Scirocco Register

Dear all Sciroccists/Sciroccowners/Rockers (you chose!!)

Some of you will know that earlier this year my brother and I took our 88 Mk2 on a 5400 mile journey to Nordkapp at the northern tip of Norway and raised nearly £2k for two important charities. Many of you supported us and we are very grateful for your donations.

It was mooted at the time that we may organise something in the future and I have some thoughts on this and wanted to ask for your views and opinions if you can spare the time. There are a number of ways that such a challenge might work but using the experience I have gained I'd make the following points:

1. It is time precious. We did the trip in 12 days. We allowed 14, you could do it in 11 possibly but a future trip needs to allow 14 days and people need to commit to that.

2. It isn't cheap. We had sponsorship which covered a large proportion of of our operating costs but our total spend was about £2k (excluding car prep)

3. Attracting charity donations is TOUGH. There is a widely held perception that driving 5400 miles is easier than running a marathon, swimming the channel or any other man vs land/sea combo. Of course I don't doubt the physical exertion of such challenges and understand that donors prefer to give to people going through a pain barrier but there is another way to raise the desired donation targets. That is to charge entrants a minimum donation pledge that they commit to and if it isn't met they make up the difference themselves.

4. Organisation is key! it took me about 3-4 months of work to get our trip underway and, whilst I've learned a lot from it there is still a lot of work to be done for a repeat exercise.

5. My thoughts at the moment is for a 14 day challenge from the UK to Nordkapp in Feb/March 2016. There would be an entry fee which would include a minimum donation pledge (perhaps £1k) and an amount to cover accommodation, meals, ferries etc etc that would be supported in part (maybe 20%) through challenge sponsorship from corporates. It would not only be open to Scirocco owners but to other retro cars (cut off maybe pre 1990). My "breakeven" number of 2 person / 1 car entrants is about a dozen.

I'm conscious that at this stage I don't want to get into details or any personal commitments but I would very much value useful, constructive feedback on the above. I'll also be at the National Meet and it'd be good to meet some of you there and talk about this at the same time.

Thanks

Tony

I think it's a nice idea, and obviously anything done to raise money for charity is admiral. I do think you would have a better chance targeting higher end car clubs and £1k entry is about the value of a lot of members cars, plus the fuel, travel, expenses and time off work, I'm not sure many people are in the position to do something like this. The other factor would be that anyone could do this without paying a fee, so other than being charitable i'm unsure why anyone wanted to do the challenge wouldn't simply do so.

Big successful drives are typically high end exotic cars as their owners have money, time and desire to network with like minded people. The other advantage is advertising is much easier to come by when it's affiliated with Ferrari rather than an 80's hatchback.

I realise my message is a little negative towards the suggestion, but I feel there are much more efficient ways to raise money for charities and much better audiences.

You're 100% correct in saying people are much more likely to donate to someone swimming the channel or running a marathon as they're both physically demanding challenges that potential donators and sponsors couldn't fathom doing themselves. While driving long distance is very tiring, I think you'll do well to convince people that they're not just paying for someone to go on a cool road trip.

In my opinion charity donations should get to the end charity as intact as possible.

good luck with it!

unknownmale wrote:While driving long distance is very tiring, I think you'll do well to convince people that they're not just paying for someone to go on a cool road trip.

In my opinion charity donations should get to the end charity as intact as possible.

I'm afraid that's pretty much where I stand on this sort of thing.

Many thanks for your opinions and feedback.

I recognise the challenge in persuading people to donate to might be deemed a cool road trip which is why I suggested the participants pay a donation up front. As part of the package a number of additional benefits would be included like snow mobiling, husky rides and ice lake driving.