Frequently Asked Questions
F. A. Q's
Frequently Asked Questions
Welcome to our FAQ page! Here, you'll find answers to the most common questions about our Charity Community, services, and support for your organization’s fundraising journey. Whether you’re curious about the benefits of joining, the resources we offer, or how all this amazing how can be free(!), this section has all the details you need. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, feel free to reach out—we’re here to help!
IDFM stands for International Development & Financial Management. We were founded in 2016 by John Ellams and Samuel Davies whilst on a charity project site inspection in a rural area outside of Seoul, South Korea. A single day project visit turned into a 3 month organisational restructuring, training and revamp of the local partner, ensuring they were sustainable, compliance with the law, capacitated to manage funds and deliver robust and effective programs capable of securing public and grant funding. After sharing similar experiences with many local charities in the UK as well as across Africa and Asia we concluded there is a huge need to support smaller organisations' ability to develop and grow using these tried and tested strategies we have developed over our careers.
IDFM's Charity Community operates as a volunteer-led endevour, where trainning, resources and support is given out for free to members. To join you simply sign up to our patreon page to get access to a host of past present and future training topics and support services>
The costs of running the community are covered by IDFM services LTD as part of its CSR program. Our speakers, contributors and experts share their time as unpaid volunteers because they share our vision of helping the world through helping small charities grow there reach and impact.
You can contact any of our team members and we will be happy to speak to you. If your question is about services and specific training please contact Dr Davies; Samuel.idfm@consultant.com, if you have a technical issues Joining the community, please contact Mr Elmas; John.idfm@consultant.com you are also more than welcome to email us or use the contact us form to arrange a call back to speak on either the phone (UK based), Whatsapp or zoom call (ROTW).
We provide an extensive list of training topics we wish to cover each year- however our topics are also driven by our members and we take regular votes on what topics are most in demand to help focus our support to each of our working groups. Our training and information comes in 5 main forms:
- Training videos paired with a Q&A session
- Live webinars to cover important topics
- Technical briefs and insights on key topics
- Enrolled in IDFM Sector Working Group (coming soon)
- Digital Fundraising Workshops and step by step training
- 1:2:1 video consultations to work through specific issues & opportunities
- A global grant database with new funds updated and circulated weekly
- A proposal submission bank (ranking good and bad proposals)
- Annual fundraising seminars and seasonal specific development courses
We use a 3rd party website provider called Patreon, a reliable and well known site, used to build communties of like minded people who can access content and support for free. This platform is a great way to foster dicussions, conversations and share ideas and feedback. The reason why we choose to use Patreon is to keep the cost of running the community as low as possible.
We ensure our digital community has very low operating costs. Software, administration and editing are the main costs, but thanks to the generous donations from IDFM Services LTD and experts volunteering their time we are able to provide these trainning services to charities for free. We also aim to keep our budget as low as possible, as the less we spend to run the community, the more funds are left over to give away to member in the form of annual grants.
We aim to offer as much support as possible, however as a volunteer-led community with a large number of members, we aim to provide group Q&A, training and consultations to help as many charities as possible.
Over our shared careers, we have worked for over 50 different organisations, from the very top of multilateral policy with the United Nations Development Programme all the way down to the grassroots level with refugee, animal rescue and homeless charities (please see information about our past partners and testimonies here).
Partners & History This scope of the charity sector allows IDFM to have a unique insight into what works for charities and what doesn’t. How charities have grown to have multiple offices around the world and how others have failed in their first year. How some spend millions of pounds and fail to address a water crisis whilst others spend a few thousand pounds to empower local people to address their own problems and use market forces to sustain and replicate this impact (now known as the public-private partnership model). With charity work, it is not just how much you are able to raise that determines your impact, but how you think and address the problem which ultimately determines your success.
Ready to Grow Your Charity?
At IDFM, we provide charities and nonprofit organizations with comprehensive support through free charity comunity model on Patreon. This allows as many charities as possible to access: expert-led training workshops, in-depth videos & Webinars, and group consultations designed to boost fundraising efforts and maximise your organisation’s impact. Whether you’re new to fundraising or looking to refine your approach, our Community has regular videos and training workshops to ensures you get continuous, actionable support month to month.
