OPENS FUNDCON: SUSTAINABILITY MISSION (IM)POSSIBLE!

Do you have a mission? Do you face great challenges? Are you a representative of the civil society organization with the focus on youth organizations and organizations for young people? If you are a representative of an office or institution which works with young people or even an owner of a small or medium enterprise, and a representative of the company which operates with corporate social responsibility, then STOP. The next three minutes could change your life.

We present you the only fundraising congress of this type in Serbia – FUNDCON.

The agenda of the congress is designed to respond to the needs of civil sector, to encourage discussions and provide different perspectives of the topic of sustainability.

The first day of the Congress is dedicated to marketing strategies:
How to get to larger visibility; how to get closer to the target group; how to have larger impact in society? The world of digital marketing has enabled even smaller budgets a chance to shine, and it is up to us to learn how to use that chance well and how to pack the content for the final users to use it better.
The second day of the Congress is reserved for fundraising:
How to get to donors; how to make a campaign and include as many stakeholders as possible; how to stand out as an organization and offer your expertise? Today, it is not hard to get to the meeting or contact, but it is hard to be different among the similar. From the angle of the largest donors in Serbia, the idea is to learn how to focus on what can be most useful.
The third day is devoted to human resources:
How to recruit people; how to make a team; how to use open source platforms for learning; how to invest in people; how to create motivating working atmosphere? It is not by accident that large companies, for whose positions people fight, spend more and more time on health of employees, free time, creative development, but it seems that it is a secret how to reach such an eco-system and more importantly, how to maintain it. Or it was the secret, until this Congress.

So, we start the arena. During the three days of September, for the first time in Novi Sad, we gather people from Dublin from where the lecturers of LinkedIn are coming, through two Unova agencies (UNIDO and UNICEF) to the giants from which we can learn, such as CocaCola, VIP, Smart Kolektiv, Execom, Catalyst etc.

We will guide you through a set of workshops, masterclasses, sessions, panels and resource cafés, but with coffee and cakes.

Sustainability and stable growth and development are most often presented as mission (im)possible of each organization (and not only organization). In that mission, finances, which we usually think about, are not the only part. Answering the needs which have occurred during the implementation of the OPENS program and close work with youth organizations and organizations for young people, we have found our additional mission and response – OPENS FundCon.

The detailed plan, program, line-up as well as manner of the organization can be found HERE.

The first national fundraising congress was held on 14 December 2018. It was a unique congress where participants from the entire Serbia had the chance to get the information about different donors and funds in Serbia and the region, to gain new knowledge at workshops about different manners of fundraising and how to lead marketing campaigns on social networks. More than 130 representatives of civil society organizations, youth offices and institutions and institutions for young people participated, and how last year looked like can be seen HERE.