WanderLearn Forum with Francis Tapon

Hi Francis,

First, congratulations on the successful kickstarter project! It sounds like (another) adventure of a lifetime that could finally demystify Africa. I'm totally inspired!

I through hiked the PCT last year, loved every minute of it (ok well not every individual minute) and quickly returned to the perceived safety/comfort of cubical life. I'm now regretting that decision and decided to go hiking for a year of endless summer - first a warm up hike of the Wonderland Trail followed by a week of PCT trail Maintenance in September, then the AZT starting 9/22. I'll buy plane tickets to NZ from the trail and do the Te Araroa from late November through March to return stateside for a break and planning session for the CDT. I'm not looking to set any speed records but I want to give back to the trail associations (AZTA TAT and new CDTC) so I started a fundraiser. A lot of us take the trail for granted and forget the management associations that negotiate access, build, maintain and inform us about the trail so I want to give back. Friends and family are pretty stingy but there is an active hiking community on reddit, and lots of various groups on facebook so I'm planning on posting there. I've already coordinated with the three trail organizations and also got a hiker oriented t-shirt company working on a design for one of the perks.

I won't link to the fundraiser here (unless that's ok) but I was wondering if you had any tips on crowd funding?

Normally I don't allow links, but I like your cause, so go ahead and provide the like.

Although I plan to write an extensive article about the lessons I learned from my Kickstarter project, it probably won't come out until October 2014.

For now, here's the simple lessons:

- Try to get blogs to cover you, but realize that they will have almost NO impact. They're totally overrated. For example, I could write a great article about your project, yet only 2 people will end up pledging even though my site gets 50,000 unique visitors per month. Sad but true.

- Most of your money will come from friends and family - direct outreach efforts.

- I wrote an article about Crowdfunding on GoBackpacking.com

Good luck!

Hey Francis,

Thanks for taking the time to answer me, I'm sure accessing the internet in Africa is not always easy! Also thanks for letting me plug the fundraiser! https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/fmYf1/ab/c3U9D9

Unfortunately I've since found out on my own that #1 and #2 are true. Also I wish I had seen the article you mentioned here: http://gobackpacking.com/how-to-crowdfund-travel/

I definitely did not do enough planning and fell for the "that guy raise $10,000 to make a potato salad! I bet I can do this!" trap. I'm going to do the hikes anyway, although probably change the order and dates since I'm still working off tendinitis in my knee. I'll look forward to your October article and hopefully things will pick up once I start hiking and posting updates from the trail.

The biggest shortcoming of your project is that it's really just a fund-raiser for the trails.
The rewards are about as good as a PBS fund-raiser (i.e., they're not generous).
People see $50 for patch? $115 for a T-shirt?

I understand you need to 90%+ of the money to go to you and the trails, and not fulfilling rewards.
Unfortunately, the guy who doesn't know you wants a good reward.
That's why I suspect that the 8 contributors are all your friends/family.

What I would do is:

- Give 80% of the money to the trails, not just half. People care more about the trails than you. Sorry.

- Offer more "soft" rewards (e.g. 1 hour of your time for $100)

- Make a fun video

Good luck!