99% of Donations to this Project are Going to the 7 Charities
I was chatting to some close friends about the 7 Wonders in 7 Days trip over the weekend and one of them, a dear Scottish friend decided to play devil’s advocate.
She pointed out that she would have problems sponsoring me on a 7 day jolly, however physically demanding the trip would be as she wouldn’t get to see all 7 new wonders of the world in her lifetime, pretty much echoing the sentiments a commenter left on the website a few weeks ago.
She also added that most charities tell you how many pennies from each pound they receive goes to the work they are doing and that she wasn’t sure where all the money I was raising was going.
She also argued that it made more sense for me to donate £7000 to all the 7 charities than to try and raise £777,000 by doing this almost impossible trip.
Her comments got me thinking and I decided to do the sums on the numbers I am trying to raise for and during the 7 Wonders in 7 Days trip in September.
Cost of trip, according to Trailfinders = £6511.75
True estimate = £7000*
Amount of money being raised for 7 charities = £777,000
Total amount to be raised through trip = £784,000
Percentage of the amount to be given to the 7 charities = (£777,000 / £784,000) x 100 = 99.1%
*True estimate of the 7 Wonders in 7 Days trip costs:
The quote from Trailfinders does not include internal travel in China, Jordan and Peru; I’m there for such a short period of time they cannot arrange it. If I were there for at least a day things would be very different.
This means that a true estimate of the cost is probably closer to £7,000, the initial budget planned.
I have to raise £7000 to go and as I’ve mentioned a couple of times already, I have plans to do so via an innovative sponsored t-shirt campaign. More on this very soon. I’ve already met with Hwa Young Jung, the graphic designer working on the T-shirt design and will be hopefully blogging more about it this week. Hwa Young is @hwayoung on Twitter.
So far I’ve raised £242 towards the trip, largely from last month’s charity auction which is a start!
As far as fundraising is concerned, rather than spending hours on Twitter and Facebook asking people to donate micro-amounts I realised that I would better off providing them an incentive to give by giving something back in return, something the t-shirt idea will do.
What’s this t-shirt idea?
I’m getting a t-shirt made for the trip which will have signatures of everyone who sponsors me printed on the back. I will be wearing this t-shirt (and others like it) everyday whilst out on the trip in September.
In essence, I’m going to be asking people to sponsor me by sending a digital copy of their signature for adding to the back of the t-shirt, along with a £10 donation.
Sponsors also get a link to their website/blog/Twitter profile etc on a dedicated Sponsors page on the site.
For the search engine optimisation (SEO) experts amongst you this site, just over 3 months old already has a Google Page Rank of PR4.
The link is a lifetime backlink to your website so much like Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Homepage which inspired the idea, the T-shirt and website will be a digital archive of sponsors and supporters that grows in value as the campaign progresses.
I’m really excited about the t-shirt idea and really like the designs Hwa Young has come up with. Organising this has breathed new life into the campaign.
So why am I writing all this?
Well, I’ve started this week fighting and winning a battle over a flu bug. It took me having to slow down to recuperate to realise that this trip is much bigger than I can manage on my own.
I realise there are still sceptics out there and I’m really happy to listen to your concerns, please share them in the comments after this post!
I’m happy I did the sums above as I was quite pleased to discover that I am spending less than 10% of the money I am raising on myself.
Having said all that, I am in this for the long haul. From the very beginning I’ve been approaching this trip very much from a position of faith.
Even now, when it all seems a bit too big for me to handle I’m holding on to this one truth:
I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency].
Photo credit: Top Notch PR
Related posts:
- Dream Donations For Diabetes UK
- I’m Inviting You to Join Me on the 7 Wonders In 7 Days Trip
- Sponsor Me: Add Your Signature to the 7 Wonders in 7 Days T-shirt
- A Quick Sport Relief Update and the Happiness Project
- Thank you for all the donations so far!
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