In order to better understand our supporters’ opinions toward HER Fund’s work and to evaluate our own past work, we conducted the “HER Fund Supporters’ Survey 2008” for the first time in July this year. We sent out 243 questionnaires and received 40 responses, a response rate of about 16%.
Here, we wish to sincerely thank those who responded to our questionnaire and had given us much valuable feedback!

Although the response rate was not too high, we still value each and every response, and all the feedback are very useful for us to improve our work in the coming future. The following is a brief summary of the results:

Concerns of our Supporters:

The three issues regarding local women that our supporters are most concerned about are (1) sexual violence against women (80%), (2) changing discriminatory gender culture (77%) and (3) economic justice for women (65%). These three issues have always been the focus areas of projects receiving grant support from HER fund in the past years. In the future, we will continue to pay attention and to support projects tackling these issues in defending women’s human rights.

Reasons for Supporting HER Fund:

Also, nearly 80% of supporters said that their main reason for supporting and will continue to support HER Fund was because they “identify with HER Fund’s vision and missions”. This response from our supporters showed that we need to remain committed to upholding HER Fund’s vision, that is: “believe in the wisdom and capability of women to determine our own needs and aspirations” and be determined to eliminate any form of sexual discrimination. Additionally, nearly 50% of supporters choose to support us because our funds are allocated to women’s projects that are most neglected by mainstream service and with the least resources. This reflects that our supporters agree with our work to support socially vulnerable groups.

Half of our supporters expressed interest in visiting our grantee organizations. We hope to arrange grantees’ visits for our supporters in the future and hope this will help our donors and supporters to have direct understanding about HER Fund’s work and the projects that we supported. Another interesting finding was that over 60% of our supporters expressed that they first learned about HER Fund either from family members, friends or other charitable organizations. From this response, we can see the significant impact of social networking! Do you have any friends who are also concerned about women’s rights? Please help spread the word about HER Fund’s work, it will make a difference. 
 

Last but not the least, regarding the overall impression about HER Fund, over 80% of the respondents expressed that they felt satisfied with our work. This has given us huge encouragement and yet we can see there are still a lot to be improved in the coming future. Here, we wish to express our deepest gratitude to each and everyone of our supporters and working partners, for being considerate and supportive to our work. Should you have any opinions or suggestions regarding our work, you are most welcome to share with us at any time.

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HER Fund is about to begin our 6^th round of invitation for funding applications. We will be hosting a briefing session on Friday, November 28, 2008 at 2:00 P.M. in Room 103, 1/F, 15 Hennessy Road, the Duke of Windsor Social Service Building. During the briefing, we will talk about the application procedure, the application form and some related reminders. We would like to cordially invite any interested organizations to attend. If your organization is interested, please download and fill out the reply slip, to be faxed or emailed back to us.