Travelers' Philanthropy Handbook - Center for Responsible Travel

ooking their trip and information they can view on Lindblad’s website. Lindblad’s guides aretrained both in the campaign strategy and their special role as deliverers of strategic messages.Toward this end, special training sessions were initially held in each location in which guidesand expedition leaders explored ways to interject selected messages into their interpretivecommentaries at various times and places during the trip.This approach proved to be far superior to the more casual approach of just letting theexperience speak for itself. In Galapagos for example, the targeted communicationstrategy nearly quadrupled donations compared to what the Fund was receivingpreviously.Whichever approach (the laissez-faire or more targeted campaign) seems best suited to yoursituation, here are five broad guidelines for making more successful offers: Timing is important.Plan to make your offer late in the travel experience and close to the moment in which theopportunity to give actually presents itself. As I outlined at the top of this chapter, your corestrategy should be to:Develop an experiential product that leads travelers to care about the place, andthen give them an opportunity in the immediate time frame to act on their caring.The key words in the second half of this strategy are “in the immediate time frame.” Forexample, donations would likely not be plentiful if you simply announce at the beginning of yourguests’ experience that there will be an opportunity to give and then wait to see what shows upin the donation box when they leave. Your guests will be far more likely to give if elements oftheir entire experience continuously cultivate their philanthropic impulses. The best results willoccur if the offer is made when that impulse exists -- what in psychology we would call abehavioral intention. Making the offer before nurturing the impulse will probably not producesatisfactory results. Likewise, you should not make the offer so late that your guests are nowbeginning to be preoccupied with thoughts about the return trip, baggage, airport connections,etc. For this reason, the optimal time to make the offer is probably around 48 hours beforeyour guests leave. Offers appealing mainly to the intrinsic,philanthropic side of travelers willgenerate more donations than willappeals focused on incentives or externalrewards.Common sense tells us that someone lookingmainly for a tax deduction can easily findcharitable organizations close to home. Theydon’t need to travel to far-away places to findthem. But even these people are capable ofbeing enticed by the promise of philanthropichappiness.Therefore, it is important not to overemphasizeLindblad’s donations brochure, Galapagos.Credit: Sam Ham146