new demands of funders influenced by the Gates Foundation.

Funders today want proposals that are brief, that can tell a story, that avoids silly development language (like empowerment) and can convince funders that your goal is to be part of the elimination of the problem. The last point is important. With the Gates Foundation and other large foundations now giving larger amounts and on a multi-year basis, they’d like to see more proposals that not just alleviate or lessen the problem. They’re talking eradication, elimination and making the problem history.

Are you equipped to talk in that language? Given the sort of development orientation we’ve had and not having been challenged to write a proposal to eradicate a problem, we are at a disadvantage.

Well, with thirty years of grant writing experience and having been with the best of NGO’s and foundations in the world, I’ll show you how to write a powerful and winning proposal that will be seriously considered for a grant.

I’m not into theory. I’m teaching three decades of working experience with the likes of Oxfam America, the Ford Foundation, the American Cancer Society and so many others. I wrote proposals and got them funded.

Read more here.

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THE GATE
© 2008 Señor Enrique

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