From 1 Email to $2m in Lao with Keo Souvannaphoum | Ep 3

Season 2
Written By Pam Cheney

Today’s conversation is with Keo Souvannaphoum, who is the award-winning Country Director in Lao, for CARE International. She has also been an active and dedicated participant in the Global Radicals Fundraising Leadership Programme -generously sharing her experiences with others around the world.

Keo is an expert with deep experience of building high impact community programmes and institutional partnerships with international funders based in Europe and North America. 

But I’m also hoping that she will share more details about an incredible funding partnership that she has built over the past three years, that began with an email enquiry and has now delivered more than two million dollars in funding for the Akha communities in Northern Lao, some of the most marginalised people in South East Asia.

 During this episode, some of the topics we discussed were:

  • Authentic relationships - how they’re the foundations of all our work - whether we’re building them with the communities we serve, with the teams within our causes, and with those who contribute funding.

  • How authenticity helps to manage expectations - how we engage and involve donors in programme design and how we push back - confident in our own expertise and the quality of a respectful and equal partnership.

  • Keo reflected on how different it feels to have full control over a funding partnership - I’ve seen this time and time again all over the world - funding partnerships build confidence, bring joy, and enjoyment to the fundraising and partnership-building process - to the point where Keo now even enjoys attending those out of hours events!

I know you'll enjoy listening to my conversation with Keo  today.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

I hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode of the Fundraising Radicals podcast and that this conversation has challenged, informed, and maybe even inspired you and your fundraising leadership practice. 

This podcast has been made possible by the Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network, Care International, the Ashmore Foundation, and our growing community of strategic partners.

We're excited to explore and share alternative views and experiences so we can all move beyond the narrow experiences that dominate global fundraising practise today so that we're all better equipped to resource our causes and communities wherever in the world we are.

Please do subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice. 

New episodes drop on the 1st & 15th of every month, so make sure to tune in to get more global perspectives on fundraising and leadership in the non-profit sector.

More about Fundraising Radicals:

If you want to find out all the ways in which we’re working to empower, equip and engage fundraisers all over the world:


And we're always looking for new perspectives. So if you would be willing to share some of your experience of global fundraising within a future episode of the podcast, please do email us. It's [email protected]

Pam Cheney

Graphic Designer and traveller

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