An associate of IZ KRUGA VOJVODINA, Mirjana Jaksic, took part in The Sixth National Fundraising Congress in The Youth Centre Opens Novi Sad on September 29, 2023. The slogan of this year’s fundraising congress was inspired by Sergio Leone’s cult western of the same title FundCon: A Fistful of Dinars. It gathered representatives of citizens, the youth sector, donors, institutions that deal with young people, and experts from various domains.
The participants of the congress had the opportunity to learn about the latest trends in fundraising, human resources, and marketing, as well as to establish contacts with potential donors. In addition, they had the chance to present examples of good practice in group work.
The representative of The Ministry of Tourism and Youth, Ivana Antonijevic, gave a speech about the program The Youth Guarantee, which is a political obligation of all governments of the member states of the European Union to ensure a good quality offer of employment to young people under 30 years of age, continued education, an apprenticeship or traineeship. Young people can be supported by Pre-Accession Assistance Funds, especially since it is necessary to change the fact that the majority of unemployed young people have been looking for a job for more than six years. Special attention should be paid to the issue of young people dubbed NEET – who are between 18 and 24 years old, are not employed, and don’t get education or training (Not in Employment, Education or Training). The idea of the Youth Guarantee is to, among other things, provide employment to this group of young people, as well as additional training and education.
Catalyst Balkans Giving Serbia 2022: Report on the State of Philanthropy was presented next. It is about how much people in Serbia donate, to whom they donate the most money, and in which year the rate of giving is higher. An overview of ideas, donors, and donations on domestic crowdfunding platforms GivingBalkans and Donacije.rs is also given. After that, Mladenka Majerić spoke on the topic of Fundraising: what does money have to do with it? She presented the results of the survey on why people donate and recommended fundraising videos by Alan Clayton and Lynn Twist.
Dajana Cvjetković spoke about the Smart Balkans project, which creates regional partnerships between civil society organizations and whose focus is the distribution of more than 450 grants related to two main topics, security and governance, and the Trag Foundation presented the Active Communities program.
A lot of important information about fundraising was conveyed to the participants, and what Mirjana Jakšić singled out as the most important is the fact that many who spoke about fundraising emphasized that it is always necessary to keep in mind that money is not the primary thing around which people gather when fundraising actions are held. The most important is the social part that needs to be satisfied – people need to create trust towards the action and its bearer, and that is why it is necessary to convey your vision and values so that people are educated and aware of the problem, which then motivates them to support the action.
