Volunteer Forever is a platform to help people find and fund their volunteer abroad trips.
The website features reviews of existing programs to help volunteers discover and select the right overseas placement, as well as a unique crowd-funding platform that enables users to tap into the power of their extended networks and raise funds for their trip more effectively.
The startup is steered by a team of four including founder and chief executive Steven Weddle, co-founder and chief marketing officer Billy Beltz, chief product officer Brian An and director of grassroots outreach Tiffany Fourment.
Volunteer Forever’s plan for making money is based on the crowd-funding model with a payment processing fee of 4.1% going to the startup. It has also secured a small business loan and is currently seeking investors for second round funding. However, the startup also says it operate on very low overheads because of the web-based platform.
Volunteer Force estimates the market to be worth between $1.7B to $2.6B and competition comes from the likes of Go Overseas, Go Abroad and FundMyTravel.
The second set of questions allow for as much detail and colour as possible, but please keep answers concise.
How is the way you are solving this problem more special or effective than previous attempts you or the market has seen before and how different do you have to be to succeed?
Volunteer Forever is a unique platform that solves two current pain points for volunteers: the information and financial barriers to volunteering overseas.
There is currently no other platform available right now that provides prospective volunteers the opportunity to find and fund their trip in one place. There are several review sites in existence for volunteer abroad programs, but there is a concern around the authenticity of reviews. Volunteer Forever will feature a patent-pending review system focused on authentic user reviews and based on the unique user cycle that volunteers will have on our site (integrating the fundraising component).
Additionally, we offer the only crowdfunding platform dedicated to volunteer abroad projects. Our fundraising solution simplifies fundraising and is designed to replace current solutions that are often expensive and inefficient.
Why should people or companies use your startup?
Volunteering abroad can be a life changing-experience that allows you to positively impact communities around the world that need it most. Unfortunately there are significant information and financial barriers that keep more people from participating in this meaningful activity. Volunteer Forever provides individuals with solutions to overcome these barriers and make their dream of volunteering overseas a reality.
Other than going viral and receiving mountains of positive PR, what is the strategy for raising awareness and getting customers/users?
We’re partnering with volunteer placement organizations to help them share the good news with their volunteers. To date we’ve partnered with more than 90 organizations that have created profiles on our site. These organizations have the same goal as us: make it easy for volunteers to learn about their opportunities, provide a platform for authentic user reviews, and help the volunteers to raise funds for their trip.
What other options have you considered for the business and the team if the original vision fails?
We are looking at providing our solution to other areas of meaningful travel, including study abroad, work abroad and intern abroad programs.
What mistakes have you made in the past in business and how have you learned from them?
To make sure you build a business around what you’re most passionate about! We’ve also learned that it’s important to establish a business model where everyone involved can win and will be invested in the success of the business. With our model we’ve done just that – both the volunteer placements organizations and the volunteers themselves are invested in optimizing the platform for their own benefit and ensuring everyone wins.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?
As mentioned above, there are currently information and financial barriers to volunteering abroad, and we’re providing a solution to overcome the barriers. Our platform helps solve the issue of unverifiable reviews and provides a more effective fundraising solution.
Tnooz view:Â
While most competitors in the space seem to be a resource to help travellers find the right program, Volunteer Forever is aiming to set itself apart by combining information about volunteering opportunities, reviews from the people who’ve done them and a platform for fundraising.
Although the sector is pretty niche, the startup seems to have thought about spreading the word by partnering with the volunteer placement organisations across the globe. It also sees opportunity in extending the platform to other areas of meaningful travel including student and internships.
One concern might be making enough travellers interested in the sector aware of the service. A quick search on the term ‘volunteer abroad’ only returns one of the companies mentioned in this article.
A further issue might be that the current unique selling point of combining the information, reviews and fundraising elements is easy to copy.
Those issues aside, services that highlight volunteering in a professional and ethical way are praiseworthy and if Volunteer Forever can tap into even a small percentage of the $2.6b market then it will do alright.
Snap poll:Â [poll id="48"]
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.
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I like the sound of this a lot. How can volunteer org’s get involved? Good luck guys!
Sam- we invite all volunteer organizations to create a page on our site to raise awareness of their volunteer opportunities. You can do so here: http://www.volunteerforever.com/signup
Once an organization creates their page, volunteers will be able to include a link to their organization’s page on their crowdfunding campaign.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at info@volunteerforever.com
Quote: “only crowdfunding platform dedicated to volunteer abroad projects. Our fundraising solution simplifies fundraising and is designed to replace current solutions that are often expensive and inefficient.”
This is incorrect – at http://www.mytab.co, volunteers can not ONLY fundraise/crowdfund their travels yet can also save for their trips and we don’t charge customers for paypal transaction fees (gifting/saving).
“Volunteer Forever only charges 4.1% per transaction to conduct fundraising through its site.” What they weren’t transparent in this article, yet is stated on their website: “PayPal will also charge 2.9% and $0.30 for each donation that you receive through Volunteer Forever.” So being truthful, volunteers are taking a 7+% hit – not so great! They should be more transparent in this to the media. Why would anyone then use this site vs crowdfunding through PayPal (free for PP to PP users)?
Volunteerforever should focus on their unique recommendation integration
Hi Heddi,
Thank you for your thoughts. I’m familiar with MyTab and we’re fans of any platform that helps volunteers raise funds for their trip more effectively. Cheers to you and your team for helping in this space as well.
To address your comments, yes we are currently the only crowdfunding site dedicated solely to volunteer abroad trips. There are several other sites, including MyTab, that cater to travel of any kind. And that’s fantastic. But right now we’re just focused on those that wish to volunteer abroad, and that is unique in the travel industry.
For your second comment, yes there is the PayPal charge as well. And as you stated, we’ve posted it on our website and make sure to be as transparent about that as possible. This question in this article was asking us about our revenue channel, not the cost to the volunteer.
There’s a very good reason volunteers would use our platform for their fundraising efforts. PayPal itself is not a true crowdfunding site- it’s merely a platform for processing online payments. What we provide is a chance for volunteers to tell their story in an effective and powerful way, and integrate their page easily with communication channels such as email and SM. And it allows the volunteers’ extended networks to do the same- easily pass along the campaign and promote it through the same channels and extending the reach exponentially. It’s all integrated into the process automatically. Additionally, we’ve integrated blog tools on the page so volunteers can provide deeper insight into their trip and keep their donors aware of the positive impact of their work during and especially after their trip. And that’s really what this is all about- giving the volunteers the best possible chance at succeeding with the fundraising efforts so they can make their trip a reality.
With that said, we know their are other platforms available that a volunteer can choose and we applaud any organization that’s helping volunteers reach their goal of traveling abroad.
We look forward to this ongoing discussion with MyTab and other leaders on how we can all work together towards our similar goals.
Cheers,
Billy
Hey Billy, thanks for this. To clarify your quote: “There are several other sites, including MyTab, that cater to travel of any kind.” I need to rebuttal this
I think you’re missing myTab’s point about ‘several sites incl myTab.’ We have a VERY different agenda and are not in the crowdfunding realm. We don’t let the customer cash out like every other platform and we let customers spend what they have in their account (not when they hit a goal). We retain the gift card funds for a reason – to negotiate with the industry so they can bid exclusive offers to our cash rich audience (called ‘match mycash’).
Everyone else lets the customer cash out and that:
#A: devalues the gifter’s objective, never knowing if their contribution actually went towards a trip or just paid for utility bills after a cash out.
#B: empowers the recipient to use their funds wisely as now there’s an emotional value (as all gift cards should be – yet they’re NOT which is why $30b of $100b gift cards a year are discarded),
#C: we stretch the customer funds further with our ‘match mycash’ feature as the customer, for the first time ever, is assured they got the best bang for their buck & didn’t spend weeks hunting for a trip.
#D: the industry targets a cash rich demographic for slow/long leads vs spending 3 times the amount on advertising & marketing to a generic audience and screwing the customer with over-inflated last minute prices.
So with all good intent, I think what you’re doing for Volunteers re the additional integration is truly fantastic but please don’t classify myTab in the same ‘crowdfund and cash out’ realm as the growing market. Because we’re not and it’s important it’s explained. We have a totally different motive, agenda and specifically created a solution for erratic prices in travel in the $100b industry.
Happy Friday and btw, love your UI
Hi Heddi,
Yes, MyTab does operate differently and has a unique set of features/benefits for travelers (apologize if it seemed like I was lumping anyone together as all the same). For a volunteer raising funds to pay for the program fee with the organization they’re volunteering with (which is the majority of the cost for volunteers) this may work or may not. I’d love to learn more about MyTab and how you work with volunteers in this situation so that I can better understand. Prob easiest to take this offline, if you’d like feel free to reach out to me at billy@volunteerforever.com.
Have a great Friday!
Billy
Hi Billy, we’re a travel gift card and not an education-fundraiser. So i’m not sure why we’d be needing to ‘handle’ volunteers asking about their full education program. We’re not in that business and our customers understand this. We’re in the business of getting their trip funded, not giving them a platform for their program or that defeats the whole objective of myTab.
I think you need to be specific in explaining this to your customers directly also