What is the value of our history and all we’ve learned?

Not much, perhaps, if we don’t consider the best of it worth keeping and looking after.

But imagine the great things we could do, if we had the cream of our historical archive and accumulated learning near to hand, available and easily searchable at the touch of a button. Just take a glance at this new and still-developing site with its mere couple of hundred or so exhibits, rather than the potential thousands, and you’ll quickly see, very eloquently, the real value of our fundraising heritage.

The vision for SOFII includes the belief that access to the site and its basic services should be free to and unlimited for all fundraisers in all countries of the world. Wherever you are, if you raise funds for a charity or for a charitable purpose, SOFII is here to help you.

But how is SOFII paid for?

To start SOFII three far-sighted sponsors — The Cascaid Group in the UK, The White Lion Press in France and Pareto Fundraising in Australia — have between them provided the initial seed funding to take the SOFII concept to its prototype phase. The first year of SOFII's development was funded by the Joffe Foundation, UK. They – and the small team of volunteers who have done all the work involved in creating SOFII – deserve our thanks and support because without them, SOFII would have stayed a dream.

More visionary sponsors stepped forward to enable SOFII to move beyond the prototype stage to it's current working interactive website. Now to achieve its full potential, SOFII has begun efforts to secure reliable and sufficient funding.

The SOFII Foundation

SOFII is supervised by The SOFII Foundation, a registered charity in the UK, No 1124743. The managing trustee is Ken Burnett. He can be reached at Ken@sofii.org or via www.kenburnett.com. Other trustees are Marie Burnett, head of the White Lion Press, Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of the UK's Institute of Fundraising and David Carrington, an independent expert on trusts, foundations and nonprofit governance. The trustees are now seeking a modest amount of medium- to long-term funding so that SOFII can develop progressively to feature not just hundreds but thousands of examples of creative, innovative, inspirational and instructive fundraising gathered from around the world.

It’s our intention to make sure SOFII is easy to use and a prime example of the best that technology has to offer.

An efficient search system was an early priority so that we could present SOFII’s exhibits and editorials in a carefully indexed, easily searchable permanent display available to fundraisers from anywhere, at any time. To achieve its potential, SOFII employs a small staff consisting of a development director and a project manager (both already appointed) and, in time, one web designer/editor.

A substantial grant from a private trust at the start of 2008 has enabled SOFII to recruit its first staff member. Efforts will soon be underway to raise funds sufficient for future needs. A small part of the required funding will come in the form of corporate sponsors and supporters.

It is our ambition at present to try to find more visionary, philanthropic sponsors who will recognise SOFII’s potential to dramatically improve the quality, creativity and originality of fundraising promotions, so will be prepared to contribute towards funding SOFII’s running and development costs over the next few years.

If you can support SOFII with a donation of any size, please use the button opposite or if you would like to help SOFII in any way please contact Carolina Herrera at SOFII. Thank you.

As we become more and more donor-focussed the communications challenge for fundraisers gets ever more complex. How are we going to cope if we don't look after all we've learned?

Times may change but values stay constant, so what worked back then will probably still work well today. Providing of course it’s wisely adapted and not overused.

View SOFII's project details on
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