A Recap of the 2025 Public Sector Workshop

We Decided Something on Day 1

The workshop opened with a statement that sparked debate and stuck with the room all week: Africa has enough. It just needs to believe it can sustain itself.

Before the sessions got technical, the opening conversation did something more important because it shifted the frame. The question being asked by most people walking in was: where do we find more funding? but by the time they left the room, the question was different: what is stopping us from going after the funding that already exists? That is not a small reframe. It is the difference between a workshop that sends people home with a list of donors and one that sends them home with a different posture. 

Ruwaydah Abdulrahman; Director Fundraising Strategic Partnerships & Communications Nature State followed with 17 years of fundraising experience distilled into one line that pinged in mind throughout the week: "There is money out there. You just need to know how to ask for it."

What the Sessions Actually Covered...

• The legal landscape and why most funding efforts stall before they start.

Dr. Edwin Wanyonyi CEO Universities Fund walked participants through the Public Finance Management Act, government stakeholder engagement, and what compliance actually looks like in practice. For many, this was the session that named the thing nobody had named before: the reason so many funding efforts fail is not the idea, and it is not the proposal. It is the legal pathway. When that is not followed, nothing moves.

What made this session especially valuable was how specific it got. Dr. Wanyonyi drew directly from his career, from Kenya Wildlife Service to the Universities Fund, to show how the same compliance failures appear across institutions of completely different mandates. He walked through the do's and don'ts of public sector funding engagement, shared actual proposal templates, and unpacked why public-private partnerships, despite being widely discussed, so rarely get executed. Participants left not just informed but equipped with frameworks, documents, and a clearer picture of where their own institutions were exposed.

• Bilateral donors; who gives what, to whom, and why it matters.

Timothy Odipo and Pinky Zala from the RMD National Treasury broke down Kenya's bilateral donor relationships with specificity that most participants had never encountered before. Denmark funds health and water. Italy supports education. Germany funds water-related projects. Japan and India prioritise infrastructure and agriculture. The takeaway was a combination of information and mapping strategy. If your project is not aligned to your bilateral partner's priorities, the proposal is irrelevant before it is read. And if the Treasury is not involved early, the delays are almost guaranteed.

Between them, Timothy and Pinky covered the full external funding pipeline, from bilateral government-to-government grants through to UN and multilateral mechanisms. They explained the step-by-step process for accessing and utilising these funds, including how tax exemptions work, how IFMIS fits into the picture, and why delays happen even when the grant agreement is signed. Both offered their contact details and opened the door for individual follow-ups which several participants took them up on during the week.

• The private sector is more accessible than most assume.

Henry Kilonzo Senior Manager - Foundations Programmes Safaricom and M-PESA Foundation delivered what many described as the standout session of the week. He opened up about how the foundation is funded; through a percentage of Safaricom's revenue, explained the application process, and then did something unexpected: he asked to review proposals from some participants personally. That is a result.

What made the session genuinely useful was how transferable the insights were. Henry broke down what corporate foundations actually look for, and it is not always the biggest or most polished proposal. It is alignment, specificity, and evidence that the organisation asking has the capacity to deliver what it promises. He walked through the common mistakes institutions make when approaching corporate funders: going in too early before the relationship exists, asking for too much without demonstrating incremental trust, and submitting proposals that speak to the organisation's needs rather than the funder's priorities. Participants left with a clearer sense of how to position themselves, not just to Safaricom, but to any corporate or foundation partner, and several left with direct next steps.

• Resource mobilisation as strategy, not reaction.

Mike Muchilwa's Day 3 session tied the week together. The common pattern in public sector institutions is this: a funding gap appears, there is a scramble, a proposal is written, and everyone hopes. He challenged that pattern directly and walked participants through what a proactive, three-year resource mobilisation strategy actually looks like, using SWOT and PESTEL analysis, donor mapping, and measurable targets. The message: organisations that raise money consistently are not luckier than organisations that don't. They are more prepared.

The session went deep into the mechanics of building a resource mobilisation strategy from scratch, starting with an honest institutional audit. Where are you now? What funding do you have, how stable is it, and what happens if it disappears? From there, Mike walked participants through how to define realistic funding targets, map the donor landscape relevant to their specific mandate, and build a strategy that their finance, programmes, and leadership teams could actually execute together. He was particularly sharp on one point that rarely gets addressed openly: most institutions do not fail at fundraising because they lack opportunity. They fail because internally, nobody owns the function. There is no dedicated capacity, no clear accountability, and no budget allocated to the work of raising money. Until that changes, strategy documents remain documents.

• Proposals don't win. Projects do.

Maurice Omondi Manager CPF Foundation | KAFP Board Chair lead a session on proposal writing opened with a line that landed hard: "Projects win or get rejected, not proposals." You cannot write your way out of a weak idea. The session covered the fundamentals strong executive summaries, clear problem statements, realistic budgets, airtight monitoring plans,  but the real value was in the honesty. Most proposals fail because the thinking behind them was not done before the writing started.

He distinguished between concept notes and full proposals, explaining that a concept note is a teaser designed to spark interest, while a full proposal carries the weight of justification, planning, and structure. He walked through the most common failure points: vague objectives, budgets that don't align with activities, monitoring plans that are added as an afterthought, and executive summaries that bury the lead. Participants worked in small groups, pitched to each other, and gave feedback in real time which made the session feel less like a lecture and more like a rehearsal for the real thing.

What the Data Says

Of the participants who completed the evaluation survey, 80% rated the workshop as having fully met their objectives with no one rating it below a 4 out of 5.

100% said they would be happy to recommend it to other Sector Proffesionals.

The sessions on donor engagement and corporate foundations exceeded expectations for the highest number of participants. The general ambience rated excellent by the majority.

And perhaps the most telling number: 70% of participants expressed interest in joining KAFP as members by the end of the week. Several signed up on the spot; including representatives from Kenya Ports Authority, UNESCO, KEMRI, and the National Olympic Committee of Kenya.

The Part the Report Cannot Capture

In as much as the final day fell on a public holiday, attendance remained strong. Some Sessions ran over because the conversations were too good to cut short. Participants were were pushing back, asking hard questions, sharing their own failures, and lessons from previous mistakes. 

One participant said it best: "The room itself was a resource. I made connections here that I will carry for years."

The 2026 Edition

The 2026 Annual Public Sector Resource Mobilisation Workshop returns to Lake Naivasha Resort from 1st to 5th June 2026, under the theme: From Strategy to Implementation: Scaling Sustainable Resource Mobilization in the Public Sector.

2025 was about understanding the landscape, 2026 is about building inside it.

KES 70,000 (KAFP Members) | KES 75,000 (Non-Members)

1st – 5th June 2026 | Lake Naivasha Resort 📞 0718 041665 / 0790 213130 / +254 143 031925 📧 info@fundraisingkenya.org 💳 Paybill: 522533 | Acc: 8064178