My Newsradio Scripts: OTGV #58

Broadcast Date: 31/05/04

Singapore is a country that is fiercely proud that it isn't a welfare state.

It also seeks to be a country where the wealthy help out the poor.

Where the government doesn't provide, the non-profit sector welfare organisation will step in.

But where will the funds come from?

Hi Welcome to On the Grapevine with me Chong Ching Liang.

For the longest time, the non-profit sector depended on a central body Community Chest to raise their funds for them.

But as some grew savvier, non-profit organisations or NPOs start to raise their own funds.

NPOs like NKF has became wildly successful and are subsequently targetted by the public for veering into the area of using professional fundraisers.

So is the old system still useful?

Executive Director of the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre or NVPC, Mrs Tan Chee Koon.

"The Comm Chest model still has its usefulness especially for the smaller charities that don't have the benefit of sufficient resources themselves to brand, to market, to brand their cause. Having said that, there is a need for CommChest to also re-invent itself. One reason for this is that more and more donors want to dictate where their money goes to. So under that kind of environment, the CommChest equivalent organisations have to see how they can accommodate donors' advice."

The Singapore now is different from the olden days.

These days Singapore sees massive television charity galas, direct mailers and myriad charity events.

Is there a danger of compassion fatigue?

"Compassion fatigue? No I don't think so. It is for us then to put the need across to the giving public or the ones who are not already giving but who could be on the fringe, who just need to be told that there is an opportunity for them to give to and I think it is for the NPOs to be able to enunciate that need and not necessarily just tug on people's emotions but sometimes also to make a good business case as to why it makes sense for the grant makers to come in and support them."

It is generally accepted by the NPO community that fund-raising is a tedious and awkward exercise.

Most feel that having to worry about and to seek funds detracts from their core services.

But some, especially those with the backing of religious societies or the marketing clout of NKF don't seem to worry too much.

Dr Lee Tuck Siang, CEO of the Thye Hwa Kuang Moral Society who runs some 50 family service centres, home for the aged and the Ang Mo Kio Hospital.

"We do not have much problems fund-raising. We do not go out all the way to fund-raise. We believe in live and let live. So we just fund-raise when there is a need but since we took over Ang Mo Kio Hospital 2002, the deficit is 2.57 million per year and with the recent deduction in subvention, we may have to go for fundraising."

Others find that it is easy to raise funds when donors think it is a one-time charge of paying for the construction of a facility.

President of the Hospice Care Association, Dr Seet Ai Mee.

"For most fund-raising, it is very easy to fund-raise for a building project even for renovation, there is a tendency for people to give to a certain object but for people to give towards supports, and towards salaries of doctors and nurses, it is not very common."

This is something that NVPC hopes very much to change says Mrs Tan.

"What we want to see is corporate donors go beyond programme funding into infrastructural overheads needs of these new initiatives or new programmes. These programmes need people to run it but traditionally, the givers have fought shy of funding overheads. So we also trying to encourage companies to take a strategic approach to giving, empower these organisations especially in their start-up years, by helping to cover whether its their staff, their rent, so that they can concentrate on delivering their services to their beneficiaries."

If NPVC is to succeed, it will certainly be much welcome by groups such as Action for Aids or AFA.

The funds raised by AFA go into subsidies for AIDS sufferers’ treatment.

The medication is incredibly expensive and the group estimates over half of the AIDS patients here can't afford the tab.

And yet, AFA's Brenton Wong says their outreach is small and he explains why.

"It's been difficult and because we have been dealing with this particular stigmatised subject of HIV/AIDS many people do not want to be involved in fundraising for us because they find that it is a topic that is not socially acceptable. And there are very few people who understand the issues as well and they tend to be judgmental so they do not give as freely as to other charities."

For groups like AFA, smaller NPOs or startup NPOs, NVPC hopes that there will be more horizontal cooperation to pool their resources together when it comes to raising funds.

Mrs Tan.

"We are trying to encourage is for some of these smaller, like-minded charities perhaps in the same cause to band together and jointly promote their interests as a cause so that when givers give, they give to maybe 3, 4 , 5 of these charities as a way to go."

Right now, an NPO has the best chance of being surviving if it enlists a high-profile political or entertainment celebrity to help it source for funds.

NPVC hopes that when the Singaporean society will mature as a giving society, it will be the NPO's mission that draws the cash from Singaporeans,

and not who is supporting them or what prizes they can win to draw them into parting with their cash.

This is Chong Ching Liang for Newsradio 938.

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