On March30th, HelpArgentina held the first meeting of the year for the Member Organizations (MO) at the Microsoft Argentina auditorium. The goal was to provide a meeting space for the OSC (Spanish acronym for Civil Society Organizations) and to give them tools to use when developing resources abroad.

HelpArgentina also took advantage of the event to announce new services and opportunities, and to share last year’s results with all the attendees.

Among the most important news, the Matching Challenge Grant II was presented, aiming to increase the foreign donations that HelpArgentina’s MOs receive. The OSCs that achieve at least three new foreign individual donors who make a monthly contribution by credit card will receive a bonus grantprovided by HelpArgentina. (For more information go to
http://www.helpargentina.org/en/matchingchallenge)

In addition, HelpArgentina announced that it has recently formed an alliance with APARU (Spanish acronym for Association of Argentine Professionals in the United Kingdom) in order to provide UK residents with an efficient means of making donations to argentine nonprofits.

Thanks to the agreement, HelpArgentina’s member organizations will be able to offer UK resident donors the chance to contribute through APARU and to gain access to tax benefits in that country.

In addition, Martín Giménez Rébora, a member of the HelpArgentina’s Board of Directors and head of  the UNICEF in Argentina, area of resources’ mobilization, presented a seminar on the basic guidelines for developing an Annual Fundraising Plan.

Since 2011, HELPARGENTINA has organized two free meetings annually for the organizations that are members of their network to improve their fundraising skills, with an emphasis on developing foreign donations.
Currently, 72 organizations all of which are distinguished by their standards of transparency and  best practices, are members of HelpArgentina.

HelpArgentina is constantly working in order to enable more Argentine nonprofits to secure international donations, and, to create new opportunities for more organizations to receive foreign support.

In our first newsletter of 2012 we want to share the main achievements of 2011 and the aims and plans for the new year.

For the first time we surpassed a million dollars in donations to HelpArgentina, which is an important milestone in the development of our organization. In 2011, over 1,200,00 dollars were donated from abroad for the benefit of more than 80 nonprofits organizations in Argentina.

In HelpArgentina we understand that this achievement symbolizes a high level of confidence on the part of thousands of people and many organizations, which inspires us to redouble our efforts to continue expanding the bridge created by our founders between people around the world and the argentine social sector.

We remain dedicated to facilitating the link between both individuals and international organizations and argentina’s nonprofit organizations as means to promote social change in our country.

In 2012, we will work so that even more Argentine nonprofit organizations have the opportunity to develop fundraising that comes from abroad. In order to do this, we will continue to expand the services and offer additional incentives to the Argentinean social sector.

For donors, we will continue expanding the Transparency Reports (http://www.helpargentina.org/es/view/transparency_reports/es) in order to assure that they have detailed information about the organization that they are supporting. In addition, we will continue to work in close collaboration with argentine Diaspora organizations and with international institutional donors that invest in our country, making HelpArgentina a valuable ally by, streamlining and optimizing their invaluable support efforts.

Finally, we want to thank all of the individuals, organizations and companies who have made the important achievements of our organization possible, especially the Argentine organizations and donors who have demonstrated their trust us in us.

Thanks to everyone for their support during 2011 and we look forward to working with you in 2012 to continue changing the social reality in Argentina.

Sincerely,

Federico Centeno Lappas

Executive Director

HelpArgentina

In January, a group of MBA students from the University of San Diego provided volunteer  counseling to the Fundación Sagrada Familia with the goal of analyzing its program “Sume Materiales” (Add Materials) and proposing a plan to strengthen it.The program Sume Materiales serves as a link between people who have building supplies or furniture to donate and the people who need them. Thanks to the program, over 3,500 families have improved their homes.

The students of University of San Diego arrived at Argentina through InsightArgentina, the volunteer program for foreigners that HelpArgentina has offered since 2005.They spent a week working in Fundación Sagrada Familia´s supply warehouse, which is located in the Boulogne neighborhood, in the province of Buenos Aires.

There, the students worked with members of the organization, interviewed the plan´s beneficiaries and identified alternatives for improving the program They, also participated in several activities designed to help integrate the volunteers with the organization.

At the end of the week the students presented their plan to strengthen the Sume Materiales´ program at an event at the Argenta Tower Hotel. Alejandro Besuschio, Executive Director of the Fundación Sagrada Familia, Bob Hannan, a member of HelpArgentina´s board, Mercedes Alvarez, HelpArgentina´s Coordinator of Relations with Social Organizations, and Jaime Gomez and Denise Dimon, professors at the University of San Diego participated on the panel that evaluated the team’s work and recommendations.

With the support of HelpArgentina, the Argentina Chicago Foundation built a new classroom for the PreSchool N° 4648, located in the department of Rivadavia, in Salta province.

Argentina Chicago Foundation, also known as the Argentineans’’ home in the city of Chicago raises funds in different ways in order to finance social projects in Argentina. For this reason,the Foundation asked HelpArgentina (HA) to present initiatives related to infrastructure needs in schools.

Different organizations from HelpArgentina’s network presented their proposals and the American organization decided to collaborate with the refurbishment and enlargement of the School N° 4648,located in the remote spot called El Gritao, more than 400 kilometers away from Salta’s capital. Thisproject was presenteded by Fundación Escolares, which was also in charge of carrying out the construction work.

Through this initiative, the construction of a 36-meters classroom was funded. It was used to create the preschool level, specificaly, a five-year-old room for the School N° 4648. The five-year-old class is the first compulsory school year according to 16th article of the Argentinian EducationNational Law N° 26.206. In fact, the project allows children from El Gritao to enjoy the right ofeducation.

It is important to highlight that this School’s refurbishment and enlargement is the 4th project thatthe Argentina Chicago Foundation has carried out in collaboration with HelpArgentina.

Throughout this challenge, HelpArgentina aims to multiply the donations that member organizations receive by their efforts of new generation resources in foreign countries and to raise their basis of regular and monthly donors.

HelpArgentina will give an amount of money to the first member organizations that can reach certain development goals of foreign countries. In this way, our member organizations will be provided an incentive to capitalize their potential and generate donations of foreigners. The amount that HelpArgentina will give is the total amount up to USD 10,000.

• Aim: to get new donors monthly basis by credit card of at least USD 25.

• The challenge will be open from 04-01-2012 until 07-31-2012.

Prize categories

Aim and Prize

• 3 new donors USD 400.-

• 6 new donors USD 1,000.-

• 12 new donors USD 2,500.-

*Donors must be people and can live in any country, but Argentina.