Purpose and Introduction

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Higher Education System Strengthening Activity (HESSA) is a partnership between the Government of Pakistan and USAID to address key challenges in the higher education sector. The project is focused on raising the capacity of Pakistan’s HEIs to address the country’s mismatch between graduate skills and modern workplace needs. The Student Support Services (SSS) Component of HESSA, which this activity supports, seeks to improve pathways to connect graduates with market-led, demand-driven jobs through the strengthening of Pakistani HEIs’ student support services.

HESSA seeks to enable and empower students—especially women and marginalized students—to access and succeed in higher education by building interventions that elevate student “power skills” and global competencies, creating strong support networks that set students up for post-graduation success. SSS interventions are clustered around six focal areas: Alumni engagement, career readiness, mental health and psychosocial support, student microenterprise development, student leadership and co-curriculars, and financial aid. This activity directly supports the Financial Aid focal area.  

Background and Context

Over the past 9 months, the 16 HEI participants of the Financial Aid focal area have made great progress in developing financial aid fundraising plans for their institutions. During the June 2023 SSS Annual Summit, participants finalized their fundraising plans with Dr. Siddiqui and jointly drafted the following key performance indicator for Year 3 (FY24) of the project which directly relates to the need for this proposed training:

• Operationalize HEI fundraising plans

In Dr. Siddiqui’s continued 1:1 and group sessions with financial aid participants, he has found that participants are struggling in two areas of fundraising: prospecting and stewardship.  Prospecting is the process of finding new donors from the various constituencies of the institution.  Stewardship is the relationship between the organization and donor from the moment a donation is made to the next time they make a donation. 

The goal of this training is for Dr. Siddiqui to have dedicated time focused specifically on these two areas of support so the HEIs can further operationalize the plans that they established in FY2023. Additionally, this activity seeks to (1) identify local best practices to help create confidence and legitimacy; (2) provide a quick overview of the trainings already delivered for those who are still struggling as well as those who are new to the project (i.e., participants who are replacing former staff members). 

Training Focus

The activity will focus on the following topics:

• Prospecting
• Stewardship
• Local best practices in fundraising

Objectives & Expected Outputs

As a result of this activity, participants will be able to:

• Articulate best practices in prospecting and stewardship.
• Conduct exercises and real-life scenarios in prospecting and funds stewardship.
• Identify HEI partner best practices in fundraising in Pakistan.

Activity Plan and Schedule