Project Fundamentals II: Communications and Fundraising
How can you turn a strategy for making an impact into real, positive change? You need to be able to create a great story, get the message out, raise the funds and manage the project well.
Our Project Fundamentals II: Communications and Fundraising, which is offered in partnership with Richmond University, will show you how to do just that. You’ll learn how to fund an impact project, how to market it and how to overcome common challenges experienced when managing it.
If you’d like to gain insight into how to develop a strategy for creating an impact and prove that an initiative actually is creating an impact, we recommend that you join our Project Fundamentals I course.
Course Information
Course starts1 June 2020
Enrolment closes: 27 May 2020
Duration: 1 week
Time Commitment: 15 Hours
Format: Online
Option Extra: GVI Program Abroad
Costs: Flexible Payment Options
Skills you’ll Acquire
After completing this course you’ll be able to:
- advocate effectively for a cause you care about and choose when this approach is appropriate
- create effective marketing for an impact project
- identify potential options for funding an impact project
- manage an impact project
- write a fundraising proposal.
Course Curriculum
Start the course by learning how to effectively market an impact initiative, project or organisation. Find out how to identify a target audience. Learn what motivates and moves your target audience and how to adapt your message to a specific audience to get the result you are after.
Find out how to make your messages compelling. Master the principles of persuasion and the basics of storytelling including the elements that make a strong narrative: characters, conflict and resolution. Explore which channels, traditional ones such as newspapers, radio, and television, or digital ones such as social media and messenger applications, would be the best place to share your message so that your key audience can receive it.
Learn when advocacy and the use of communication to create behavioral change is appropriate. Investigate the women’s rights movement, civil rights movement and environmental movement.. Design an advocacy strategy including short- and long-term objectives, a map of stakeholders’ positions and types of power, and clear messages designed to engage the government, the public, the private sector and the media.
Next, you’ll find out how to identify funding options and write a fundraising proposal. Deep dive into five different financial mechanisms: grants, microfinance, impact investing, challenge prizes and crowdfunding. Learn more about the three main sources of funding: government, private business, foundations. Discover the seven most common elements in a funding proposal read through successful and unsuccessful examples from other projects to learn how to put together a winning proposal.
Finally learn about the common challenges experienced when implementing impact: the level of uncertainty involved, distribution of capacity and knowledge, and uncertainty around project goals and how best to achieve them. Discuss the four major stages necessary in order to effectively manage one of these projects: analysis and initiation, design and planning, implementation and monitoring, closing and evaluation. Hear about projects that succeeded and failed, discussing common things that can go wrong and how to avoid them.
You’ll wrap up the learning of the above concepts by discussing all these theories in the context of real-life case studies, helping you to ground your understanding in the practical realities of fieldwork.
Orientation to our online learning platform
Module 1: Storytelling for impact
Module 2: Project management for international development
Module 3: Financial mechanisms
Module 4: Writing a fundraising proposal
Module 5: Case studies
EARN A CERTIFICATE
Want to show colleges, universities and employers that you’ve got the knowledge and skills covered in this course? Once you’ve successfully completed any of our courses, we’ll send you a digital certificate of completion at no additional cost. The certificate will feature the official name of the course, your name, the date and a signature from your course instructor. Add the certificate to your college application, your graduate school application, your job application or your LinkedIn page.
GVI ONLINE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH RICHMOND SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL & CONTINUING STUDIES
