Earlier this year, I spent a month in Sierra Leone training local women candidates in the run-up to the July local elections. As we designed the training program, and as we adapted the program to fit the needs of the candidates, fundraising was certainly the most difficult skill to address. In local elections in Sierra Leone, and in many other countries, constituents do not expect to give money to the campaign of the candidate. Rather, constituents (and chiefs and local businesses and clubs, etc) expect to RECEIVE money from the candidate. In Sierra Leone, this practice is called “shake hands” and it is particularly cumbersome for the women candidates who traditionally have even less campaign money to spend than their male counterparts.

Our goal, therefore, was to help these women to educate their constituents and to raise money by creating a network of supporters. We advised the women candidates to each find 10 women that they know support them, women such as their best friends, their mother, their aunties, their daughters’ best friends. These women would then be asked to pledge to contribute their support and a certain financial amount to the campaign, perhaps as little as half one US dollar. But the women would also pledge to each recruit 10 other women that would support the woman’s campaign and pledge a small financial amount. When all of these women come together, there is a group of 100 women ready to contribute their time, their support and their money to the campaign.

While I wish that I could claim to have invented this fundraising scheme, in truth women all over the world are already implementing this type of network strategy. A few months ago, I attended a women’s campaign fundraising meeting in Trinidad where I met some of the women on the forefront of women's campaign fundraising techniques. One of the women that I met had served as a City Council member in Asuncion, Paraguay, and decided to run for mayor of that town. She developed a network of 300 people, each of whom gave a bit of money each month. Each month, she sent out a letter to each person, letting them know who much money had been raised, how much spent, spent on what. She even put the budget and the expenditures on a website. She lost by 50 votes, in part because of her opponent’s questionable tactics, but she had created a system of campaign fundraising that proved highly successful.

There numerous other women and organizations around the world working to develop innovative means of providing financial support to women candidates at the local level. Here is some information about other individuals and groups helping women raise the funds necessary to run a successful political campaign:

COWAN- (Nigeria) At the meeting I met a Nigerian woman named Chief Bisi Ogunleye who is the co-founder of the Country Women Association of Nigeria (COWAN). This is a microfinance group for women, the headquarters of which is located in Ondo State, but with state offices throughout Nigeria. Started in 1982, the group works on the 10 Trusting 10 principal, wherein women form groups, save money and then take out loans for businesses. It started with 225 women members and now has 278,000. In the late 90’s, this group began to also provide microfinance loans for women running for office. They provide loans to women who are considering running so that they can implement a project in the community they will represent. They also provide loans for campaign finances, as well as mobilize women to campaign for the women candidates. In the 2003 elections, they helped 82 women, 64 of whom won their race.

Network of NGOs- (Trinidad & Tobago) Hazel Brown is the head of the Network of NGO’s, an NGO working to get more women in politics in T & T and throughout the Caribbean. She started a program called Put a Woman, which is loosely modeled on the COWAN model of 10 Trusting 10. In the most recent elections, of the 34 woman running, all were assisted by Put a Woman; 11 were elected.

Women Helping Women – (Jordan) Organized in 2005 with the assistance of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Women Helping Women is an organization that helps Jordanian women overcome the social, economic and political challenges to assume a presence in Jordanian governance. It is the first initiative of its kind in the country dedicated to supporting women's candidacy for elected office. Members of the network are individuals who are committed to recruiting and funding viable women candidates; helping them build and run effective campaigns; training the next generation of political activists; and mobilizing voters to help elect women candidates across Jordan.

Piper Stege Nelson works for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, previously as a Senior Program Officer on the Women's Political Participation Team and now serves the Institute's Development Manager.