Where does your money go?

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If you're wondering why a 3 month expedition seems to be more expensive than a 3 month volunteering project then here's an explanation to help you understand why.

On an expedition we are working with teams of people, often up to 120 people at one time, and transporting them into remote regions to a variety of project sites, ensuring their safety as well as being in constant communication with them at all times.

We also run expeditions year round and invest in a permanent field base and in full-time staff in each country in order to develop genuine partnerships to ensure that projects are worthwhile and sustainable.

Money from venturers covers the cost of running our permanent field bases and the costs of having permanent staff - without this infrastructure we simply could not build up the relationships we have with the communities and project partners to create sustainable projects.  However, it does not cover the costs of building materials and local labour for our projects and we fundraise for these separately.  Raleigh venturers work on between 40 and 60 projects a year and we need to find additional funding for these costs.  We also need to find additional funding for our partnership programme so that we can enable young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to join Raleigh expeditions and funding for our host country venturer programme.

Here's a more detailed breakdown of where your money goes:

72% of the money you raise goes towards the cost of running the expeditions.  This includes:

  • Staff, accommodation and support costs in each country
  • Host Country Venturer programme- while extra funds are raised in country for the HCV programme, this only covers about 15% of the full cost of involving HCVs on expedition
  • All transportation in country, including vehicles, fuel, hire costs when needed
  • All safety equipment, including radios, satellite phones, medical equipment etc
  • All accommodation and food costs while on expedition
  • Transport and collection from airport in country
  • Training workshops in the UK in preparation
  • Recruitment of volunteers, vetting of applications, selection of volunteer managers
  • Insurance costs for health and medical care and/or repatriation

14% is fundraising and marketing, which includes liaising with charitable trusts and government departments that provide funding for disadvantaged youth, engaging with our alumni support groups, maintaining our website and other publications.

13% is the cost of head office overheads including monitoring and evaluation, finance, HR, etc.

1% is the cost of the governance for running a charity