We write this from Bombay at Rama-giridhari Das home. We have been very, very busy with this NIOS and Minstry of Education work with very good results. Our rewrite work is discussed below. We are keeping up with our standard of one meeting a week on this each Tuesday.
To: savitrie budhu
Cc: Ramanan Nagarajan, Meera's Mom Houston ; Nity Gaura Sundar Das
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2017 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: letter review
Hare Krsna
AgtSP. Wonderful. We will look at their template and rewrite the letter.
We are very, very busy with NIOS and Ministry of Education since we landed
HpS
--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 10/3/17, savitrie budhu <[email protected]> wrote
Hare Krishna,
Please accept my
humble obeisances. All glories to Srila
Prabhupada.
I contacted the
Metasoft and ask them to review the found [fund] raiser letter
Maharaj send me. They finally reply to my message, and state
that the letter needs a lot of work because it does not
address some key point that the found raising companies are looking for. I have attached their
response/review to this email. Please review and let me know
how I should proceed.
Your
servant,
Ambika
From: Sue Ashworth <[email protected]>
Date: October 3, 2017 at 3:30:51 PM CDT
Subject: RE: letter review
Hi,
Savitrie:
Thank you for the
opportunity to review your letter of inquiry.
I’m afraid that in its current form it’s unlikely
to attract funding for several reasons:
1: It’s very
difficult to discern what your project actually is.
You seem to be discussing putting on a symposium, and
then mention a movie, but it’s very difficult to
understand why you have identified the project or how it
fits with your mission statement
oHpS - I just reread the application letter and changed a few things from my perception and Sue's comments but... her comments seem very strange to us. First we introduce our selves with a little bit of our our history, successful programs, with big agencies, of the type we are now attempting. This is based upon the formula from W. Clement Stone by whom we were trained in salesmanship. He was big rich dude with lots of success. He said that people buy on the basis of three things: The opinion of others, the price of the product and then details of the offer. We began with the opinion of others, including the opinion of others of our director, Oscar Natars.
Then we can't see how to make it more clear that we are planning a symposium in Lima that 40,000 people will see, and that the center of this will be the movie which will then be marketed to the BBC and National Geographic Channel as well as our sources.
We state the problem by quoting from Hector and Gandhi.
Maybe Sue is focused on bodily benefit such as medicine and surgery. This is actually why the problem exists. People see physical engagment but do not see that the bird in the cage needs music.
It may very well be true that we will not be attractive or comprehensible to many funding agencies with the same limited vision. Personally I would prefer to eliminate them as soon as possible because it will require much heavy work to reach them. If we can find more enightened partners then we can move ahead quickly and not die of fatigue.
It may very well be true that we will not be attractive or comprehensible to many funding agencies with the same limited vision. Personally I would prefer to eliminate them as soon as possible because it will require much heavy work to reach them. If we can find more enightened partners then we can move ahead quickly and not die of fatigue.
These people do exist. A lot of them.
We did not include the details of the budget, but $125,000 for what we are proposing is a sane figure. I was looking at this letter as an introduction, eliminating a lot of foundations with whom we cannot work and then receiving a simple letter for more details from those who have interest.
2: You have not
actually stated your organization’s mission:
HpS - To reduce the number of suicides in the world.
3: You mention a budget
of $125,000, but don’t actually state how the money will
be used.
HpS - To make a movie. Later we will include details of how many lights we will rent. Also, in the orientation lecture that Meta-soft gives the general director said that some Foundations will ask for the financial details of your project immediately and others not until they are very convinced that they want to join, so in any case it is good to have it ready early in the project. We ask Oscar for his suggestions for a budget along with this letter.
4: You have not
addressed who this project will benefit.
HpS - 40,000 people a week who attend visit the center in Peru and then later audiences on the BBC Channel etc. Maybe Sue is looking for something like, "1,000 free cataract surgeries for poor villagers in Rhodesia". Hmmm?
5: How will your
project impact society, and on which portion of society will
the impact be felt.
HpS - All people who like movies, more cultured people, by inspiring them to cultivate the human spirit with Art, Dance, Music, Drama with a higher character.
6: You
write: “If you are
seriously interested we can send more details. Partial
funding for even specific aspects of the project
would be greatly appreciated.”
Firstly, “If you
are seriously interested we can send more details,” could
be taken as insulting to some foundations,
HpS - O.K. We rewrote this but we wanted to present that we are not coming as beggars. We are coming with great assets and looking for partners who also have assets. Second we do not want off-hand formula letters responding with request for more information when the Foundation does not really have any passion for the ideas we are presenting. It will waste our time.
and secondly you
should be reviewing each
foundation before you approach them and determining how
much they would usually give to this kind of project, and
then requesting that.
IF they give to this kind of project to the tune if
$125,000 then you can request that as long as you talk about
what the money will be spent on.
If their giving is in smaller amounts you should be
assessing a sum they ordinarily give, requesting that amount
and letting the foundation know just what their grant will
pay for.
HpS- Hmmm. This is a good idea but it seems that we can even be frank and Ambika can even say that "Looking at their Foundation's funding profile for projects like this they might be interested in first becoming involved by funding $xxxx which we can apply to specific detailed parts of the project".
Please take a look
at the recommended format for a letter of inquiry that I
have attached, along with the checklist that ensures that
you include everything
a foundation might need in order to make a
decision.
HpS - We did not see this??
I would be happy to
discuss this review with you if you would like.
Warm
regards,
Sue
Ashworth
Member
Support Representative
HpS - Looking at our man, and woman, power resources and our time frames I would suggest going ahead and sending out the letter to like 1/3 of the funders listed and see what the response is. If someone else can work in more detail with Sue then they still have 2/3rd of the funding base to approach. I could get on the phone with NGD and M. Ambika and talk with Sue over the points she brings up and our comments, but that would not be until November 15th. Seems we need to go ahead as soon as possible.
What do you all think?
[ ] Smt. Ambika Devi Dasi, can you send the sample letter and check list that Sue sent??
[ ] Oscar, can you send a rough budget for the kind of movie we are suggesting?
We are attaching the edited letter.