Fundraising policy

Like the Netherlands, many countries are planning to cut their development aid budgets as a result of the economic crisis. Individuals and companies are also giving less due to their reduced incomes. Charities have to compete for less money, and education and child protection projects have to compete with 'life saving' interventions such as nutrition, shelter, and water for funding from institutional donors. The situation necessitates innovative initiatives and a pro-active attitude.

Creativity has been at the core of War Child’s work since it was founded, and we apply this approach in everything we do, including keeping the costs as low as possible, and fundraising by involving and mobilising our Friends, network and community. While we believe in and rely on traditional fundraising methods that have proven to be effective, we also want to inspire, surprise and motivate people to join our cause while raising money.

More focus on education and child protection

Although donors make funding available for conflict-affected countries, funding for education and child protection in emergencies remains limited despite the fact that the UN Secretary General highlighted the negative effect of conflict on the Millennium Development Goal to send all children to school by the end of 2015. Advocating towards donors to increase the funding they make available for these sectors by demonstrating the devastating and long-term impact of conflict on the well-being and education of children is urgent.

Spreading income risks

War Child does not want to depend on a limited number of income sources. In order to maintain financial stability, we need to generate income from diverse sources and maintain a healthy balance between structural income that we can rely on for several years and incidental short-term income.

Low-cost policy

War Child’s low-cost policy aims to ensure that as much money as possible is spent on our programmes. Following this policy, we strive to gain sponsorship or donations for the production of all materials and activities used for communication and fundraising. We closely monitoring, evaluate, and adjust communication and fundraising activities to ensure that results justify the investment.

In accordance with our low-cost policy, we also aim to keep the percentage of our income spent on fundraising activities as low as possible In 2013, mainly due to a decrease in own fundraising income as well as to an increase in fundraising staff at our head office, the percentage of costs/income increased to 18.7%. Although this is below the maximum set by the Central Bureau for Fundraising (CBF) of 25%, it is above our internal target of 15%. War Child has taken measures to gradually decrease this ratio back to below 15% in the foreseeable future.

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