Impact Story
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Raising Revenue to Raise the Roof: A Partner Story
The organization: MySkills Foundation, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The impact: New funding plan for at-risk youth
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MySkills Foundation, located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing second-chance opportunities for at-risk youth to acquire fundamental social, living and workplace skills. MySkills students often come from dysfunctional families and have had problems in traditional learning environments.
The foundation has ambitious goals for the future, including a new, 1,000-student campus in Kalumpang, which is 90 kilometers north of Kuala Lumpur. Scheduled for completion in December 2019, the campus will serve as the hub for MySkills’ holistic training environment for youth between 14 and 20 years old.
Their vision is big – and it got a helpful boost when a 3M Impact team came to work with MySkills for 10 days in late 2017.
Noelle Alexander (U.S.), Nancy Brandt (U.S.) and Karla Chavez (Mexico) had been asked to explore ways to add value to MySkills’ vision. While interviewing stakeholders, they discovered there was a need to reassess the foundation’s dependency on government funding which was at risk due to potential changes in spending priorities. The 3M Impact team evaluated initial steps MySkills had taken, through the use of social enterprises and social media, and then suggested additional steps that could help the organization scale up its non-government revenue sources.
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Students working in the MySkills social enterprise caféAccording to MySkills CEO Devasharma Gangadaran, two major areas the team looked into were volunteers and corporate partnerships. “They helped us match our volunteer force to relevant areas, to reduce operating expenses. They suggested ways to engage more shared community ownership of the MySkills cause. And they created detailed, step-by-step initiatives, including a volunteer manual and analytical tools, which helped us plan effectively for the new year. We expect their recommendations will help us raise one million in Malaysian Ringgit ($246,000 USD) in funding in 2018.”
About the results achieved by the 3M Impact team, Devasharma says, “MySkills Foundation was deeply impacted by the relentless effort of 3M to transform lives of youth at risk in Malaysia. We had a vision for a self-sustaining campus with numerous enterprising ventures in the future, and they helped us make it real in a short amount of time.”
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