Capacity Building and Sustainable Development of Post Bellum SK

Description

Since 2015, due to the change of the director, in a relatively short time, the Post Bellum organization has grown rapidly from the one employee per organization to five full-time employees and nine part-time employees per organization. Externally, it has also been cooperating for a long time with almost 40 documentarians and 15 lecturers, who participate in the implementation of the two main pillars of the organization''s activities. The above-mentioned rapid growth was mainly due to the success with grant fundraising (for example, from various foundations, grant schemes of various ministries). However, the organization currently has an acute lack of funding for its capacity building and sustainability. For this reason, Post Bellum is focusing on its development in the project and plans not only to acquire new donors but also to strengthen the base of existing donors.

The project aims to reduce the organization''s dependence on project grants towards the development of fundraising from individual and corporate donors, as well as to strengthen the organization''s presence in the regions. The director completes a course focused on the effective management of the organization and with the help of an external consultant, the entire organization goes through the process of strategic planning for the period 2021 - 2025. Last but not least, the project also aims to implement a project management application.

The aim is also to focus on the identification and training of Post Bellum SK representatives in individual regions of Slovakia. This would strengthen the nationwide nature of the organization, volunteering, as well as fundraising from local companies, individual donors/donors, and especially from local government grant schemes.

The project will be beneficial mostly for the intern or extern employees of the Post Bellum, but also the director and the individual donors.

 

Summary of project results

The main goal of the project was to strengthen Post Bellum in Slovakia (in the field of HR, brand, fundraising). The planned goals have been met and the current organization is working on their sustainability and expansion.As part of the project, the Salesforce CRM system was created and implemented, relevant parts of the website were improved, as well as communication and fundraising campaigns in the online and offline environment, which contributed to the development of individual and corporate giving. CRM / Salesforce also assists the organization in developing volunteering or the Memory of the Nation College, working with contact databases. Institutional sustainability was achieved by the organization in the following ways: 1) by diversifying revenues towards deviating from grant funding, 2) the director of Post Bellum completed a Leadership course and regular mentoring meetings with a mentor - Milan Šagát. The leadership course focused on effective management of the organization (in order to achieve higher standards of management) and sustainability of the organization, 3) involvement of external consultants / facilitators who successfully guided project implementers through a strategic planning process for 2021-2024, which will directly lead to institutional sustainability 4) implementation of project management application / software.All activities planned within the project were prepared with emphasis on their sustainability and the sustainability of the organization as such in the future (not only from a financial point of view). By strengthening fundraising from individual donors (through PR / FR campaigns), companies, as well as obtaining funding from local governments, the organization has partially managed to reduce its dependence on grants - especially individual fundraising is an effective way to achieve this goal.