REPORT ON THIRD TRAINING “Finances and Fundraising for Social Enterprises”
REPORT
S.E.E.D. – Social Entrepreneurship Education Development Project
Third Training - “Finances and Fundraising for Social Enterprises”
Report prepared by: Sara Andonovska
Date: 08-12 November 2021
Location: Online via Zoom
Participants:
· High school students and teachers from “Rade Jovchevski Korchagin”,
· “Prva Sushachka Hrvatska Gimnazija”
· Gymnasium of Lizdeika
· three volunteers from ARNO
· one from “Go Green”-Belgium.
In total more than 40 people coming from 4 different countries
Report Summary
Day 1- Monday 8th November:
Today we held our first workshop from the third training for social entrepreneurship. In previous training, we already discussed how to start a social enterprise. Topic that will be covered in our third training is Finances and Fundraising for Social Enterprises. At first, like with our previous training and workshops, we started with a short introduction from our presenters and hosts about the plan and scheduled activities for the next few days. We all know that having good skills in finances and fundraising is the key to a successful social enterprise, and we are excited and willing to work together on improving our skills. But before jumping into the learning process, we had to stop for a minute to remind ourselves about the past activities that we did after our last training. Students from Macedonia, Lithuania, and Croatia worked hard for upgrading their virtual companies. Each school presented its student's accomplishments, we can tell that every student worked hard on improving their virtual companies, and the results were outstanding. The progress that we made shows how much we're ready to learn and work and enhance our society. Later on, we had a short practice, we had to manage our expenses with 1000 euros income per month. It was an interesting exercise that helped us start with our first workshop. We also watched some educational videos, on how to make a good project budget. As the ending of our first day was coming closer, we got to show a little bit from what we learned with a game that we played. It was an interesting way of learning how hard sometimes managing the finances could be, followed by a short discussion about our opinions on the game afterwards. The first day went great, and we got to learn some handy abilities and techniques that we will be expanding and developing through our third training. All of us are truly happy and grateful that we got to learn some new interesting skills and give our opinions on the various discussion and topics.
For those who are interested here is the link from the video and from the game:
Day 2- Tuesday 9th November:
The second day of SEED training was very eventful. Everyone was ready to work. At the beginning of the meeting the schedule of the day was presented. Our trainer Shemsedin together with Boris explained what a business plan is, and why it is so relevant to have it. He showed 6 steps to making financial projections for a new business. We had a discussion about it. We were presented the important information about the issues for establishing business. The slides showed common mistakes which people should avoid while creating a business plan and lots of more useful ideas. We also discussed the composition of the business plan. Later we were grouped and did an Urban Farm exercise. The purpose of the task was that we had to transfer the numbers from the Urban Farm business plan onto the Excel sheet. At first the task seemed to be quite challenging, but later working in teams, we managed to accomplish it successfully. Finally, we all disputed on the task and talked about our mistakes.
Day 3 – Wednesday 10th November:
New day, new lessons! The third day has passed leaving us a lot of new knowledge, thanks to Ivan Jovanov and Vojkan Krstevski, who were our lecturers today. For those who don't know, crowdfunding is a way to raise money from a society. At the beginning of a presentation Ivan was talking about some general facts about gathering money, the donators and why is it so important to have a good start. The important segments are the stories laying behind, marketing and network of supporters. Afterwards, we were shown videos about some fundraising campaigns: Brlog, Ne damo Jabuku and The Future is Private. Ivan told us that to keep the supporters who are promoting us we must update them about the progress (at least 4 new pieces of information every 5 days) and show the success, because, of course, they want to be a part of something successful. Furthermore, we were told that crowdfunding, as every other campaign, has its strengths (such as the fact that if we decide to venture the capital is ours and the donators will also be our supporters), as well as the weaknesses of it (preparation is different than traditional project writing and it doesn't always work out) we have to be aware of if we're planning on setting off that way . It may be a big risk, but the one who doesn't take risks can not profit either. If you don't try, you will never know what you might have achieved.
Thank you, Ivan, for the great presentation and everything you taught us that may be of a good use one day.
After a short break, we were full of energy and ready to jump in the next lecture.
Vojkan Krstevski is from The Final Frontier, a group which was mentioned on today’s first training for its successful campaign. The lecture was good for us because we got the first-hand experience from him. He told us all about their campaigns for the cardboard games and all the problems they came across along the way. For instance, they were wondering if it was better for them to fully develop their idea in China but in the end decided not to because of the high prices of development, and prices of shipping to Europe and America. It just wasn’t profitable. He told us all that they did and how and advised us for our campaigns. He gave us tips on how to make our campaigns as successful as possible. For example, he advised us on what time of the day to start a campaign (which is very important since the first three days matter the most), and which days of the week and months to avoid. Also, we were told to pay attention to our donators, their thoughts, and ideas. Giving them feedback about the project we campaigned for is also a crucial component. We’ve learnt a lot from Vojkan, and we thank him for his time and patience. We hope that the seed he planted in this project will grow to be a strong, healthy, and tall tree.
Day 4- Thursday 11th November:
Today we had a topic, which was presented by Irina Janevska. The topic was fundraising, its approaches and tools. First, we listened to the presentation on tools for fundraising and we learnt about how to use them in reality, how to apply them in our work regarding the social enterprise. Then we had a short break. After the short break, the STRET Silent Auction was presented by schools and STRET students. It was an example of a tool for fundraising. Then Shemo divided us into different groups to different rooms and we made a SWOT analysis depending on the tool. In the groups we had discussions and tried to find insights for the SWOT of the selected approach. We wrote the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats on a word document and presented it to other groups in main session. During these sessions we knew a lot, first we learnt about the SWOT and understood why we need it establishing our new business, then we got the idea of the fundraising and how many opportunities we can have. And We think, that we'll have a great training today!
Day 5 – Friday 12th November:
Today was held the last and final workshop from the third training for social entrepreneurship. Throughout the whole training were discussed finances, fundraising along with crowd funding as a tool, forming a business plan, as well as the importance of it, SWOT analysis, silent auction followed by a lot of games and visual effect which made the topics more understandable and dynamic. All the important topics were covered in the previous days, so today we just summed it all up and talked about the upcoming activities. First we worked in groups for our virtual social enterprises divided in country regions. Considering that we worked in groups in the previous days together with Croatia and Lithuania, it was not a problem at all, it was a delight actually. After having an hour to form our presentations, later we all presented them. Every country had a different element in their presentation which inspired us altogether and made us try to be better. After the presentations we had a small break, and afterwards we continued with reflections and the knowledge gathered as well as discussing the next steps and evaluations, which were all presented by Boris. We also filled a form were we wrote our opinions and thoughts on the training altogether along with our experiences.
To sum up, we all enjoyed and found the training useful and helpful considering the fact that we wouldn’t be able to learn all of this in our schools. I believe that I can speak for everyone when I say that we cannot wait for the next training and we are all looking forward to it. Hopefully the next one will be executed in person, so we will be able to get to know each other even better and learn many more.
- What elements of the training would you keep? And tell us what did you like the most :)
,,I would like to keep the ice-breaker activities at the beginning of every trainings. They are a good way to make us closer even though we are far away from each other. The combination between presentations from the speakers and activities between the participants, is something I enjoyed very much and would definitely keep. The challenges and activities where the participants, students and teachers from different countries, were one of my favorites, because we get to meet and communicate with people from different nationalities and cultures.’’
,,I liked fundraising the most.’’
,,I have to say this was the most motivational of the three trainings so far. I would definitely keep the games experience from this training! Also I loved the dimanics of the speakers and the flow of one topic to another. The time slots and duration of the training was just right.’
,,I really like the fundraising event creating it was my favorite part. I will remember everything about SWOT and SE’’
,,I liked the most the activities in groups and the parts when we were separated in different zoom rooms collaborating with our friends from the other countries and i also enjoyed the useful information from the presentations and online sites’’
- What would you change? And tell us why
,,We would like to be doing these sessions in real life, the communication and the progress would be much better fit if it was in real life,
,,Nothing, it was perfect’’
,,I would like to include more communication between the participants from different countries, which is harder to do with the current pandemic situation.’’
,,Everything was really great, but i would like in the following training to not have monotonic presentations of one person, otherwise to have discussions in he presentations as some of the presenters did’’
,,I would maybe give a little bit more time to do the tasks when we are put into breakout rooms.’’
- Do you have any additional comments for improvement of the entire project? Feel free to write your opinion; it does matter to us, this is one of the ways how we can design the next trainings.
,,I would love to have maybe a meeting where we would have a cultural exchange between the schools, more in the sense of the participants getting to know each other more since the on line trainings made this element a bit harder for all of us. So have a game night/day/two hour session where we get to know each other, like an on line meet up of SEED friends rather than a formal training.’’
,,No, I fully enjoyed it’
,,I'd just say how thankful I am for a chance to participate in another interesting training and look forward to the next training, hopefully face to face :) Kisses and hugs for Irina and Shemo <3’’
,,Please make us talk more, we are shy. I really want to meet new people and make friends, put us in groups more often and make us work together because this is what is really missing.’’
