Interview w/ Jon Huggett, former Bridgespan partner

Interview w/ Jon Huggett, former Bridgespan partner

Hi team,

Wanted to let you all know that we just posted up notes from our conversation with Jon Huggett, a former Bridgespan partner who’s done a lot of work with international NGOs. You can find those notes here.

Some key takeaways as they pertain to finances:

  • Large NGOs like WorldVision, Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children have had lots of success raising money through small donations from a large number of people, and they don’t have the reach of Wikimedia or the range of opportunities to make contact with people
  • Capacity is key to successfully raising money this way: Jon estimates that organizations spend up to 1/3 of the money they raise on their fundraising costs
  • When working with large networks (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, etc.), making explicit the value transfer between different levels is important
    • For example, if a chapter raises a large amount of money and transfers it to the Foundation, they would expect to see some type of value transferred back to them
JohnF19:57, 11 December 2009