International Fundraising Strategy: Getting Started

International fundraising is a significant opportunity to increase income by accessing significant global wealth, but the pitfalls or poorly developed and executed strategy can distract from core domestic fundraising income or fail to deliver the potential seen on paper. Simply put, balancing risk and reward is critical, and understanding these variables before starting is key to developing and enacting an international fundraising strategy that can deliver for your organisation.

In this first piece on a series on international fundraising, Peter O’Connor, Consultant at Philanthropy Company, provides some insights on developing an international fundraising strategy.

International Fundraising Strategy – a basic principle: The World is your Oyster (if you know how to prise open the shell)

Having worked with donors across North America, Europe and Asia, including over a decade of regular travel to Asia, I’ve seen both the promise and the pitfalls of international fundraising first-hand. The UK is home to some of the world’s leading schools, universities, charities, NGO’s, and arts and cultural organisations. Their excellence, reputation and impact is global, which naturally means their audience and those who might wish to support them also stretches beyond the UK’s borders. However, for many organisations with small teams of fundraisers and limited budget, making the business case to explore new markets in which there might be little professional experience and where the cost of entry can be high is often difficult. Enacting that business case, successfully, can be an even bigger challenge.

That said, the opportunities are there! And there are some great examples of success across the Higher Education, Arts, and wider charitable sectors in the UK and beyond. Even ignoring headline-grabbing gifts from international donors, let’s take a look at the global distribution of wealth, particularly UHNWI’s and the world’s leading philanthropists. Asia alone, an area I travelled to over 10 times a year when in a specialist role as a fundraiser focusing on the region, contains over 2/3’s of the world’s global population, over 160,000 UHNWI individuals (those with wealth of $30 million USD or more) and this is growing (predicted to be 250,000 UHNWI’s by 2028).^[1] The United States needs no introduction with respect to the centrality of philanthropy in society, with donors such as CrankStart recently making a transformational nine-figure gift to the National Gallery. Finally, a growing diaspora of UHNWI’s from the UK and other countries to low-tax environments, such as Dubai, also means that funders themselves are forcing us to look globally to follow wealth.

To set you on your journey to reflect on your own organisation’s international fundraising potential, or indeed existing strategy, I will:

• Demonstrate that the key principles of fundraising are global;
• Provide some context on practical and cultural considerations that should feed into an international strategy; and
• Look at common risks and pitfalls of international programmes.

^[1] Knight Frank. (2024). The Wealth Report—2024. Retrieved from https://content.knightfrank.com/resources/knightfrank.com/wealthreport/the-wealth-report-2024.pdf

When developing an International Fundraising Strategy, remember that fundraising is fundraising wherever you are…

One key thing I always stress is that fundraising works in more or less the same way everywhere. Find potential funders. Understand them and build a good relationship with them. Ensure that they understand your mission and the impact their support will have. Provide a great request to them for support that aligns with their mission, demonstrating your excellence. Receive a gift, and steward that donor well.

The donors and the way they work vary across many different geographies – from established trusts and foundations in the US through to first time donors amidst the new wealth of family offices that have proliferated in the Middle East and Singapore in recent years. But the principle remains the same.

… until practical barriers and cultural nuance throw up issues for your international fundraising strategy.

It’s important to balance what is feasible in terms of resource, with some insight into the wider cultural milieu and global context in which you intend to fundraise. I’ve signposted some common questions in both areas below:

Practical

• What can we afford to service internationally, in terms of staff time, travel, and ROI?
• Are the international markets in which we have most impact, and the strongest relationships, ones where we can make inroads with funders? In other words, is our “product market fit” right to secure gifts?
• How do we compare to local institutions and organisations in our space, and how do we ensure that we are relevant in this landscape?
• Can we do our due diligence in these markets, and understand the financial, legal, and administrative structures required to secure funding safely and smoothly?

Cultural

• Do we understand the landscape of philanthropy in our target market, from initial research to the reality on the ground?
• Are fundraisers equipped to travel and to sustain a multi-year effort to secure the support that we are seeking, and to ensure buy-in across leadership when needed?
• Do we have networks that we can leverage to make introductions to funders, demonstrate authenticity, and provide a head start to our work and operations?
• Do we know common cultural roadblocks and how to overcome them? For example, donors offering gifts in cultures where favours, such as university admission, may be exchanged for a gift? How do we prepare for and navigate these scenarios?

Pitfalls in your International Fundraising Strategy: Overambition, development tourism, and practical barriers

As mentioned above, realising an international fundraising strategy can be challenging. Taking those thousands of opportunities across the globe and trying to turn that into a concise, effective multi-year plan is fraught with pitfalls and potential problems. Commonly, there are a few simple mistakes to avoid, which are key to actually achieving success:

• Don’t overstretch yourselves – core domestic funding shouldn’t suffer as a result of international efforts. Otherwise there is a risk of “start-stop” approaches, which can fray both nascent and burgeoning donor relationships through scattergun engagement.
• Don’t be a “development tourist” – just because there are potential funders all over the globe, it doesn’t mean you need to go everywhere (especially if you are a small organisation). Resist the urge to lose focus and spread yourselves thinly in a way that prohibits meaningful engagement and the transformative gifts that can follow.
• Do your homework before rushing out and soliciting gifts internationally: due diligence on funders, legal barriers to international philanthropy, how people talk about their giving. Speaking with donors in a jurisdiction where there are capital controls or without having a tax-efficient giving vehicle will be a severe hindrance to securing real income (especially if you then find that there is a due diligence concern that couldn’t be found using conventional English-language searches).

Taking the next steps with your international fundraising strategy

It can be complicated understanding where to begin – no organisation has the same profile internationally as another, in terms of brand, networks, impact and international community. Ask yourself these three questions:

• Is there an obvious international appeal or impact in our work, and what global audiences would this resonate with?
• With my budget, bandwidth and staff expertise, what work is feasible internationally without core-domestic fundraising suffering?
• What are the risks of these markets and within my organisation, and how do I mitigate and plan for these to ensure the programme is feasible?

I would be delighted to speak further with anyone who would like to explore these questions or any others regarding their international fundraising strategy, whether you are scoping out a new programme or re-evaluating the effectiveness of existing efforts. Contact enquiries@philanthropycompany.com today to start a conversation.