Good write-up! I'll add some tips for a website too:

* unless you're an expert (but even then...) don't bother with making/designing a website by yourself. I just buy some webspace and put on WordPress (or get it hosted at Wordpress for free). It's a blog program which you can fancy up with skins and graphics. It's not very hard. Also, it has lots of plugins for running adds (nice for your sponsors), Google Maps (to show maps with your tracklogs).
* advertise your website. That's not the same as spamming, but for instance: put it in your tagline on the various forums (like I do). Start topics in relevant forums, telling about your trip and pointing people to your site. Also, the more sites link to yours, the higher you get ranked at Google.
* Post regular updates everywhere
* Use Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Hyves etc. Use keywords at Twitter (#keyword) to get noticed. These things help to drive traffic to your site, and that is good for sponsors. The more people come to your site, the better.
* Don't put (all) your video and photos on your site! It only fills up space and consumes mega-bandwidth, which will cost you. Put the video on Youtube and embed it on your site. It will display in your site, but the bill for the bandwidt is for Google. Put your photo's on some free online photostore (that allows embedding on your own site). Or just put a few photo's on your site, and link to one of the online photostores (some offer slideshows) that you can get for free almost anywhere. And make small versions of your photo's before you put 'm on your site. You can specify a display size, but it's still the big file sitting on your site, costing your storage and bandwith. And a picture that it reduced by your browser often looks ugly (and is slow, because it still has to load the big bugger).

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Short Way Down 2009

[quote=Alexlebrit;176471]It depends what type of sponsorship you're looking for, you've mentioned two types here.

1. Charitable fundraising
2. Sponsorship to cover the cost of your trip

Ok, starting with:

Charitable fundraising: depending on where you live, you could go to a site like Justgiving.com and pick a charity already on it which is close to your heart, and then fill out the forms and voila, you have an online fund-raising page. Then contact the charity itself, even if they're on justgiving, it's good to make contact, if they're not it's essential, charities have their good name to protect, and while a wodge of cash is nice, they like to give the right image too. They might also have people who know about fundraising and might be able to give/loan you some materials (leaflets, balloons, collecting tins, t-shirts etc) to help.
Then you'll just need to tell as many people as possible about this, start with your local media (newspaper, radio, tv and work up, also try any specialist magazines). Tell your mates, get them to tell their mates, add the site as an annoying signature on all your e-mails, join Facebook and invite people in, all that type of thing, none of it's hard and it doesn't need a lot of work.

.[/quote


Hallo everyone, i am new here.
I dont understund how the fundraising for a charity works.

You build the page to raise money for the charity, or for yourself in the name of the charity?

:confused1:

You have your own page on justgiving (other fundraising websites are available ) but the donations go to whatever charity you are raising money for, provided they are registered with that particular website.

For example our trip later this year Home (blatant plug) has it's own justgiving page here, where the money raised will go to the charity we are backing. They will also sort out "gift aid" etc. and it makes the whole thing easy.

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Kev

here is a link to a great article written by Scott Brady. The Truth About Expedition Sponsorship:

called the 'Truth About Expedition Sponsorship'.
its excellent and well worth the read.

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Lisa
www.2ridetheworld.com

I've had my go at the sponsorship attempt too and I totally agree with Alex, starting early is the best thing you can do. However I must say that the path of least resistance is to simply save up your money and go when the time is right.

Financing motorcycle travel through sponsorship isn’t for everyone. Generally, sponsors will need a good incentive to get on board with you. But a business selling motorcycle equipment, for example, might be interested in sponsoring a motorcycle traveler who can demonstrate how their equipments perform on the road. A gear company might want to sponsor a rider who wore their gear. And you get free stuff and save some money.

Another strategy that some people use to finance lengthy motorcycle trips is to find work along the way or selling something. Crowdfunding can also be a choice.

Finally getting a celebrity on board, also gives you a huge amount of credibility and makes sponsors and potential media outlets (which in turn help you to get sponsors…) sit up and take notice. For my trip I got a Dakar pilot - Helder Rodrigues - to be a patron of my project.

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Kangaroo Route

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