TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Nora Stefanova
- To provoke participants to effectively share their background and expertise in funding and fundraising to support their EYC initiative by summarizing best practices and successful stories;
- To essentially outline important groundwork that must be accomplished before start looking for funding;
- To learn about the action steps necessary for contacting, engaging and recognizing donors, managing fundraising events to support the EYC.
Target groups:
- Representatives of Eurpean Youth Capital (EYC) teams that are in the process of implementing or have implemented an EYC initiative. Partner countries were Portugal, Greece, Slovenia, Italy, Romania;
- Representatives of the local youth sector of Varna directly involved in / supporting the application of the city for EYC 2017 and its implementation.
- Interactive sharing of good practices
- Simulation and role plays for practicing grant application and negotiation with donors
- Real meetings with business representatives of big companies and donor foundations
- presentation, effective communication and influencing skills practices
- Group work and creative tasks
- Presentations and discussions
- Group and self-reflection
By the end of the training all participants has explored through different methods how to fundrasing strategy and mindset, how to draft fundrasing sales pitch and to identify potantial funding sources. They had the chance to work on psychological methods to manage their emotions and deal with rejection in the negotation process, as well as to maintain donor relationships and manage official meetings. They have practiced a lot their communication and presentation skills and ended up the training with drafting funding proposals for potential fundrasing events.
As the training is part of an overall training programme, part of the YiA Action 4.6 Project "Youth Capitals in Action", I have participated in the initial process of developing the project application and the training programme with its 5 trainings.
Within this second training we have been two trainers developing the training programme together, participating in all the sessions and delivering training activities as full time trainers. The group was over 30 participants which required strong training presence. I have been full-time-trainer in the following activities:
- official opening of the training and group reconnecting activities
- introduction of the fundrasing topic
- connecting strategic development and financial planning
- European fuding opportunities in the youth field
- meeting the business
- business communication and negotiation skills
- practicing all the topics
- planning and presenting fundraising event
- presenting final results of the gorup work and closing the training