Donations

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Look at donations broadly. You can obtain money, equipment and supplies in this category. A donations campaign—or even an ad-hoc effort—can be combined with seeking foundation grants, as discussed above, to offer companies a range of options for being involved with your organization.

[edit] Obtaining Donations

Mary Ann Wilson, Administrative Director
Neurofibromatosis, Inc.

"In 1979, the Neurofibromatosis Mid-Atlantic Chapter started in my dining room in Mitchellville, Maryland. We mailed letters, seeking to identify families, to the local pediatricians listed in the Yellow Pages of the telephone directory. The Chapter needed an inexpensive way to reproduce information about the disorder and communicate with the families and health professionals about various resources and meetings we were scheduling.

The Washington Post published a feature article on the Mars family (that's right—the candy people) in McLean, Virginia just across the Potomac River. I wrote a letter to The Mars Foundation explaining the disorder, the support group just getting started, and the need for a copying machine to help make information available to families and physicians.

Knowing that a lot of different people make a high volume of copies in libraries, I visited the local library to find out the manufacturer of the copiers being purchased by the County Library System. The local representative for the manufacturer quoted us a good price for a tabletop copier after hearing our story.

In less than a month after writing the letter to The Mars Foundation, we received a check for $2,000 for the copier. Until we moved into bona fide office space 10 years later, we used only that machine. We then obtained a donated copy machine with a much larger capacity. That is another story!"

[edit] International Donations

Many organizations are looking for ways to function and get donations internationally. This becomes especially important for rare conditions; the international support is quite necessary with a small population of affected individuals. Arrangements of this nature are a difficult issue, due to differing donation and tax exemption regulations.

The criteria for donations and taxes varies widely among countries. There are individual standards, though there is usually the expectation of a physical presence and offering resources and supports to residents in that country of agreement. Getting status as a charity in the country of operation might also be required. Here are some questions and plans to consider:

Eleni Z. Tsigas Executive Director Preeclampsia Foundation

"...wondering if there might be some value in combining forces to set up an office in some of our key countries that would serve as a 'registered agent' co-op, of sorts. It would serve as the physical address and a local bank account could be set up. We would probably need to contract with a local bookkeeper (for a few hours a week at most, I might think) that would be responsible for taking in donations, allocating them to their respective organizations and then either paying expenses when the money is spent in country or if its allowed, to forward the money to the parent organization."

There are many different types of agreements for managing your organization internationally, and it can be successful if rules, incentives, and representation for the international membership are taken into consideration

Please see our article on international offices for more information.

[edit] Internal Links

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