Chinese University's NGO management course will teach fundraising and provide it

Classes start next month in a course tailor-made for NGOs, during which students will learn about financial strategies and resource management, as well as how to write proposals to obtain funding - a chronic problem for most small and mid-sized local charities.

The course at Chinese University is designed to fill the expertise gap commonly found in NGOs - where employees are typically trained in social work and community services, not finance and marketing.

NGOs were finding it hard to secure long-term funding, while many big companies were having trouble finding good community projects to fulfil their Community Services Responsibility clauses, said Professor Joyce Ma Lai-chong, from the university's department of social work.

"Courses in strategic management and planning for the non-profit setting are hard to come by for us," said Linda Wong Sau-yung, the executive director of RainLily, which helps victims of sexual violence. She is one of the 25 students selected from 70 applicants. "Even if there are such courses, we don't have the budget to attend them," she said.

Wong said the lack of resources plagued most mid-sized local NGOs.

Ma, who is one of the professors in charge, said this was the first course in the city to give students not just academic knowledge, but the chance of actually obtaining funding.