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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Fund Facts

Dr. Anuradha Rajput with Adarsha and Apoorva at the 2009 International Eco Hero Awards Reception on October 24, 2009.



Hello Blog Followers,

This is Apoorva Rangan. I thought of addressing the fund raising issues in this post in response to several comments and questions. First of all, I am very happy to inform you all that we have been successful in fulfilling the financial obligation of $15,000 towards the phase I and II of our project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank two very important people from our advisory committee for our success. First of all, Mrs. Michelle Lacourciere, executive director of Sirona Cares foundation, sponsored our project to attain a nonprofit status. This was a big deal for us. We could not have done this by ourselves, because we learned that the annual operating cost of a nonprofit organization itself is very expensive. As Sirona Cares foundation handles that for us, any funds we collect directly goes into our project. Though this is remarkable, Sirona Cares is not financially sponsoring our project. We need to come up with the funds on our own. With the current global recession, fund raising has been one of our main challenges.

As I am the cofounder of the project, and took the financial Director’s role from day one, I know how we have come up with every single penny! Ours is a unique project with a unique approach to fund collections. This is where Dr. Anuradha Rajput’s role comes in. She has been our financial anchor in India, in addition to being a member in our advisory committee. We started the project with a total sum of $650, which was the cash prize Adarsha won in the CA State spelling championship in 2006. By October 2009, we have roughly $15,000. Pretty impressive right? Firstly, Dr. Rajput guided us in the right direction. She researched the available awards in the environmental service area and nominated us. The first award that we won as a team was the 2009 T4PE Gold service award. The team (Adarsha, Callie and I) won $1000 together and we all contributed the entire cash prize towards the project. Next, she nominated Adarsha and me for The International Eco Hero award 2009, and the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes 2009 for which we both won a total of $500 and $2500 respectively. Adarsha and I donated that entirely towards project Jatropha. Very recently Adarsha won the Brower Youth Award 2009. He received a cash prize of $3000 which he contributed towards the project. So far, we have collected $7000 from the awards alone. We want to thank Dr. Adrianna Smyth for nominating Adarsha for Brower Youth Award. In addition, Adarsha also donated his annual earnings of $1200, and adding the $650 of his earlier contribution so far makes our total to $8850. I collected the rest of the $6150 from the generous donors in India introduced by Dr. Rajput. We’d also like to thank to our family and friends for their contributions toward our project. This is a short summary of our fund raising tactics.

Lately Callie and I have been exploring other fund raising opportunities. Callie suggested that we do a bracelet sale in the local schools! Not any bracelet, but ones that are popular in our project site. These are the colorful glass bangles that the rural women wear. I took Callie’s suggestion and contacted Dr. Rajput for help again. Luckily, she was visiting CA in October. She lives in Bangalore which is 120 miles away from the project site. As we needed the bulk supply, she took the help of 10 of the workers to find 200 bangles from 12 different shops. She packed them carefully and delivered them to us three weeks ago. Next step is to make the sale. We will let you know how this plan works out soon. Wish us good luck!

Here's a glimpse of the bangles!

~Apoorva

14 comments:

  1. Hi Guys,
    great bangles! You should sell it on E Bay guys. set a Paypal account on Project jatropha's name and sell it then you will make lots of moey.Good luck.
    Cheers,
    Lilian

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your suggestion Lilian, but selling it on eBay is not an option for us. Shipping and handling expenses will be more than the cost of the bangles. As the bangles are fragile, we can't ship it to the buyers.
    ~Apoorva

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yup, You are right!
    Cheers,
    Lilian

    ReplyDelete
  4. A valuable post on "Fund Facts".
    If you are looking for non profit fund raising tap into an established, successful, and proven Fundraising Program that works @ http://debtfreeliving.supportnonprofits.com

    Thanks,
    Karim
    Fund raising that really works

    ReplyDelete
  5. As always, I'm impressed by you guys. The bangles will be a great fundraiser! Beautiful, and a nice way for contributors here to feel connected to what you're doing in India. I definitely know one interested buyer... :3

    Helen

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Karim,
    Thanks for the information. We will look into the link.

    Hi Helen,
    Thank you for your interest in our project. It looks like you read our blog updates very regularly. Yes, we are counting on girls like you to make our bangles sale a success. We may even add Indian food sale. You will be one of the first ones to know from Adarsha.
    ~Apoorva

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi guys,
    Just wanted to let you know that your work is featured on the home page of Imagine web site!
    http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/index.html
    If you follow the link, there is a very nice article on Adarsha in the Education News.
    Wow, Apoorva, your school girls are so lucky! They get to buy the bangles. I am J!!

    Cheers,
    Lilian

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hey Adarsha,

    I am a high school student who is also involved in an environmental project from past 10 months. I have seen you, spoken to you a few times. Three of my teammates follow your blog as well. I need some information about rather a sensitive issue in the project. I am sure my teammates will benefit from your advice too.I am uncomfortable to post the question with my original ID because of the delicacy of the situation. But many teams will have faced similar problems and will want to hear the answer to this issue. Our project is not yet reached the level of project Jatropha. I think partly due to the internal competition.

    I see that your project has no formal adult advisor right? How do you guys decide who should apply for individual awards? Our team has roughly 8 members. Each one thinks that he/she is the leader and has done more work. Because we could not come to a unanimous decision, we have missed out on even applying for many individual awards. How did you guys do it? In terms of nominations, did you approach the nominator your self?

    In our group different people have joined the project at different times. There are kids who joined at the inception. I joined ten months ago and have done more work than people who joined 13 months ago.

    who helped you guys in establishing the ranking in the project? Can you please make a blog post about your experience, hurdles, involvement of adults/parents etc. You guys have won several awards and there is something that you are doing right that we are not.
    Thanks
    Gypsy Group

    ReplyDelete
  9. Adarsh,

    I am glad to read the above comment. I have my own concerns too. There are people who have worked on our project really hard for like 14 months now. Some have just joined, like three months ago. How can they be even thinking of applying to any award? There are few of them who started 14 moths ago with fancy positions on paper and show up for meetings when they feel like when there is a adult mentor present just to impress them.. They are not the real workers though.
    And can you tell us how two of you could apply for an individual award? If two students approach a teacher to nominate both, will that work? In your opinion, how long do you think the student should have worked before applying for an award. Even for team awards, how can one expect to be included as a member, if that person just joined three moths ago?

    ReplyDelete
  10. My My!! This is getting interesting. I am not sure if we are talking about the same project. Though some of us have joined less than three months ago, we have done more fund raising than the others in 14 months. One person has collected $4000 in three months where as the person in charge of finance and fund raising for more than 14 months is sitting with the title collecting hardly one fourth of what is done in three months. Now you tell me, Just because I just started three months ago, I should just sit aside not getting any recognition, when the team is going to say that they have raised $5000 in all and the finance in charge will get the credit for what?? I think the amount of work is important rather than how long you have held the position. I am just a new comer and just a member of the project with no name

    ReplyDelete
  11. What is your solution for this Biofuel Boy!!

    Did you guys watch this
    Eco Teen Working for planet
    http://www.cnycentral.com/community/video.aspx?id+369112
    Cheers,
    Lilian

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sorry guys, I have typo in the link. it is not + but it is =
    For some reason you need to type in URL rather than cut and paste
    alternatively you can go to cnycentral.com and type in Adarsha's name or the title

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Guys,
    We have read all of your comments, concerns and questions about the team versus individual efforts and their importance in awards. I really commend you all for being brave and opening up. I think this is the first step to problem solving. Communication is the key. I have been very busy with the school and project work in the past few weeks. I will make a blog post addressing all these issues ASAP. Until then, Happy Thanks Giving to all of you.
    Sincerely,
    Adarsha

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thanks for the clarification. Well, we do have a few adults involved in the project. The team has not applied for any awards until now. No one has given us any information about available awards out there. I wish to discuss this with you further in details,I will contact you for advice once I figure out some details

    ReplyDelete