A Guide for Childreach fundraisers to Explaining Fundraising Ratios for our Challenge Events
Dig Deep is member of the Fundraising Regulator and takes our responsibility to uphold its guidelines very seriously. We are consulting with them at this time to ensure that all fundraising is conducted in a honest and transparent manner with all donors aware of how the money will be used.
Following Childreach’s decision to cease all of its operations, Dig Deep has recently stepped in to offer students who had signed up to challenge events with Childreach the opportunity to move over to our Kilimanjaro challenges. This offer will support our work providing clean water and sanitation to children in East Africa. The money already raised by these students was given to Childreach in good faith. Given this, Dig Deep is to honour those gifts and ask students to raise the rest with us to achieve their target for charitable fundraising. The following information is important for those switching, so that they are informed as to the breakdown of their fundraising in this unique situation, and as to how they can communicate to their donors in a transparent manner.
How Dig Deep calculates the fundraising ratio in normal circumstances
Under normal circumstances the student pays a £295 registration fee from their own funds before they begin seeking donations. This covers the initial payment to reserve their flight and for fundraising support from Dig Deep. The fundraising target is then £2,990 which is usually raised from public donations. £1,495 or 50% of this fundraising target is used for the Charityʼs work and £1,495 pays for the remaining trip costs. Thus the monies gathered from public donations are at least 50:50 donation:cost. We say ‘at leastʼ because many choose to pay some or all of the costs themselves.
We are proud of our adherence to a 50:50 ratio in normal circumstances. There are some factors such as currency variation, and changes to taxation in Tanzania, which can affect the final ratio in a positive or negative fashion. However, by organising the trips ourselves we avoid paying prepayments and charges designed to protect the profit margins of for-profit companies and absorb the costs of fundraising support in the registration fee (which is usually not received by charities working with for profit companies). This means with Dig Deep there are no extra costs to running the challenges that are excluded from the ratio calculations. We are able to do all of this, offer a lower fundraising target, be the only Charity in the UK approved by The Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project as a Partner for Responsible Tourism, and offer our students cheaper extension trip options, because no one involved here in the UK is making a profit from the cost of the trip. Itʼs a win for our students, our beneficiaries and the local people who work so hard to make our Kilimanjaro challenge events happen.
What is different for those transferring from Childreach?
The registration fee and 50% of the fundraising together form the cost of the challenge to Dig Deep (£295 + £1495 = £1,790). In this instance we have not collected the registration fee as this was paid to Rare Adventures and is now not recoverable.
Scenario 1
If a student wishes to raise £2,990 from public donations they must communicate a 60:40 cost:donation ratio.
If they wish to communicate that there is at least a 50:50 cost:donation ratio there are two options:
Scenario 2 - Raise an additional £590 pounds from public donations.
Scenario 3 - Commit to contribute £295 themselves towards the costs of the trip.
Dig Deep recommends that students choose scenario 2 or 3 to communicate to donors, however they may choose to continue with scenario 1 but in all cases must tell their donors exactly how the money is to be spent. This is an important Term and Condition in our agreement and as ambassadors of Dig Deep, we ask that they commit to helping us maintain our excellent reputation for transparency and ethical fundraising.
For media enquires please contact Ben Skelton - ben@digdeep.org.uk
