Marketing and Fundraising with the African Community Education Program

Project Goal

To help ACE stabilize its funding and to increase the efficiency of their fundraising process, our group worked directly with the staff and board members to develop a compilation of evaluated potential fundraising campaigns as well as a fundraising manual for existing fundraising initiatives. The compilation of potential fundraisers will allow ACE staff and board to quickly determine the cost and benefits of fundraisers before devoting time and resources to them while the manual will simplify the planning process for the larger events ACE holds throughout the year. These two deliverables are an important step to help ACE develop a funding raising strategy that will allow the program to expand and prosper in the many years to come.

Objective 1) Identify ACE’s fundraising priorities;

Objective 2) Improve ACE’s current event operations;

Objective 3) Analyze potential ACE fundraising initiatives;

Objective 4) Promote the implementation of the recommended fundraising operations amongst  the current ACE staff, volunteers and board members.

Project Sponsor

The African Community Education Program is a Worcester non-profit organization focused on the education of  African immigrant and refugee youth. The organization began as hour long tutoring programs for Liberian youth  that was run by a few University of Massachusetts Medical students. With the driving forces of Kaska Yawo, Olga Valdman, the Worcester African community and UMass Medical students, the tutoring sessions evolved into a week-long afterschool and Saturday program. ACE is unique in that it focuses on all the aspects of its students; helping with their school life, home  life, and social life. ACE works to keep all of these aspects in balance so that its students may thrive.