Since setting up International Volunteer HQ almost 10 years ago, Daniel Radcliffe has grown the company to place around 15,000 volunteers a year in 36 countries. He speaks about the popularity of volunteer travel among students and how he’s trying to change the mindset of the global sector.
The PIE: So tell me why you decided to set your company up in 2007?
DR: I had a corporate job that lasted three days out of university and I quit it and decided I would go overseas and work out what I wanted to do with my life. I went on a volunteer abroad trip, enjoyed the trip but found it very expensive to do and poorly run and I thought there must be a better way of doing it, so that was the motivation.
The PIE: Tell me about the interesting business model.
DR: The company itself works with local teams around the world. Each local team we set up, we give them training around customer service, how to look after western volunteer travelers. Then they have to source meaningful volunteer work for the volunteers to be able to do. They source local accommodation and local meals. By working directly with a local team you have someone there on the ground that understands the local issues. They can provide meals and accommodation and do everything relatively affordably, which is one of the reasons we can keep our costs so low.
“We now have on average of three to four different organisations approach us every day, which makes it really easy for development and growth”
The PIE: How do you find the teams in the first place?
DR: It was very difficult to start, we didn’t always get the working teams we wanted. I travelled to Kenya, Thailand, Nepal and Vietnam with some of the start-up funds. I did a lot of cold calling. I did a lot of digging into the dark corners of the internet to try to find these volunteer organisations that existed. Then over the years, as we’ve developed and grown, we have proven the model is successful. We now have on average of three to four different organisations approach us every day, which makes it really easy for development and growth. We’ve got a waiting list of two to three thousand different organisations, which is awesome.
The PIE: How big is the business now?
DR: Right now we are working in 36 countries around the world, we are placing about 15,000 people into these programmes every year.
The PIE: And where do they come from?
DR: About 60% are coming from America, a lot of American students. We’ve got around 10% from the UK, around 10% from Canada, 5% from Australia, another 10% from China and then the rest of the world makes up the balance.
The PIE: Why do you think there is such big interest in the US?
DR: I think the idea of travelling and giving back is really big among young American students. This generation gets a lot of flack but they do actually want to travel and give back in a meaningful way. Sometimes the motivations aren’t completely altruistic, they also want to bolster their own CV, help develop themselves – which is why I did it in the first place – but we have just found the US market seems to respond to price. Again we hang our hat on the fact that we are affordable and the American market seems to respond to that.
The PIE: Tell me about your pricing model, what might somebody typically pay?
DR: The whole thing around our pricing is it’s really transparent. It was one of the issues that I had when I travelled abroad, I spent a lot of money and I realised that actually not much of it went towards the programme where I was working. So we charge what we call a registration fee of $279 and that comes to us as a company and that is what we charge for setting everything up. There is another fee which is a programme fee, now that can be as little as $180 for a week in Peru or at the top end of the scale it could be $6,000 for six months working with elephants in Sri Lanka. That is paid to us but we hand it on directly to the local team we work with so the entire amount goes in country and covers the volunteers’ meals, accommodation, project costs, support.
“Word of mouth is a really big driver for us now and with the alumni base that we have got now it keeps things moving along”
The PIE: And how do you find students, how have you grown?
DR: All online. We’re actually a New Zealand-based company but ironically not very much happens there in terms of sending volunteers or receiving them. Less than 1% of our volunteers are Kiwis. We do all our marketing online, search engine marketing, social media, referral websites – they are all really important for us. We are fortunate that word of mouth is a really big driver for us now and with the alumni base that we have got now it keeps things moving along.
The PIE: People sometimes criticise short-term volunteering trips as not really making any impact on the local economy or country, what are your thoughts on that?
DR: Yeah, definitely, the programmes have to be set up in the right way and you have to set the right expectations. Our shortest programmes, people can go for a week, but for anything less than a month they are really only going into a role where they are assisting locals. They are not going to get any real responsibility until they start getting into longer durations. It is really important to set the expectations of the volunteer around that. If you don’t set the expectation or if you don’t have the programme set up like that you can give the volunteer a bad experience but also do a lot of damage to communities in which you are working. A typical duration for us is somewhere between three to five weeks, so it is around that one month duration.
The PIE: What is your most popular place?
DR: Bali is our most popular destination at the moment.
The PIE: What do they do there?
DR: We’ve got teaching, turtle conservation, construction, healthcare education and a kindergarten support programme.
The PIE: Do you think students are just increasingly looking for something more than a holiday? A holiday that gives back?
DR: Yeah, definitely. On average our students will work for three to five hours per day, so it is not an extreme work day and they have got a lot of time to go and see other things. I think the concept of a holiday that gives back and makes a positive difference is a really important one. One thing that we talk a lot about is our trips aren’t designed to save the world; they are designed to make a positive impact.
The PIE: Experiential travel is gaining popularity, this chimes with the success of homestay.com, Airbnb even. How do you see the volunteer travel industry developing in the next five years?
DR: Good question, volunteer travel to date has really been focused on this idea of people travelling to developing countries and giving back. One thing that we are trying to change and that we have been practising the last couple of year is trying to create opportunities for people to travel and give back in developed countries as well.
“We are trying to create opportunities for people to travel and give back in developed countries as well”
You don’t need to leave your own home city to volunteer. What we are trying to do is create opportunities in developed countries for people to travel and give back, so within the last two years we have run some programmes in Italy, Portugal, Spain and New Zealand. This year we have got programmes in the United States, Australia and France on the horizon, so the programmes are incredibly popular.
We’re trying to change this mindset about what volunteer travel actually is, instead of having people think about it as a thing where you have rich people going to help poor people, it is rather an idea of people travelling anywhere in the world to make a positive difference and give back while they are abroad. That is where we would like to see volunteer travel go and through opening these new countries and creating these opportunities we are hoping to take it there.
The PIE: And do you still get a chance to do any of these volunteer experiences?
DR: Yes I spend a lot of time, probably too much time, on the road. Last year I spent about seven months. Next week I am off to Zambia, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and then Kenya over the next month. I get to go there and see all the projects first hand and volunteers working on them which is always really exciting.
