[at-l] Financing trips

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 10:07 AM 12/28/2004 -0500, Jim and/or Ginny Owen wrote:
>Saunterer wrote:
>>Pretty much the same way you finance anything you want badly enough to
>>figure out how to do it. Save up, reduce expenses, sell stuff you no longer
>>need or want as badly as you want whatever you are trying to finance. A few
>>people start a fund raiser for some cause. "I'm hiking for [fill in the
>>cause here] and need donations." Run around giving speeches about the cause
>>and collecting money with the aim of collecting enough to finance the hike
>>plus money for the cause. At least 2 AT journal books ("Walking the Dream"
>>and "A Walk for Sunshine") are about hikes that were done for causes.
>
>
>I know people do that - but frankly, I consider it sleazy and unethical to 
>"hike for a cause" and then use the money people donate to the cause to 
>pay for ones hike.  If one wants to "hike for a cause", then IMO it's 
>incumbent on the hiker to pay for their own hike and make sure the donated 
>money goes to the cause.  Otherwise it's not "hiking for the cause" but 
>rather "using the cause to hustle people into financing the hike."  We 
>went through this ethical maze a long time ago when the first multiple (AT 
>& PCT) hike was being planned in my living rooom and the question came 
>up.  We found other, more ethical solutions.
>
>Of course, you "could" just ask for contributions.  At least it's an 
>honest approach.
>
>Both of those approaches involve something I won't do - it's called 
>"hustling your friends."
>
>OTOH - I see no ethical problem with being up-front with an "I need money 
>to hike the Trail and I'd like you to buy stock in my future" type approach.
>That's been done before.  It's a way to allow people to invest and 
>participate in your hike, with the promise that they'll get their money 
>back eventually (and presumably with some small profit) as you buy the 
>stock back from them after you finish the hike and are in a better 
>financial position.
>I know of several people who financed their way through college like that.

I agree that it at least borders on unethical to finance the trip from the 
donations, OTOH some can't do the trip any other way and the trip is the 
"hook" that grabs attention to attract donations so it is arguably part of 
the "overhead" of the fund raiser. I suppose it depends on the purity of 
your intent and how hard you work at fund raising on behalf of the cause. 
If your trip costs say $4G and you raise $5G, then use $4G for the trip and 
donate only $1G to the cause, that is very suspect. In the case of "A Walk 
for Sunshine" however Jeff Alt apparently raised over $90G for the cause so 
the overhead of his hike (if he even used donations to pay for the hike and 
I don't know that he did 'cuz that is one book I don't have) is a rather 
small percentage of his fundraising.


>Otherwise, my personal view is that one should work and save (and 
>acrifice) what's necessary to do what you want to do.  It's a matter of 
>personal pride, responsibility and integrity.  It's also a question of 
>commitment to the hike.  If one is not willing to make the effort, to 
>sacrifice the movies, pizza or electronic goodies in order to save that 
>money for the hike, then what's their real commitment?   If one person is 
>doing the hike on OPM (other people's money) and another has worked a 
>"horrid" job and sacrificed their comfy lifestyle for a year or so in 
>order to finance their hike --- which one do you think will appreciate and 
>enjoy the hike more?
>And which one do you think is more likely to actually finish the hike?
>
>Walk softly,
>Jim

That's my plan. Go to the local temp agencies and see what they have to 
offer for the next 2-3 months. That and maybe sell some stuff I don't use 
anymore on Ebay. Worse come to worst I can use my line-of-credit (one of 
the advantages of age) and pay for it after the fact. Permits for private 
trips in the Grand Canyon are not easy to come by so I figure it's worth a 
bit of debt as a last resort. OTOH if about one third of AT-L members 
wanted to buy my Adirondack Photo screen-saver program (www.jimbullard.org) 
consisting of 52 photos I took in 2004, that would cover my trip and spare 
me the trials of a 'horrid job'. ;D