Fundraise for Your Trip

Overseas travel can be expensive. A number of our participants have successfully fundraised through their own list of contacts to cover a portion of their expenses. We fully encourage you to do this to whatever extent you are able.

How to Fundraise for Your Trip

There are a couple quick steps to get you started:

1) Create a budget. Figure out how much you need. Take into account the cost of the program, the cost of your plane ticket and any other funds you might require for your trip. Try to come up with a fundraising goal.

2) Create a Fundraising Plan.

3) Follow through. Do something every day to forward your fundraising goal.

Sample Fundraising Plan

Write a list of family and friends, local organizations or businesses that may be interested in helping you (in other words—everyone and everything you know. Assume they are all interested unless they explicitly tell you otherwise).

Write a letter to each of them (snail mail, email, or both) about the journey you are about to embark on and why it is important to you. Ask for:

• Monetary donations
• Miles
• Travel gear donations (let them know what you might need, if anything)
• Connection donations (laptop, international cell phone, international phone card, etc.)
• Gift cards (Someone doesn’t have money but they have a target gift card, so be it!)
• Prayer

Create a PowerPoint presentation or a verbal message on what you are doing. Present this to the local organizations, groups of people, or businesses who will hear and bounce ideas off from them. Tell them how long it will be and ask when they have that time available. Voila!

Contact specific people you know on your list that can help host a fundraiser. You can also present at these functions! Here are some ideas:

• Musically talented friends? Have them hold a benefit concert. If they go acoustic, you can have it anywhere. Use a cover charge, raffle tickets, etc. Suggestion: $5 cover, $1 raffle.

• Bethlehem BBQ! Get some friends together and BBQ some Middle Eastern delicacies. Include some pita and hummus, and some tea or coffee the way they would do it. If you know any Middle Eastern friends, let them take you shopping and help you with the BBQ. Suggestion: $10 each for dinner.

• Yard sale donations/Local Bizarre: Ask your friends to donate any junk they have in good condition and sell it in a yard, inside your house as a local “bizarre,” and even promote some of these items online beforehand so that your friends can reserve and buy them ahead of time before the big day. This does work! Clothes, jewelry, cookbooks, waffle-makers, tea, whatever you can think of…and you can also include cookies and other baked goodies as either another thing to sell or as a welcome offering to your “customers.”

• Go to your local business and ask if you can hold a fundraiser there (Coldstone Creamery, Chipotle, and BJ’s are notorious for this). Pick a date you want your people to come, print out flyers, and a percentage of their bill goes straight to you! And the businesses love the extra customers.

For any other ideas, ask your friends/family/local organizations & businesses for any other creative ideas. By asking, they may want to be a part of whatever they suggest.

How it Works

If someone wants to make a check to you that is tax deductible, be sure to inform the party that he/she must make it out to Middle East Fellowship and include a separate note that the donation will go towards you. Make sure in their note they include both your first and last name.

For more about how the process of raising funds might work, please refer to this question from the FAQ: http://www.summerofservice.org/node/14