2. About Us
• Founded in 2003 by Mr. Robert Yet-Sen Chen
(1929-2003)
• Hybrid organization
– Grant making
– Special Projects
• Geographic Focus
– Mainland China (80%)
– Hong Kong (10%)
– Ghana (10%)
3. Our Mission
To nurture the potential of the next generation
by building, supporting & sustaining innovative
approaches that enhance learning and
personal development
4. Geographical Focus
Beijing, Shanghai,
Anhui, Jiangsu,
Yunnan
Hong
Kong
Ghana
5. Observations on Hong Kong
• Struggling mainstream NGO community
• Being weaned off government dependency
• Mission focused strategic planning, policies and programs
driven by bottom up community needs and fundraising
communication
• Relatively small local donor community
• Large funding tend to be channeled to sophisticated foreign
NGOs or high profile/emotional appeals
• Slow awareness of marginalized/poverty issues
6. Trends and Observations in China
• Lack of tools and bandwidth to cope with huge social and
environmental stresses
• Estimated 400,000 grassroots NGOs stepping in to fill the void
• Party’s ideological barrier
• “Unfriendly” policies preventing proper legalization of NGOs
• Good practices and solutions
difficult to scale or disseminate
• Recent withdrawal of foreign
donor aid
• Resources, demands and practices from
private sector will re-define and re-shape
philanthropy development in China
• New generation of donors
7. Traditional vs. New Donors
in China
• Traditional donors
• International foundations, I-NGOs, UN agencies, Bilateral and Multilateral
Agreements
• New donors
– Government, Corporations, Government-Managed Public Foundations, Private
Foundations
• In 2006, total philanthropy donations were around 0.046% of GDP
and in 2009, total philanthropy donations were around 0.149% of
GDP (MoCA 2007)
• In 2009, 58% of total donations were made by corporations (2009
China Philanthropy Blue Book)
• In 2010, 30% of total donations were made by individuals via
government-managed foundations and private foundations (2011
China Philanthropy Information Centre)
8. China’s New Donors
• Strong emphasis on effectiveness and efficiency
of the donation
• Requirements on implementation organizations’
transparency and accountability
• Focus on long term impact more than direct
service providing
• More market approaches are adopted
• Holistic engagement
9.
10.
11. Giving Philosophy
• To understand and help solve issues of
importance to society
• Ability to take risk and accept failure
• Provide long term strategic leadership and
partnership
• Pioneer new models
• Fund true innovation and engage the NGO
community to ‘sharpen their game’
12. Our Work
• Grant making
– Early childhood literacy
• Library
• Build reading culture
– Basic life skills
• Out-of-classroom, experiential learning
• Special Projects
– Research
– Incubation
– International Library Conference
– Stone Soup Happy Reading Alliance in Hefei
15. Organization Structure
Advisory
Committee
7 members who
Executive meet every April
Committee and October
Meeting
Meets every 3
months Executive
Director
Grants Special Projects
16. Grant Application Process
• Two stages application
– Pre-Proposal Inquiry (PPI)
– Program Funding Application (PFA)
• Maximum of 3 years per program / project to
discourage dependency
• Ineligible requests
17. Approach on Grants
1
• Assess Need
2
• Due diligence on potential partners
3
• Award Grant
4
• Evaluate Impact
5
• Promote / Replicate Best Practice
18. Application Evaluation
• Provide solution to needs
• Organization assessment
– management team, governance, human
resources
• Program design
– Track record on previous programs,
professional know-hows, evaluation
mechanism
• Financial efficiency
– Achieve maximum impact with minimum
investment
– Welcome matching grants or co-funding of
programs
19. Tips to Grantseekers
• Align needs with solution:
– What social problem are you trying to solve?
– Who are you serving?
– What do they need?
• Well designed program:
– How long is your program, how many phases, time frame for
each phase and what are the milestones for each of the
phases?
– What are the quantitative and qualitative goals of your program?
– How do you assess the outputs of your program?
• Strong team:
– Candid communication with donor and stakeholders
– Record progress, output, statistics and learning experience
– Build replicable model
20. Lessons Learned
• Take your time
– Understanding issue and options
– Choosing who to work with
• Importance of program design and assessment
– Impact, sustainability and accountability
• Soft over hardware
– Importance of human and intellectual capital
• Need in capacity building for grassroots Due
• Internet as a powerful tool diligence
and
– Weibo, twitter, blogs, forums research
21. “I believe we found it – the
1/24/2013
Fountain of Funding!”
Minerva Management Consulting 21
22. Resources
• www.fdncenter.org (Numerous resources including a
free basic webinar on grant writing basics through
Grant
Space)http://www.grantspace.org/Classroom/Training-
Courses/Proposal-Writing-Basics
• www.philanthrophy.com
• Linkedin – Grant Writers Networking Group
• http://www.asianphilanthropyforum.org/articles-on-asia-
pacific-.html
• For AFP members check out the Hot Topic-Grants in the
Resource Center
http://www.afpnet.org/bbtdetail.cfm?itemnumber=4569
(login and password required)