Volunteer Abroad with the Global Volunteer Network

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Fundraising

You have already taken the first big step towards volunteering abroad. We want to do everything we can to help you make this dream possible. Whether you have one month or one year until your program starts, the following advice has been prepared in order to give you the ideas, tools, and inspiration you need to effectively and efficiently fundraise for your volunteer trip.

Compiled using the successes of past volunteers, you can be sure that the advice is relevant to you and will help you fundraise so that you can fully and wholeheartedly engage in your international volunteer experience. You will also receive access to our comprehensive Fundraising Guide once you have signed up for one of our programs. The information in the guide will further help you to plan and achieve your fundraising goals.

Resources

GVN PowerPoint Presentation

We have prepared a PowerPoint presentation about GVN you can use to make a fundraising presentation. The size of this file is 14.5MB. You may download it at: http://www.globalvolunteernetwork.org/resources/gvn.ppt.

Just right click on the link and "save as". We ask that you don't modify the existing slides, although you may wish to add some extra slides about your own trip to the end of the presentation.

Great sources of funding

Family and Friends

Friends and family will be really supportive of your goals – include them in your plans as much as possible. Let them know about the volunteer project you will be taking part in, talk to them about the needs of the community and you’ll find most people will want to help. Not everyone has the opportunity to volunteer themselves, friends and family will be eager to help in any way they can. Many small donations will soon add up.

You might ask talented friends or family members to produce goods for you to sell or raffle. As they say ‘many hands make light work.’ Ask them to join you running a bake sale or car wash by providing a venue, special goods, or their time and hard work.

Community and neighbourhood

Negotiate a percentage of profits from a local business: Have a local business offer to donate a percentage of its profits on a specified day (an Irish bar could donate 2% of its profits on St. Patrick's day). Promise the business owner you will get as many people as you can to their business on the specified day.

Community groups: Civic groups such as Rotary, Lions, Elks, certain Unions, and special interest groups (like the Sierra Club or Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) might be interested in sponsoring you, especially if you can give them a special presentation when you return from overseas.

Sell something door to door: The traditional candy sale can work if you mark everything up enough. Volunteers with artistic abilities can produce their own items (t-shirts, mugs, pins, etc.) to sell. Try to calculate the sale price in relation to the cost of the materials and the time spent making and selling their production. Such items could also be sold at a fair or similar event. If it is around the holiday season, try getting in early and selling something people would need to buy anyway, like candy near Halloween or candy canes before Christmas.

Provide a service in exchange for donations

Remember the days of mowing grandpa's lawn for $5? Here's your chance to do again and, of course, up the price just a little. Ask family and neighbors if they would like Saturday afternoon off while you tidy up their kitchen, wash their car, vacuum their house, or babysit their children. Remember to tell them what you are fundraising for, and how much you would appreciate them allowing you to offer a special service that will directly support your trip to help others.

You can also offer to give classes or private tutoring in an area you are experienced in. Determine your skills/experience and offer to teach others for a fee. If you can speak French, give French lessons. If you are an accounting wizard offer to give seminars to people who struggle with accounting.

Write Letters (Grants and Trusts)

Many local charities and community organizations will have a budget for supporting members of the community. Research grants and sponsorships available in your area and write in requesting support.

Fundraising Event Ideas

Raffle

Whether it's in person or over email, ask everyone you know to buy $15 raffle tickets to be entered into a prize drawing. Offer several prizes for the first, second, and third names to be drawn. For prizes, use unwanted presents from birthdays or Christmas, cinema tickets, bottles of wine, crafts you bought on past travels, or any other goodie you see on sale at the mall. You can also approach shops with your plan and request for donations.

Quiz Night

Put questions together about the country you are planning to visit: the native animals, year of independence, current president, size of the country, current events, or popular movies filmed there. Ask participants to pay $10 to enter for a chance of winning the grand prize (see "Raffle" for gift ideas). You can even go 'jeopardy' style by only awarding points for answers given in the form of a question (eg. "What is Kenya?"). Be creative, and don't be afraid to ask someone else to help you organize and/or run the quiz!

School Presentation

School children in your district would probably be interested in helping impoverished school children. Asking for their fundraising support would not only be advantageous for but you would also provice you with the opportunity to educate young people about another part of the world. You could offer to have an educational meeting in which you teach school kids about any number of issues. Many schools would probably be interested in an informational meeting after you return and might be willing to pay for it. You could offer to prepare a multi-media presentation that includes photos of your trip, cultural music, and a display of crafts and local arts you purchased.

Success Stories

Finding the Sweet Tooth

Natalia Villalpando Paez from Mexico called everyone she knew to take orders for cakes she was going to bake and sell for fundraising. On each cake she included a promotional advertisement which contained information about the project she would be participating in and suggested for buyers to purchase more cakes for special events or for presents. After a few months, people became used to the service and began to call her on a regular basis with their orders.

Natalia also arranged to sell her cakes at a local candy shop. Each time a cake sold, the shopkeeper would call her to come to the shop so that she could collect the money. This way, the shopkeeper would not be losing any profit by paying for her cakes first. She said, "It was a lot better to give people something for donating money. They were happy that I was working for it and not just asking for money."

Natalia volunteered in India and also participated in the GVN Training Program in New Zealand. She encourages other volunteers to "make whatever you do well and put a price on it. There are always people willing to give a nice gift."

Multitalented Fundraisers

Teresa Coates and her two children, Stuart (14) and Audrey (9), held several garage sales over the summer; screened and sold t-shirts; marketed items on eBay (for example, sewing patterns, fabric, and their game system); and asked for cash gifts for their birthdays and Christmas. "We had a lot of positive response from people because they wanted to help us find a way to help others. We were encouraged by so many people, especially because I was taking my children and many thought it would be an amazing experience for them," Teresa said.

Teresa also set up a spot on her web page where people could contribute to their trip and received contributions that ranged from $20 to $300. With all of these efforts, they were no doubt successful fundraisers and they volunteered in Vietnam for January and February 2007. "It was amazing and there's no way I could have managed it without all the fundraising," Teresa said. "A lot of people want to help poor and orphaned children, but can't give up their jobs or simply don't know how to contribute in an effective way. This is a very concrete way of helping and people can see that their contributions are going to a good cause.