|
FUN FINDING FUNDING While non-profit organisations are less vulnerable to 'bottom line' considerations than many other types of institutions, they must still ultimately come to terms with the hard realities of financing their project. There are limits to what can be asked of volunteers. Also, the very success of a small, mainly voluntary project will eventually present the need for paid staff, larger premises and increased supplies. Given this inevitable dynamic, it is important to inquire how non-profit projects generally fund themselves. While there are differences from country to country, depending
on political ethos, traditions and history, in general studies
show that non-profit voluntary organisations are funded through
a mix of sources. And generally the breakdown follows this pattern: * Private fees/Membership/ Sale of services etc. 47% Given that the highest figure is for sales of services, can community media interpret this as indicating advertising as a significant source of income? If a community media project is making any attempt to deliver alternative, empowering and developmental programming, it will not fit into the generally accepted commercial media model, therefore, the usual commercial sources of financing the enterprise, such as advertising, won't be as readily available. What to do? Change to a commercial format? Or look to other sources of income? Research shows that a great deal of the 47% income to non-profit projects comes, not from advertising, but from sales of other services, such as training. Non-profit organisations in the fields of culture, education and information, derive the bulk of their income from private fees and charges for services. The second significant source of income (43%) is indicated as being from public sector funding. Non-profit organisations, far from seeking to substitute for state activities, seek to facilitate the expansion of state services by delivering these services for a fee. This approach provides a dynamic for the expansion of government financed services without a corresponding expansion in the scale of the state apparatus. … This approach to funding community media services through charging for media training and for the dissemination of government information offers community media a secure source of income through a range of activities more compatible with its ethos of community development and empowerment. *Source 'The Emerging Sector' The John Hopkins University
1994.
|
