Italy’s fundrais­ing task force: Help­ing hos­pi­tals dur­ing the pandemic

Exhibited by
Umberto Tramontano and Diego Maria Ierna
Added
May 07, 2020
Medium of Communication
Emergency appeals
Target Audience
Type of Charity
All
Country of Origin
Italy
Date of first appearance
April 2020

SOFII’s view

Crisis produces the best in people. Here is a story of an inspirational coming together of more than 40 fundraising and communications professionals, all donating their time and expertise to ensure that the Italian public’s desire to help at this challenging time is safely and professionally directed, to create the best possible results from all of the spontaneous campaigns that have arisen during this crisis. The Italian fundraising sector will look back at this as a significant, inspirational and effective initiative at a time when their country was particularly badly hit by the pandemic.

Summary / objectives

Italy has been going through a public health emergency which has triggered a massive wave of solidarity throughout the country. Many fundraising campaigns have been created to help hospitals, who are in desperate need of medical equipment and additional staff.

However very few public organisations are fully aware of how fundraising works from start to finish. The risk is that many of the donations will never reach the intended recipient and they will be bounced back to the donors due to crediting or collection issues, thus jeopardising their efforts. Therefore the objective of this unique task force is to support hospitals in collecting funds from all the online crowdfunding initiatives which the public has started.

Background

Thousands of fundraising campaigns for hospitals are available on numerous crowdfunding platforms. To help ensure that these campaigns are properly run and achieve their full potential several Italian fundraising specialists got together to create a working group consisting of a partnership between Job4good (a third sector job search platform created in 2016) and Italian professionals from the fundraising sector, under the patronage of Assif (Associazione Italiana Fundraiser – Association of Italian Fundraisers). This task force is a pro-bono consulting service to directly support hospitals during the Coronavirus crisis. For further details see:

https://www.job4good.it/fundraising-taskforce-for-hospitals-during-the-covid-19-crisis/

The site allows hospitals who have received money (but don’t know much about fundraising) to contact the task force and receive expert advice on things like donor stewardship and how to manage the funds collected. All free of charge.

Creator / originator

Job4Good.

Costs

No cost as all the people involved are working pro-bono.

Results

So far at least €830,000 has been raised, with more to come, and the task force will be on hand to help with the ongoing fundraising efforts, and support the hospitals in how to stay connected with donors. SOFII suspects there will be many more side-effects from this initiative than just the funds raised. It’s an inspirational example of a profession galvanising its best expertise to help the common good. This will surely have many benefits for years to come.

The fundraising task force for hospitals has brought together over 40 fundraisers.
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The pro-bono task force has produced amazing results, with much more to follow.
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Hospitals receiving donations via crowdfunding sites can contact the task force for advice on how to manage and process donations and provide donor stewardship.