Case study: Global Development Network expands its fundraising

The Global Development Network (GDN) is a worldwide association of research and policy institutes promoting the generation, sharing and application to policy of multidisciplinary knowledge for the purpose of development.

It was founded as a unit in the World Bank a decade ago, and is now an independent International Organisation with headquarters in New Delhi.

Background

GDN had strong strategies in place to achieve its vision: to equip people living in the daily crisis of poverty with the skills to provide their own home-grown solutions. However, it was suffering from an overdependence on bilateral government funding, and a relatively small pool of donors. Furthermore, it didn’t have the unrestricted funds it needed to expand into new areas of work.

Challenge

GDN wanted to develop recommendations to the Board, Regional Partners and Management that would ensure its long term sustainability and enable the organisation to expand. Specifically, they knew they needed to increase their financial stability in terms of current funding, diversify their income streams, and raise additional unrestricted funds. GDN asked fundraising consultants from Management Centre Asia (=mc|Asia) and the UK based Management Centre (=mc) to help them with this process.

Solution

Working with =mc|Asia and =mc|UK, GDN undertook:

• An assessment of their original fundraising strategy and the feasibility of establishing an endowment fund
• A market mapping and entry strategy development for Asia, the Middle East and Australia
• Income source identification and related strategy development
• The crafting of the elements for a strong case for support to strengthen the overall fundraising strategy

Result

=mc helped the GDN staff, the Board and management to revaluate their plans by providing a thorough assessment of GDN’s current fundraising plan, and some recommendations for an alternative strategy.

This led to GDN adopting some new approaches, including:

• The launch of a capital campaign leveraging on GDN’s global presence
• A prioritised list of prospects in key markets
• Comprehensive action steps with timelines for the Board, Management and Regional Partners Network

Ramona Angelescu Naqvi, the senior political scientist and global programme manager at GDN, was delighted with the result:

“We were really impressed by =mc‘s truly international expertise in fundraising, and their professional and dedicated approach to this project”