We are grateful to all of CARTHA's energetic volunteers who are continuing to identify, provide, pool, and leverage both financial and non-financial resources in both traditional and non-traditional ways to advance the work and vision of our organization.
Initial Funding
CARTHA founder Usha R. Balakrishnan took a 2-year self-imposed sabbatical of sorts to pursue her personal dream and vision to establish CARTHA. From 2006 to 2008, she served on a full-time basis as the Founding President, CEO and Board Chair, and made the requisite financial commitments from her personal savings to jumpstart the formative phases (e.g., to gather the initial team of volunteers to incorporate the organization, gain 501c3 tax-exempt status, develop and maintain the website content, launch the CARTHA Fellows program, design some early pilot-level programming based on the C2G2SM training model, and support travel expenses for reaching out to prospective program partners and donors.) Usha views CARTHA as her life-long companion to whose continued and long-term success she will continue to commit modest resources of time and money. Usha has embraced CARTHA as the recipient of a portion of whatever she earns from her ongoing professional endeavors, including via her strategic advisory services firm, CarthaGlobal Ventures.
Our collection of volunteers, well-wishers, and program partners have continued to provide various forms of in-kind support and moral encouragement needed to pursue our early activities as a young organization. Our donors similarly have allowed us to keep continuing on our journey in bold-and-new yet patient-and-steadfast ways to keep us balanced between CARTHA's short-term and long-term objectives.
Current and Future Financing Needs
CARTHA hopes to establish itself as a sustainable entity by attracting funding from a variety of sources both for core infrastructure support as well as for project launches:
Year 1 & Beyond: Cultivating a base of individual donors that (a) provide the needed funds for initial development of CARTHA programs, particularly those which may not fit into existing grant-making programs of external agencies and foundations; and (b) build an operational endowment for a strengthened and stable organization over the longer term.
Year 2 & Beyond: Developing and submitting grant proposals to philanthropic foundations, government agencies and corporate foundations that may be willing to support CARTHA's programs and/or core operations.
CARTHA needs – and is seeking – core infrastructure support for its operations as follows:
Project-specific support funds
Outreach activities and program evaluation expenses
Communications materials such as brochures, printed materials, and website
Legal and professional fees
Operating costs, including travel, conferences, membership fees, and supplies
Support for activities undertaken by CARTHA Fellows and Student Interns
Compensation for staff and professional consultants
If CARTHA’s work intrigues you, please call CARTHA Founder Usha Balakrishnan at 319-248-9625 or send her an email at cartha (dot) global (at) gmail.com.
