CRS’ partners, like organizations anywhere in the world, struggle to raise sufficient resources to cover their costs and plan for a sustainable future. To address this challenge, CRS uses a range of country-specific interventions, which are usually focused on proposal writing. However, CRS country programs have expressed interest in having tools to help partners develop a more systematic, broader view of fundraising. This need is particularly acute as funding strategies and philosophies continue to evolve, both from U.S. government agencies and private donors, who wish to work with sustainable institutions with robust and diversified sources of income. In many cases, projects managed by international NGOs are awarded in a second phase to local NGOs, who are expected to demonstrate a greater degree of financial independence than ever before. Finally, partners themselves are extremely concerned about funding diversification and sustainability.

This guide seeks to address this need and provide an overview of the wide range of resource mobilization strategies organizations employ to ensure adequate and sustainable resources. Rather than being a training focused specifically on fundraising campaigns or on deep skills building around a particular approach such as proposal writing, this training looks at what makes organizations successful, and works with participating organizations to look inward and begin to develop and implement successful resource mobilization strategies.

This training is meant to provide a solid foundation for an organization of any size and capacity level interested in strengthening its overall resource mobilization strategies and skills. It is specifically designed to be an introduction for organizations working with CRS who are interested in strengthening their organizational resource mobilization capacity.