Fundraising to help pay to volunteer abroad
More fundraising ideas are on their way...but here is one to keep you going...
Why not try to obtain part or full sponsorship from a local business or newspaper and agree to write reports for them? They gain good publicity from sponsoring you and publishing your reports and you get at least a proportion of your costs covered. You have nothing to lose writing some introductory letters about yourself, what you intend to do, why you are doing it and what you hope to achieve. You then include a polite request for consideration of sponsorship and explain the potential benefits to the organisation or business you are writing to with some suggestions about what exactly you could do for them - how would you promote them?
Prepare a travel blog on the internet before you go and seek sponsorship for your travels using that. Perhaps an online travel company would be interested in you promoting them on your blog especially if it has interesting content. You could provide links to that company so that they get promotion. You could sell the concept to them by explaining that all your friends and family will be accessing the blog on a regular basis whilst you are away. Indeed it will likely receive a lot more visitors than just those you send the web address to. We have listed some possible blog sites in our keeping in touch volunteer guide.
Further to the above, you could consider adding a 'donate' button to your blog where people can contribute to your trip and you could find inventive ways of thanking them, perhaps with a surprise gift from your volunteer trip for one lucky donor?
REMEMBER - you are going to be a voluntary worker - you are doing something good that will be of benefit in many, many ways. So why not get yourself sponsored or raise money in other ways?
If you have any fundraising ideas or suggestions for this volunteer guide, we would be grateful if you could let us know so we can pass them on to others.