On Thursday, November 22nd, 2018, Lagos, Nigeria will witness the official launch of Fundanenterprise.org at Best Western Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos. Fundanenterprise.org is a donation-based crowdfunding website (first of its kind in Nigeria) built specifically for fundraising activities, solely in form of grants to support start-up, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria and beyond.
Date: Thursday, November 22nd, 2018
Venue: Best Western Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos
The website is owned and operated by the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Crowd Funding Foundation, a new not-for-profit organization in Nigeria. Given the imbalance in the Nigerian economy and its recent rating as the poorest country in the world, it is high time individuals and groups joined hands together to make our economy work again. It is high time we began to support one another in every little way in order to expunge the poverty index and make our economy great again.
The MSME Crowd Funding Foundation, through Fundanenterprise.org, is here, not only to provide the much-needed relief to start-ups, small and growing businesses but to change the way Nigerians in particular and the world in general support business operations. Crowdfunding (raising funds from a large number and spread of people all over the world, majorly through a website) is a globally accepted financing method, practiced as a much easier alternative to the traditional fundraising through the Capital Markets and other Financial Institutions.
Crowdfunding has been used globally and successfully to fund a wide range of entrepreneurial ventures/activities and community-oriented projects, as well as test the community’s reception of a particular project or business idea to find out if it will be successful before embarking on such business. The MSME Crowd Funding Foundation, Nigeria, believes that by bringing this practice of crowdfunding for enterprises closer home, Nigerians can benefit from the much-needed ease of funding / financial support for their personal and group enterprises.
The mandate of MSME Crowd Funding Foundation is therefore solely to help build thriving enterprises, as many as can possibly be; to guarantee a meaningful life and livelihood for Africans, and Nigerians in particular. This mandate is carried out through three (3) key functions as follows:
Skills Training: The Foundation provides its enterprise community members with the necessary financial and soft skills training to start, manage and grow their businesses. Most importantly, the Foundation works with intending start-ups to develop a business plan that is realistic and practical.
Crowdfunding: www.fundanenterprise.org is a crowdfunding website designed to link enterprises that need funding, with good people who love engaging in philanthropic activities and changing lives.
An African proverb says “If you think that you are too small to make a difference, you have not spent a night with a mosquito”. Every small donation, from any volunteer, would make a big difference in our community and by extension, in our country.
Handholding/ Monitoring of Enterprises: A compulsory one-year hand holding support is put in place to assist enterprises who are beneficiaries of grants or backers’ grants from www.fundanenterprise.org put a proper legal and operational structure around their new businesses. Existing businesses are also offered the same business process improvement to ensure that they henceforth grow more, generate their own funding needs and also assist other start-up and struggling enterprises with donations.
It is all intended to be a communal enterprise building circle, to empower our people and build our economy.
The MSME Crowd Funding Foundation, through Fundanenterprise.org, is here to help our country and our world, in the following ways:
People who love to engage in philanthropic activities (both in and outside the country) can now help build enterprises and change lives very easily by donating to enterprise building on Fundanenterprise.org.
Donors can get the products and services they love, through rewards that campaign creators are encouraged to offer on the website.
People with entrepreneurial drive and energy, can now very easily get the funds they need, to start up or scale up their businesses, through their well thought out fundraising campaigns to be published on Fundanenterprise.org.
Young businesses will get it right from the start, as the Foundation and its handholding partners will set up the right legal and operational structure around their businesses for free.
Prospective and existing business founders will find the much-needed knowledge sharing partners/ mentors for free, in the Foundation and its consultants.
Campaign creators will have their business plans critiqued and reviewed by professionals, to ensure that they are good enough to turn out viable enterprises.
Campaign creators can pre-test the public’s reception of their intended products or services through the pattern/level of donations and reactions they get on their campaigns on fundanenterprise.org.
The Foundation can help build the consultancy industry by engaging as many qualified consultants as possible, to render professional and training services to our enterprise community on fundanenterprise.org.
Our people and their dependents can have a meaningful livelihood.
The country will increasingly become an entrepreneurial hub and our economy can grow to reach its full potentials in the ranks of developed economies.
It is the belief of the MSME Crowd Funding Foundation that unless many more people undertake meaningful and viable enterprises; unless the elite and more successful people in our society make it a point of duty to support budding and struggling enterprises, our economy will continue to be underdeveloped. The Foundation is, therefore, calling on everyone out there who wishes to make an impact in the society (no matter how small) to support us in this cause to make our economy buoyant again.
Donate to an enterprise today on Fundanenterprise.org. Photos of the Foundation’s latest enterprise building projects in partnership with its handholding partners – Vi-M Professional Solutions (a tax, audit, and business advisory services firm) are displayed below: