CASE STUDY
MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES | DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS
A pilot fundraising programme with a R100,000 target — run for the first time anywhere in the world alongside an active MSF humanitarian programme. It raised more than three times that in year one.
Team LEADER | TRAINER
Face-To-Face Fundraising Contract Role
CAPe TOWN
Primary Location
R100 000
Fundraising Target
THE BRIEF
Build sustainable funding, from the ground up
MSF’s humanitarian work in South Africa depends on sustainable, predictable funding, not one-off donations. To test whether face-to-face fundraising could build that kind of base locally, MSF ran a pilot programme with a modest first-year target of R100,000.
What made it unusual?
This was the first country in the world where MSF ran a face-to-face fundraising programme alongside an active humanitarian programme already operating on the ground — meaning the model had to prove itself in real time, with real stakes.
The Programme This Funded
Twenty years of HIV and TB care in Khayelitsha
The money raised fed directly into one of MSF’s longest-running and most influential humanitarian programmes anywhere in the world.
MSF’s work in Khayelitsha began in 2000, at a point when advanced HIV was killing roughly 1,000 people a day nationally and no antiretroviral treatment was available through the public health system, a crisis deepened by political denial at the highest levels of government.
Working alongside the Treatment Action Campaign, MSF staff and local nurses pushed for accessible treatment against serious political resistance, helping force a national reckoning on access to care.
MY ROLE
Team Leader, start to finish
Recruiting and running a face-to-face fundraising team from scratch, with the systems and rigour to make it sustainable.
TEAM TRAINING
Recruited and trained the face-to-face fundraising team from the ground up
Script writing
Wrote the donor conversation scripts used at every location
Location strategy
Selected fundraising locations and secured the permissions to operate at each one
Support material
Sourced the fundraising materials the team needed on the ground
Activity tracking
Tracked daily fundraising activity across every site
Scheduling
Built and managed shift schedules across the full team and footprint
Reporting
Ran performance reports on fundraising activity to guide where effort went next
The Fundraising Footprint
Nineteen locations across Cape Town
From the CBD to the beachfronts to the edge of the Winelands, a footprint built to reach as many potential donors as possible.
Adelphi Centre
Sea Point
Bayside Mall
Tableview
Beachfront
Camps Bay
Beachfront
Muizenberg
Beachfront
Sea Point
Blue Route Mall
Tokai
Cape Gate
Okavango
Canal Walk
Century City
Cavendish Square
Claremont
Eikestad Mall
Stellenbosch
Fountain Centre
Rondebosch
Garden Centre
Cape Town CBD
Long Beach Mall
Noordhoek
Parow Centre
Parow
St Georges Mall
Cape Town CBD
The Paddocks
Milnerton
Tygervalley Centre
Tygervalley
Vangate Mall
Athlone
Willowbridge
Bellville
Built To Last
Not a spike. A sustained base
The real proof of a face-to-face fundraising model isn’t the first donation, it’s whether people keep giving.
The pilot converted into an ongoing base of 424 monthly donors, together contributing more than R30,000 every single month. This became a recurring funding stream MSF could plan around, not just a single good year.
KEY RESULTS
R300k
3X Target Achieved In One Year
R30K +
Ongoing Monthly Donations
424
Monthly Donors Recruited
What The Funds Made Possible
What R300,000+ actually meant
Fundraising numbers only matter for what they become. Here’s what this programme’s funds went toward:
497
Severely malnourished children given life-saving care
560
People cured of tuberculosis with a 6-month course of treatment
373
Babies provided with anti-HIV treatment
7,460
Children provided with treatment against malaria