Open Challenge Pricing

A charity challenge is all about raising funds for charity. Therefore we are very careful to ensure that as much money as possible goes to the charity you are supporting.

Each challenge has two components:

1. The actual "costs" of the trip (flights, transport, accommodation, food etc.)
2. The money which is raised to support your charity.

To enable as many people as possible to enjoy a Different Challenge, we offer 2 payment options:

1. Minimum Sponsorship: This option is for those who wish to raise sponsorship to cover both the costs of the trip, along with the money which is given to the charity.

There is a minimum sponsorship amount for each challenge
There is a separate registration fee, usually £300, payable upon booking
The remaining minimum sponsorship must be with the chosen charity 10 or 12 weeks prior to departure so Different Travel can invoice the charity for the tour costs to be received at least eight weeks before departure. Check out our fundraising tips here!

2. Self-funding: This option is for those who choose to pay the tour costs themselves and then raise extra funds through sponsorship, which is given to their charity. There is no minimum extra sponsorship required, although self-funders are encouraged to raise as much as possible for their chosen charity.

A deposit is payable at the time of booking
The balance is payable eight weeks prior to departure.

The amounts vary by challenge - please refer to individual challenge pages for exact pricing.

Frequently Asked Questions

1/ How do different travel receive their own funds? Is there an annual fee, annual fee and share of each trip’s sponsor money, or just the latter? If there is a share of the trip’s fee, what amount would we expect to go to the charity and how much would go to Different Travel?

If you choose to promote one of our Open Challenges we will provide you with tour information, photos, and everything you need to get people interested in wanting to book. Once they decide they want to participate, depending on our agreement with you, they will either book directly through us on our website, or through you using a booking form. They pay us a participation fee (usually around £300), and then we ask them to raise a minimum amount of sponsorship. This amount will depend on the tour. They pay the sponsorship to you 12 weeks before departure, and then we invoice you for the balance of the tour costs.

As an example, for the Inca Trail Challenge 2010, the cost of the tour is £2,200. The participant pays £300 of that cost to us as a participation fee within 14 days of booking, leaving the balance of £1900. We will then ask them to raise £2900 minimum sponsorship, payable to their chosen charity 12 weeks before departure. 10 weeks before departure, we invoice the charity for the remaining cost of the tour (£1900) and you keep the extra £1000 as a donation.

There are no annual fees, you do not sign up for anything, there is absolutely no financial outgoing required at all for your involvement in the tour. We are here in a capacity to help you raise funds by offering fundraising challenges.

Things work slightly differently with bespoke challenges. For ease, I will give you another example.
Let’s assume that you want to do a bespoke trip to Vietnam, climbing the challenging Mount Fansipan (we can organise bespoke trips to any destination in the world – you name it – we do it!). We’ll work out a costing, say £1900 per person, the deposit would be £300, leaving a tour costs balance of £1600. We then add a minimum fundraising donation for the charity (usually £1000) = minimum sponsorship total £2600.
Although, we do encourage people to pay for the tour costs themselves if they can, then all the fundraising can be given to the charity.

We will then help you promote this tour, and you will send out booking forms, and you receive the deposits from the interested parties. Depending on our agreement, once you have reached minimum numbers, we will invoice you for the deposits that you have received from your minimum of 10 and will then continue to let your participants fundraise to reach the target we have agreed upon in this example (£2600 each). We would then invoice you as with the Open Challenges, 10 weeks before departure for the tour balance. If you do not reach your minimum numbers in the allotted time, you can refund all the money received to those who have booked, making it a safe investment for them financially, and also for you.

2/ Are insurance issues and the like handled by Different Travel?

Insurance is not strictly organised by us, although we have are aware of a company that offers excellent policies. We encourage participants to organise their own insurance for ease and less administration time for both us and the charity, however it is important that all the activities included in the trip are covered in the insurance policy.

3/ Besides recruiting, encouraging and supporting sponsors before and after the trip(s), is there anything else the charity are obliged or encouraged to do?

Different Travel gives you, the charity fundraiser, as much support as possible to make the organisation and running of the trip easy and problem free for you. Depending on our agreement, you can have as much or as little direct involvement with the participants as you can manage. One of our charity partners works by sending out the booking forms and information to their supporters, but directs those interested in booking directly to Different Travel, so we can help them with the booking process. This way the charity can focus on helping the participants with fundraising ideas and their other duties as fundraisers.
Another one of our partners works as an intermediary between the participants and us, and the participants do not deal directly with us until they are on the tour. Of course usually it is somewhere in the middle. It really is flexible depending on what you would like to do.

All we ask is that you put a mention of the tour on your newsletter/fundraising documentation/website to help yourselves get as much exposure as possible. We do not insist on your spending money on advertisement or anything which requires financial outgoings. Really, the ball is in your court!

4/ If we were only able to recruit, say, two people for a trip that there should be ten on, are the other participants sources from other similar charities / people who have been profiled as similar or just a random mix. How does this issue sort itself out?

If you have arranged a bespoke trip and you were only able to recruit 2 out of 10, it is likely it would need to be postponed or cancelled. However, the participants may still wish to participate in a challenge type fundraising activity, in which case we would offer them the chance to transfer to any of our Open Challenges instead, so they could still raise money for the charity.

If you are promoting an Open Challenge, the participants will be mixed up with other people fundraising for a variety of charities, or those just going on the trip as a self-funded challenge! If we did not reach minimum numbers on the Open Challenge, then sadly we would have to cancel it, and either refund the deposit, or allow them to transfer to another tour. It is unlikely that we would fail to reach minimum numbers.

5/ Simply for our own potential recruitment, do you have any participants’ testimonies?

We certainly do! This is something we can provide for you with the other support documents we would send out to you.

6/ Which Open Challenges can we promote for 2010/2011?

All our Open Challenges are displayed on our destinations page.
If the tour you are interested in does not appear on our Open Challenge page, why not get in touch to discuss organising a bespoke departure?

For further information, please contact Different Travel on +44 (0)7881 698623 or email info@different-travel.com