May 1, 2009

1:00 pm

Mt. Elgon Hotel

This morning the participants broke up into small groups of 4 to brainstorm ideas on fundraising.  We’ve had one other brainstorming session.  These sessions are officially called “focus groups”, by the way.  Yesterday the focus groups reviewed the Bylaws (really, all I head was Blah, Blah, Blah)....this morning the topic was fundraising, and later today they will discuss recruitment.  Then we’ll all come back together to share our ideas. 

Unfortunately for you, I am particularly interested in the fundraising focus group time.  My background is in political campaigns – mainly on the fundraising side.  So, this is something that gets my blood pumping, but I’ll do my best not to ramble on about the ideas that were shared.

Each group addressed 5 basic questions (I am paraphrasing here):

What can we raise money for?

Who can we ask for money?

How can we raise money?

How can LIU facilitate the Council members in this process?

How can the Council stay accountable and encouraged to achieve goals? 

There were so many great ideas – ideas that never crossed my mind.  Of course there were the typical: ask for grants, ask rich people, take collections at churches, ask businesses – But so many of the suggestions involved the Ugandan community.  The folks on the Council weren’t suggesting that we just look for handouts from folks in America (which is honestly what I was thinking), but they desire to see the East African community share in the opportunity to build a quality Christian institution. 

One thing is for sure – this is a huge task – LIU needs a lot of money.  Starting a university isn’t cheap – nor should it be. 

-Julie