NGOs Encouraged To Have Endowment Funds

The President of the National Philanthropic Forum, Dr. Ben Okrah is calling on all Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’S) to have aside an endowment fund to support development initiatives of their organizations. He believes strongly that if this is done, it will help communities to develop in the long run.

Speaking to Modernghana.com, he disclosed that the initiative came up during the National Philanthropic forum held last March and it is geared towards ensuring that NGO’s do not become overly reliant on donor agencies. He also added that if this is done it will help sustain Non-Governmental Organizations because they will not always have to go out and look for money due to the fact that they will be having their own money.

“NGO’s for the sake of sustainability needs to have endowment funds”, he said.

Dr. Ben Okrah explained that endowment funds are funds that an organization collects from the public and also foundations and other donors and do not use immediately for programs but rather put them in savings and use the proceeds of that savings for programs.

“We thought that if all NGO’s can do this, then NGO’s will not always be going out seeking for money but the funds that they have in savings can generate some income which they can use”, he stated.

Moving on, he revealed that encouraging NGO’s to have an endowment fund is something they are doing nationwide. They are also encouraging communities to do something similar to that but that will be called Community foundation.

“Communities are also going to be setting up this endowment funds but in their case we are going to call it a community foundation”.

According to the President of the National Philanthropic Forum, if communities have a fund that individuals and personalities can donate to, then they can be assured to sustain their developmental projects in their communities.