Earned Income for Financial Sustainability in Indonesia: The Dian Desa Foundation
By Rustam Ibrahim | August 2003 | View Full Text | Email Link

Abstract

The potential for both success and challenges makes experiences in conducting earned income activities critically important to understand further. Based on primary and secondary documents in Dian Desa as well as interviews with foundation staff, this case study explores the experience of Dian Desa in this field. It tries to answer how this organization experimented with earned income activities; how it developed earned income approaches that can meet its social goals; how its earned income is managed; the challenges Dian Desa continues to address; and the success factors that other foundations could potentially incorporate into their fundraising strategies.

The experiences and challenges faced by Dian Desa demonstrate the following six important lessons regarding earned income as a mechanism to build financial sustainability: 1) Perseverance and leadership are critical. 2) Sufficient seed funding needs to be raised upfront. 3) Staff needs to have marketing skills. 4) The organization's core competency must be applied. 5) Know the community being served. 6) Recognize what the enabling environment will and will not allow.

This paper is part of the collection Financing Development in Southeast Asia: Opportunities for Collaboration and Sustainability produced with support from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.

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Philanthropic Actors & Issues | Business Philanthropy & Social Investment | Philanthropy Support Organizations | Resource Mobilization | Indonesia | Southeast Asia