[RESOURCE] Learning to Love Budgeting

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By Meg Davis

There’s no getting around it – for most of us, creating a budget is a joyless task. But while it requires dusting off math skills some of us hoped we’d left behind in school, budgeting can also help you to develop useful and practical plans. This week’s blog post describes how to create a very basic program budget.

We recommend creating a budget that is relatively detailed from the beginning. You may or may not decide to send this detailed budget to donors when you apply for grants (more on this at the end), but you should still create one for internal use in your organization.

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[REPORT] Scaling Up: Capacity-Building in China

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by Gisa Hartmann

With the beginning of the new year, Asia Catalyst paved the ground for rapid growth of our capacity building program in China and Southeast Asia. This year in China, Asia Catalyst will begin short-term capacity-building partnerships of three to six months with seven new Chinese NGOs run by drug users, sex workers, and LGBT people — all communities directly affected by HIV/AIDS.

This year, an expanded technical assistance grant allowed us to issue a general call for applications from grassroots NGOs in China that want to strengthen their organizational management skills and build their future stability.

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[COMMENTARY] Emerging Human Rights Issues in China’s Response to HIV/AIDS

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There was a visible presence for China during AIDS 2010, which included a delegation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from the country. Chinese officials also presented on the government’s work on HIV/AIDS, which elicited critical feedback from activists. In this article from the HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review, conference attendees Sara L. M. Davis and Li Dan outline the main human rights issues in China’s response to HIV/AIDS.

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[UPDATE] An Exchange Between Shawn Shieh & Meg Davis on Chinese NGOs

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In June 2010, we posted this
blog post on how China’s new nonprofit regulations – including new,
stricter regulations on INGOs in China’s Yunnan Province — were affecting
grassroots groups. The essay was reposted to Chinapol (aka C-Pol), an email
list of professionals working on Chinese policy issues. The following
discussion between Asia Catalyst ED, Sara L.M. Davis (also known by her
nickname, Meg) and Shawn Shieh
of Marist College is reprinted here with consent from both.

Shawn Shieh writes:

Meg,

Thanks for writing this up.  I’m actually in the middle of translating the
Yunnan regs, so if anyone has the translation already and would be willing to
share, I’d be most grateful.

I had one question and a comment.  In your discussion of the Yunnan regs
on foreign NGOs, you note that foreign NGOs will have to apply for approval
with the provincial Civil Affairs and then go on to say that this will make
them [government-organized NGOs, or] GONGOs.  I didn’t understand the
connection.  How does applying for approval translate into becoming a
GONGO?

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[RESOURCE] 10 Mistakes to Avoid in a Conference Talk

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By Meg Davis

Next month, Asia Catalyst is supporting a delegation of Chinese AIDS activists to go to Vienna for the International AIDS Conference. Like (no doubt) many of you, we’ve spent a fair amount of time sitting through boring conference presentations around the world. But making a conference presentation valuable and memorable is possible. Here are ten tips we came up with:

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