Fundraising Pack

Welcome to your digital Project Trust Fundraising Pack to help you get started on your fundraising journey.

Fundraising to support your volunteering placement is an important part of your Project Trust experience and an opportunity to learn and develop skills for life.

We are here to support you every step of the way to help you achieve your target. Over the past 50 years we have successfully supported over 8,000 Volunteers. In the following pages, you will find advice, ideas and how-to guides for key parts of the fundraising process. Read through everything here and refer to it throughout your fundraising journey; it contains all the tools and information you will need to hit your target.

Bookmark this page! It is not accessible through the rest of our website or search engines – this information is for your benefit.

Fundraising Basics

Key facts relating to your fundraising as part of the Project Trust journey.

Getting Started

Simple steps to set yourself up for your fundraising efforts – create a plan and start shouting about your exploits!

Ways to Raise

Stuck for ideas? Look through our suggestions to kick-start your event planning.

Sending in Money

How and when to send in your raised funds to us: guidelines and deadlines.

Charity Trusts

Charitable Trusts have the potential to provide a huge amount of your funds.

Information for guardians

Share this page with your guardians and help them to help you!

Join Tom, Kat & Ellie on Tuesday 12^th December to chat with other Volunteers and think about planning for the start of 2025.

Register for this event!

As ever, this event is totally optional, so please do not worry if you can’t attend. We’ll have time for chats & meeting other Volunteers, event planning workshopping, and space to ask staff members any Project Trust-related questions you may have. Hope to see you there!

Your systems of support

We are here to help you at every turn. Staff members are dedicated to assisting you with this part of your journey, as well as events and programmes in place to support you in your endeavours.

Here are the main ways you can contact us for advice and support. You can also message to request a call back if you prefer speaking directly or book a 1-to-1 meeting with Tom (see to the right).

Fundraising Team (Coll Office)

fundraising@projecttrust.org.uk

Tom (Volunteer Support)

Tom.Chambers@projecttrust.org.uk

+44 (0) 7483 111 291

@tomchambers.pt

Sheila (Finance Director)

Sheila.McNeil@projecttrust.org.uk

Tom is available every week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons for 25-minute meetings. Use these to ask questions, discuss ideas, or chat about Project Trust! It’s your time – so use it whenever you like.

Book a Fundraising Chat with Tom

We coordinate WhatsApp groups for each cohort while you are fundraising. These are good places to workshop ideas informally and ask each other for advice. Please ask Tom to be added, and make sure he knows which number you wish to use.

Many Returned Volunteers are keen to give back to the Project Trust community. We pair Volunteers with Mentors based largely on geographical location (both placement country, and within the UK). Please tell us if you would like a mentor, and we will find you a suitable match! We put you in touch, but leave arranging chats up to your preference with your Mentor. Some pairs chat every few weeks, others every few months.

Online Teams meetings discuss all things Fundraising! Guardians are always welcome. Each meeting is focused on a different theme, followed by general questions and discussions.

Our next meeting will be in December.

Tuesday 12^th December, at 6.30pm
with Tom, Kat & Ellie

The last meeting was Festive Fun(draising) Ideas with Tom on October 26^th.

We email a fundraising newsletter every Season full of updates, ideas, and sharing each other’s successes – the most recent is available here:

Fun-raising Quarterly 1 (Oct. ’23)

Meet the Team!

Fundraising Resources and FAQs

We have collected the resources from around this pack into the list below, for quick access:

The absolute deadline to send all funds is two weeks before your flights from the UK. We cannot facilitate a project for you if we have not received a minimum of the fundraising target by this date.

We are a small charity and have key milestones along the way which we require:

50% for flights & placement – we need all Volunteers to send in 50% of their fundraising target by the time we confirm specific projects and book your return flights. This is May 1^st for 12-month Volunteers, and October 1^st for 8-month Volunteers.
90% by Training – by the time you come to Coll for Training, we will incur significant costs and require you to be nearly complete with your fundraising. This is July 1^st for 12-month Volunteers, and December 1^st for 8-month Volunteers.
100% a fortnight before Departure – we need a fortnight to make sure all donations are properly allocated to your total. Departure is during August-September for 12-month Volunteers, and January for 8-month Volunteers.

We recommend aiming to complete fundraising by your Training course, as this gives you downtime before departure to ensure you have everything prepared.

If you have concerns about reaching a given milestone by the stated deadline, please contact us (especially Tom or Peter!). We are here to help you – we want you to succeed and be able to have this experience, and we will always work with you to this end.

The funds that you raise go directly to Project Trust and support the work we do, ensuring young people continue to have the opportunity to Volunteer around the world. We outline the average costs to our operations below.

If you want more information on what this looks like, please talk to us about it. We are the only non-profit charity in this field left, which means 100% of funds go directly towards facilitating the work we do – none of it is taken for profit or shareholders.

All funds contribute towards our charitable mission. Laws on how charities can use donations mean we cannot give back your donations apart from in exceptional circumstances.

There are a few reasons why we ask you to fundraise for your placement. It means you can take ownership of year whilst also building and developing skills for the future. It also means that this opportunity can be open to all young people, regardless of background.

Our volunteers have said that fundraising developed their skills in:

Confidence
Hard Work
Social Skills
Problem-solving
Perseverance
Organization
Resilience
Communication
Independence
Financial Maturity

In a practical sense, we must ask Volunteers to raise funds towards their own placement because it is simply not possible for us as an organisation to cover the entire cost ourselves.

We keep your target as low as possible by fundraising on your behalf wherever possible, and through our status as a non-profit charity – 100% of your funds are used for your projects, and nothing is sent to shareholders.

We currently fundraise approximately a third (33%) extra for each Volunteer to facilitate your placements.

Unfortunately, Project Trust cannot allocate Gift Aid towards individuals – as explained in Sending in Money. This is because Inland Revenue states that it can only be used towards a charity’s “general aims and purposes”.

Please still encourage Gift Aid as we use it to keep the following year’s total lower (so you are benefitting from previous Volunteers’ Gift Aid!).

For every donation from a UK taxpayer who completes a Declaration form, we can claim an extra 25% of their donation at no cost to them.

You must never profit from fundraising, so all funds donated must go either to the charity (us), or back to the donor in full.

Charitable donations are also non-refundable, so unfortunately we cannot refund any monies which we have received. We can, however, set aside the money you have fundraised should you choose to postpone your volunteering (e.g. until after university), so you won’t have to start from scratch if you return to us.

Because donations are non-refundable, we ask you not to send in any personal money such as job earnings or savings until you wish to use them for a key milestone (50% for flights, 90% for Training, 100% before departure).

Please note that sponsorship and fundraised money (donations, events – anything which invokes our name or logo, or the term ‘charity’) must be sent to us within 28 days, as this is given with the understanding that the charity (us) receives the amount in full.

If a donor changes their mind and wants a refund, you can refer them to us as long as you have sent us their donation already.

See Sending in Money for more information.

“Hello, Tom here. I personally raised about 50% of my fundraising total just from writing a letter outlining my year, and then editing the address for each individual Trust. One letter, over 100 Trusts contacted. Much less stressful than organising several extra events! One Trust sponsored me £1,000 despite saying my project wasn’t their usual focus, purely because my letter and leaflet impressed them.

“In other words, the effort of writing a single letter and researching Trusts could earn you thousands of pounds of funding.

“I am always available to proofread letters, so please, send them in! Stamps are expensive and old-fashioned, but for 100 stamps you might raise most of your target.”

There’s no one-size-fits-all, but we emphasise strategy so that you can schedule breaks (for holidays, exams, etc.). Weekly events can quickly become exhausting. We recommend one larger event every 3–4 months, and smaller events more frequently between these. See Getting Started and Ways to Raise for more.

This varies from country to country, but all Volunteers must contribute £150 for Visas and immigration costs to make it fair for everyone.

As for vaccines, this depends on where you are and where you’re going. Try asking your GP first, as some parts of the UK will offer free jabs on the NHS. Please contact the International Programme team for more information (international@projecttrust.org.uk), such as how to find out which vaccines are required for your Project country.

Pies and Statistics

Fundraising Target Cost Breakdown

Sheila has collated the breakdown of how we use the funds you raise during fundraising. This is both for your information, and for you to share with sponsors – many Volunteers add a pie chart like the one provided to their fundraising leaflets.

5%	Selection & Pre-flight costs
7%	Training (4-day residential)
5%	Debriefing (2-day residential)
27%	UK-based support
13%	International support
17%	Insurance (inc. self-insured)
13%	Living allowance
13%	Return flights

These costs are averaged across all of our country programmes.

Fundraising advice from previous Volunteers.

Since 1967, over 8000 young people have volunteered with Project Trust in more than 67 countries.

We asked our volunteers departing this summer what advice they would give to volunteers at the beginning of their fundraising placement. Here are some of their responses: