Photo Credit: 2020 Eric Sales/ADB
By Dr Glenda Miro Antonio, Spring Rain Global
In December 2021, my family and I were among the 8 million Filipinos that were affected by Typhoon Rai, which caused nine landfalls across seven provinces in the Philippines. Houses were damaged, and many died or were injured. There was no power and communication lines were down, forcing us to cancel a virtual event that was meant to cap a four-month fundraising activity to benefit 14 grassroots organisations. We later learned that many of their staff were affected by the typhoon, themselves needing aid and unable to help their communities.
Over the last two years, we have seen how natural calamities and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic have severely limited the ability of community-based organisations to raise resources. Indeed, philanthropic development offices (PDOs) and other charitable organisations are just one crisis away from being crippled, unable to deliver critical help to their community beneficiaries in the precise period when they are critically needed.
A UNESCO Policy Lab report emphasised the dire straits in which vulnerable Filipinos found themselves during the pandemic: “Close to three million more Filipinos are now poor, half of the labour force is jobless, 7.6 million families experience hunger, and 30% of businesses have closed.” Community organisations stepped in to fill the gaps.
The same report recommended a paradigm shift from a “whole-of-government” approach to a “whole-of-society” approach to address the deteriorating situation in communities. This entails the creation of partnerships between different sectors of society to holistically address development problems such as poverty, illnesses, insecure food supplies, or climate change. So important are partnerships that it is among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations: to “strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.”
This resonates with our thrust at Spring Rain Global to create an ecosystem of good, which we believe is key to fully enabling grassroots and community-based organisations to break cycles of poverty in all its forms. We believe that systemic change can only occur if the smallest development player that works at the very grassroots of society is empowered and supported to achieve their fullest potential to serve.
As a social enterprise, we aim to empower and professionalise these organisations, germinating them towards sustainability. As Spring Rain Global nurtures its ecosystem of good – which now hosts over 100 philanthropic development offices, philanthropists and others – we empower them to create sustainable positive impacts in communities.
One way that we are doing this is through Spring Rain Global’s 6-Pillar Capacitation Model©. This is a proprietary systematic framework that we use to train and empower philanthropic development organisations towards sustainability.
Through this model, we are able to address the critical urgent social needs of the communities that CBOs (community-based organisations), PDOs (philanthropic development offices), and grassroots organisations serve. The model trains the staff and empowers the organisations to:
- Strengthen leadership and governance, crafting a vision, mission and goals statement as the guidepost to their programming.
- Sharpen the organisations’ advocacies and enhance their programme development and management systems to enable them to better respond to the needs of their constituents and communities.
- Organise philanthropic development offices to grow awareness and a consistent, reliable support base for their advocacies and programmes.
- Develop financial roadmaps towards sustainability and constancy in their mission.
- Value the importance of data in monitoring and assessing programme impact and in developing and nurturing their relationship with partners and donors.
- Connect them with other organisations and donors so they can work collectively, share resources, learn from each other, and maximise their impact.
Through paid membership to the ecosystem, coaching and consultancy, and fund facilitation, organisations invest in fully developing their capabilities, methodically risk-proofing themselves and priming them for more impact. We also host training events such as a Philanthropic Development Office Bootcamp and other immersive training based on our 6-Pillar Capacitation Model.
It is a framework that works. Working together creates synergy, as opposed to competition, among the members of our ecosystem of good. While fundraising collectively dropped in the past two years due to the pandemic, the PDOs who followed our Capacitation Model and leveraged the ecosystem raised close to Php120 million (about US$ 2.3 million) in donations and gifts-in-kind in 2021. This ensured the continuation of their work in education, livelihood programmes, environment, women empowerment, capacity building, and support for indigenous peoples, to name a few.
The Covid-19 pandemic underlined how much we rely on each other’s generosity to address the pressing needs of various social concerns such as hunger, poverty, homelessness, lack of access to education, and unemployment. The only way toward sustainability is to connect and build an ecosystem of good: a community committed to working together in the long-term to create a more equitable world.
A more strategic approach to charitable giving is necessary. It is essential to work as an ecosystem of good in collaboration with social enterprises, sustainable livelihood programmes, microfunding and other forms of hybrid philanthropy, so we can address systemic issues and not operate in silos.
This is the only way philanthropic organisations, charities, non-profits and missionary organisations can continue to serve the most vulnerable members of our society.
You can be part of our ecosystem of good, either as an implementing organisation or as an investor in the empowerment of grassroots organisations. The full range of our services is available here. We invite you to explore ways that you can tap into and support the ecosystem of good by sending a message to springrainglobal@gmail.com.
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SRG will host the 6th Asian Philanthropic Development Conference on July 27-29, 2022. It is a virtual conference that brings together people’s development organisations, non-profit organisations, the Church, religious congregations, donors, global philanthropy experts, the academy, and other organisations for three days of insightful, impactful discussions on the theme, “Beyond Boundaries for Impact: Our Sustainable Ecosystem Roadmap.” They will discuss current challenges, trends in giving, fundraising, and philanthropy, and will highlight best practices and innovations in advocacy to develop action steps that participants might take to build resilience through an empowered system of good.
The conference will also bring together participants for the pre-event annual Leadership Conference, on July 1, 2022. It will spotlight three themes: (a) Responding sustainably to the world’s enormous need, (b) Innovating conscience-based investments, and (c) Supercharging impact through an ecosystem of good. Registration is now open at bit.ly/WINGS-APDC6.
Dr Glenda Miro Antonio is the Founder, President and CEO of Spring Rain Global. She is a practising International Registered Financial Consultant (RFC) since 2006, a member of the International Association of Registered Financial Consultants (IARFC) based in Ohio, USA. She specialises in Financial Planning for Institutional Sustainability in Religious Congregations/Organizations and Schools in the Philippines.