We received an invitation to speak at a gathering on arts and culture for social change, organized by PHILEA, the European network of philantropic organizations (mostly foundations). The invitation comes from none other than @ilariadauria, who now works there. Edgeryders community for the win!
They want to hear about the Sci-Fi Economics Lab work. Dates are 19 and 20 October; the place is Oviedo, in Asturias. I myself will not be available, but @nadia has agreed to take point (and frankly, given the room, I think she is a better fit than I am anyway), with support from @ivan . @giacomo.pinaffo should also pitch in with advice, since we are developing this activity in close coordination with FDCM; and also @yudhanjaya might want to hold the thought in the background.
Our main goal, as always, will be to get high-quality conversations with potential funders. Ilaria should be able to help us optimizing our presence. A list of members of PHILEA (though by no means all of them will be represented in Oviedo) is here.
I suggest we shortlist which organisations we want an audience with, based on their programming. And prepare our participation/ presence/ meetings accordingly.
@ivan@giacomo.pinaffo do you have time to spend a little time to split the list into three and each of us selects 3 appropriate ones for us to pursue?
what do you mean by “each of us selects 3 appropriate ones for us to pursue”?What should we do exactely?
I underline the fact that Carola Carazzone, vice-President of PHILEA is an old and good friend (and supporter) of our Foundation, so we can directly get in touch with her, to better understand which foundations might be more “suitable” for us. I can ask her if she will be at the event, so the representatives of Edgeryders who will be there could have a chat with her.
So, at an event like that one you need to have prepared to meet/ set appointments to meet people ahead of the event. So, we should go through the list and see who is likely to be a good match to fund the work we are doing. And then ask the organisers to broker introductions & or opportunities to met - e.g make sure to invite those people to a session dedicated to our project, organise a dinner etc. To increase likelihood of a return on effort/time at this evnt, we should find people who’s foundation is likely to fund a project like ours (already have a good funding program up and running).
And this means going through the list and based on that picking a shortlist of say 12 organisations we make sure to connect with before and during the event. This ideally would be through a contact who knows what is going on. But either way I dont think we should wait till the actual event to make the first connection. I learned this from American friends who are funded primarily by e.g family foundations. It’s also how we got a grant from one of the major american ones a few years ago. Makes sense?
