Introducing Donorpedia — Hong Kong’s First Donor Dire​​ctory Created by Time Auction Volunteers

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The Challenge — Finding donors is difficult

71% of nonprofits say finding donors that may be interested in their cause is difficult.*

The reason why? There is no centralized directory of active foundations and grants in Hong Kong. 66% of nonprofits find HK’s funding landscape to be untransparent. This presents a great challenge as  76% of nonprofits say finding new sources of funding is extremely important.

The Solution — HK’s first donor directory 

With a talented volunteer community, we posted a Fundraising Researcher project on Time Auction and recruited volunteers to conduct a landscape study of donors in Hong Kong,  with a goal to help every non-profit discover potential donors more efficiently. 

In just two weeks, we successfully recruited 21 volunteers to embark on our research. Each volunteer selected a cause (eg. animal welfare, environment), and looked for 20 nonprofits’ voluminous data in the open domain, including their websites, annual reports, audit reports, event publications and acknowledgement pages, retrieving information on their past donors to put in a shared Google spreadsheet.

Donorpedia Team Photo Small
Volunteers contributed 620 hours to this project

By day, these volunteers include a student, a teacher, a civil servant, an investment banker, a financial analyst, a PR officer and many more. By night, they all transformed into “keyboard warriors”, hunching before computers as they carried out detective-like work to uncover active philanthropists out there. A Whatsapp group was set up, filled with conversations as we shared the difficulties encountered and tips to overcome them. Coupled by intermittent Zoom meetings, our collaborative effort finally took off, with a hefty Google spreadsheet emerging. 

To ensure accuracy, we engaged 10 additional volunteers to cross check the data. A former consultant took the lead to coordinate. A developer advised us on how to use no-code tools to create a website easily. A growth marketing manager and a PR professional also joined to strategize and execute a launch plan. 

620 volunteer hours later, Donorpedia was born! 

Meet Donorperdia, the first crowdsourced donor directory in Hong Kong, a one-stop guide where you can browse 540+ entries of established philanthropic institutions, low-profile family foundations, government grants and other funding sources for non-profits and social enterprises! 

"Hope our small efforts can help you make a more powerful impact on our community!" - Debbie Wong 

With a donor directory at hand, 85% of nonprofits say this would be helpful to their fundraising work. This shows how volunteering can be so impactful — By bringing together awesome, kind-hearted people together in this project, we co-created a much-needed donor directory from scratch. 

Head over to Donorpedia to discover potential donors today! With the cost of 4 cups of coffee, you can gain access to our volunteers’ 620 hours of collective hard work, and save valuable time to effectively fundraise. All proceeds will go to maintenance of the website, updating the directory, and future initiatives to empower NGOs/social enterprises in fundraising. 

We’d love your input 

As Donorpedia is a volunteer-run grassroots initiative, we’d love to hear from you if you have any source of active donors in Hong Kong that we might not have come across. 

If you’re a donor in search of trusted partners for your philanthropic endeavour, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us to connect with our community of impactful nonprofits dedicated to making Hong Kong a better place! 

Get in touch with us at [email protected]

*Data from a survey conducted with 118 NGOs and Social Enterprises in July 2021

Updated on 9 March, 2022
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Donorpedia: 一個由Time Auction義工團隊創造的捐助機構資源庫
非牟利機構的挑戰 — 尋找捐助機構的困難 71% 的非牟利機構表示尋找對其感興趣的捐助者是很困難的。* 為何籌款這麼困難? 其一因為香港沒有一個基金和撥款機構的中央名冊。 66%的非牟利機構認為香港的籌款環境相當不透明,令籌款成巨大挑戰,因為76%的非牟利機構指開拓新資金來源對它們十分重要。 解決方案 — 香港首個捐助機構資源庫 Time Auction是一個義工人才網絡,我們遂在網站張貼籌款研究員項目,招募一批義工就香港的捐助者進行研究,以協助非牟利機構更有效率地發掘潛在捐助者。 短短兩星期內,我們成功招募了21名義工展開研究,每人先選定一個慈善領域(例如動物權益、環保等),然後搜尋20個非牟利機構在公開網站的浩繁資料,包括網頁、年報、審計報告、活動刊物、鳴謝聲明等,從中找出它們過往捐助者的資料,輸入一個共享的Google試算表內。 日間這些義工的身份是學生、老師、公務員、投資銀行家、財務分析師、公關或其他,夜間他們全搖身一變成為「鍵盤戰士」,伏在電腦前進行偵探式工作,找出香港活躍的慈善家。他們建立了通訊群組,不時對話,以分享工作遇到的困難和解決心得,有時候更配合視像會議。隨着時間推移,眾人的群策群力漸見成果,一個龐大「有份量」的Google試算表出現了。 為確保資料準確無誤,我們另招募了10位義工,以覆查資料。一個前商業顧問接手統籌工作,另一程式開發員則就如何利用「無程式碼工具」快速建立網頁提供意見,一個市場推廣經理和一名公關亦加入,就推展項目的策略和執行提供協助。 經過一班義工620小時的工作,捐助機構資源庫終於誕生了!  Donorperdia是香港首個眾包的捐助者資源庫,讓你一站式瀏覽超過540個非牟利機構和社會企業可申請的慈善捐助機構、低調的家族基金、政府撥款及其他資金來源! 「希望我們小小的努力可以幫助您對我們的社區產生更強大的影響!」義工 Debbie Wong 說 。 85%的非牟利機構指一份機構資源庫,對其籌款工作很有用,這凸顯義務工作的影響力 — 透過匯聚一批有心人,我們從零開始建立了一份非牟利機構急需的中央捐助者名冊。 現在就瀏覽Donorpedia,一起發掘潛在捐助者! 您只需付出4杯咖啡的價錢,就可享受一批義工620小時研究的成果,將節省的時間聚焦放在其他籌款工作上。所有收益均撥作維護此網站、更新名冊,或未來協助非牟利機構及社企籌款的工作。 歡迎您的投入 由於Donorpedia是一項全由義工推動的項目,如果您認識一些香港的活躍捐助機構,不妨告訴我們!  如果你是一名捐助者,想尋找可靠的夥伴,以達成你的慈善志業,請聯絡我們,我們會為你連結一個朝氣勃勃、致力令香港更美好的的非牟利機構社群! 聯絡我們﹕ [email protected] *數據來自於2021 年 7 月與 118 家非牟利機構和社企進行的調查。
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