Are you planning to spend your holidays volunteering and not quite sure if you have enough money to cover your expenses to ensure you have an amazing time while making a real impact? Well, Worldwide Experience has partnered with Fund My Travel which is an online fundraising campaign platform which was created for travellers by travellers, in the hopes that more people will have the opportunity to discover their own meaningful travel experiences around the world. In this blog, we share some important tips to ensure you make the most of your fundraising campaign just using the power of sharing on social media… it just couldn’t be easier!
Online fundraising campaigns are one of the easiest and most effective ways to raise funds for your trip. This platform allows you to run your campaign for 3 months, so it’s often a good idea to select your 3-month period to coincide with your birthday or Christmas, etc. so that you can ask friends and family to contribute to your trip as a gift. (It’s all about working smarter and not harder right?!)
Let’s jump into the nitty-gritty for some great tips on fundraising using your social media platforms. You can use any of your favourite social media platforms, however, the best way to run a successful campaign (and all it takes is a click and share) is to use ALL of your social media platforms, this way you can reach out to as many potential donors as possible! Twitter and Facebook are great for sharing and Instagram, Vimeo and YouTube are a great way to channel potential donors to your Fund My Travel campaign, but it does require an extra click or two and lets face it, in today’s busy world, you want to make it as quick and easy as possible so it is best to use the social media platforms which are the most user friendly (most populated platform where you know all your aunties, uncles, grandparents and distant cousins may use regularly) and channel potential donors directly to your campaign so they can click on the donate button without too much fuss!
Once you have decided on your preferred and most populated platform (or all of them), you will now start building your campaign. Before you start with the text paragraph, it is best to find powerful images and videos that best represent the project you will be volunteering at and of course your reason for choosing the project and the impact you feel it will make on your life.
When you start planning your written paragraph, it is best to keep it short and sweet and to the point and most importantly it must come from you, preferably not from a template as people are emotional souls and your message can be felt if it comes from the heart.
It is a good idea to make sure your post can be shared on various platforms, so make sure your sharing permissions allow for this and encourage family and friends to share your post as well!
And last but definitely very important in this digital age, is to keep your post alive and refreshed every now and again and if you have the opportunity to post fresh content about the project you will be visiting (i.e. news and updates about the project) even better, as this will keep your campaign engaged!
Worldwide Experience team members are available to assist you with fresh photos and videos from your chosen project for your campaign and will gladly guide you on how to best maximise your online campaign. For all the schools, colleges and universities that enjoy travelling abroad, these campaigns are the perfect way to not only raise funds for your group but also a great way to encourage team building and promote awareness for the project and the animals or programmes that they support which they would not be able to do without volunteers!
You can check out this video of one of our 2019 College groups that travelled with us to our Conserving Orphaned Rhinos project in South Africa and read their 2019 blog here. If you would like to sign up for more information on our group tours, please click here or email info@worldwideexperience.com .
Please make sure you use FundMyTravel Worldwide Experience page to set up your campaign!
https://www.fundmytravel.com/partner/Worldwide-Experience
