Funding for Victim Assistance

The provision of quality services for crime victims requires a strong funding base. During the past decade, strong fund-raising skills have become essential job requirements for many victim advocates. This chapter examines sources of potential funding from the public and private sectors and offers guidelines for a variety of fund-raising strategies.

Learning objectives include:

• The major sources off federal funding for crime victim service programs.
• The fundamental concepts of and significant challenges to fund-raising.
• Critical elements of fund-raising.
• "Nuts and bolts" of grant writing.
• Grant seeking on the Internet.
• An overview of cause-related marketing.
• Increasing fund-raising skills and identifying corporate, foundation, and grant funding sources.
• Promising practices in fund-raising for victim services.