Kiva founder to speak at first IFC Online fundraising conference in May
Posted by Bryan on February 4, 2009
The Resource Alliance, organisers of the annual International Fundraising Congress that last year attracted some 900 fundraisers from all around the world, has today announced that it is to host what it describes as “the world’s first virtual fundraising conference”, from May 12-14 this year.
The organisation trialled a series of webinars last year and the success of these led to the development of ‘IFC Online’, which it hopes to make an annual event.
For its first year IFC Online will be focusing exclusively on new media fundraising because the organisers, probably rightly, believe that it will be the online fundraisers who will be the most comfortable with an online conference format. However, the plan is to expand the programme in future years to attract fundraisers from all disciplines.
The conference programme will comprise ten one-hour practical workshops (including 30 minutes q&a) delivered twice over the three day conference, plus three 45-minute plenaries (including 15 minutes q&a). The full programme has yet to be finalised, but the plenary speakers will be Kiva founder Premal Shah and YouTube’s Ramya Raghavan.
As well as the main conference sessions, there will also be an online community space with topic discussion areas, downloadable materials, etc. The organisers say that “the site will take on the buzz and frenzied pace of the best offline conferences” – which should make for an interesting experience.
Conference registration will cost US$275 (£190). For more details just go to www.fundraisingonline.com.
Jill Ruchel said
This sounds fantastic. There is a huge need for this. What timezone will you do it in, and can it be recorded so that you can listen later if the timezone is too inconvenient? (I’m from Australia)
Bryan said
Hi Jill, it looks from the Resource Alliance website (http://www.resource-alliance.org/events/741.asp) that they are going to schedule their conference for GMT – with presentation downloads and podcasts for people unable to catch sessions live.
John Scarpucci said
I understand each presentation will be given live twice to give as much global time zone coverage as possible. Presentations will be recorded for later viewing.
Mal Warwick said
Hi, folks. I’m involved in organizing the IFC Online, and I can tell you that we hope to reach around the globe. Workshop sessions will be repeated — live — to make them available at more or less convenient times everywhere. We’re still noodling with the schedule, but that’s the plan.
Bryan said
Hi Mal, thanks for the clarification. Sounds like it’s going to be a great event.