Many times volunteers really want to come to Costa Rica and participate in our programs, but they say they can't afford it. Why not think about doing some good old fashioned fundraising to help pay for some -- or all -- of your costs?

Amanda Rose Kessner and her friends paid for 100% of the costs of their trip to volunteer in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, including their airfare. And she says it was easy! In this article, Amanda shares her tips with us on how to do it. Amanda is currently a student at UC Santa Cruz, double majoring in Feminist Studies and Community Studies. She recently interned in Costa Rica through a non-profit called CAN and worked at a fair/direct trade coffee coop.

Fundraising

When fundraising for a volunteer project it is important to remember that no fundraiser is too small; every penny counts when you are working towards a good cause. The first step to professional fundraising is organizing a fundraising game plan, so to speak.

If you will be receiving monetary donations you should arrange where the money will go. Do you plan on accepting personal checks? Are you willing to accept cash? Another way to receive donations is to set up a PayPal account (paypal.com), which enables donors to go online and contribute directly to your cause. You should first check with your volunteer organization to see if they have some advice, as they may have a system in place to help you. In addition, your volunteer organization might have a way to make those donations tax deductible for your donors.

Once the direction of your donations are arranged the next step is to type up a mission statement with your plans, goals, and why you feel passionately about what you are fundraising for. You might want to even make your own brochure with photos.

Do not forget to mention the organization you will be working with and provide their information as well. It always helps to provide credible references. People are more likely to contribute to something they perceive as legitimate and providing website links, etc. can help to support your mission statement. The last information you want to provide in your mission statement is your monetary goal and how to donate. This will help people gage what will be an effective contribution.

Depending on how much time you have prior to your project you may want to create a website or a blog where you can post your mission statement as well us update people on your fundraising progress, how close you are to goals, projects dates, dates of scheduled fundraisers, and you can share your experiences after your volunteer work is completed.

Personal websites and mission statements can be distributed to all your friends, family, neighbors, local business, your place of worship, youth groups, or in class. If you are a student it is great to share your mission statement in your classes and ask for support from your peers. One idea is to pass around a large envelope around a classroom and ask people to contribute just a dollar. This may seem silly or insignificant, but every dollar will add up, especially if you were to do this exercise in all of your classes.

Take advantage of local restaurants and venues for fundraising. Many local businesses are interested in doing percentage shares where they will give some of their profit to your cause if you bring the customers for a fundraiser. Maybe you have friends in a band. Ask them if they are willing to play to raise money for your project. Community organizations and international groups such as the Rotary Club are also great to get in touch with because often times they already have money set aside to donate and maybe it could be for you and your cause. You won’t know until you ask!

Another great idea is to contact your local newspaper or radio station and see if they would be interested in advertising your cause with donation information or announce the date of a fundraiser your have planned. Depending on if you are working solo or you have friends working toward the same goal it always helps to team up. Good group fundraisers are bake sales, fundraising picnics, walk-a-thons where people can donate a certain amount for each lap walked, or going door-to-door in your neighborhood asking for donations. Most importantly, you must keep track of everyone who contributes to your cause and send them thank you cards as well as let them know how your volunteer project went and share your experiences. People will be much more willing to support you in the future if you thank them and let them know about how they contributed by sharing the great work you did with their help. If you are professional, creative, and passionate about what you are raising money for, you can’t go wrong!

Warm holiday greetings to you and your loved ones from all of us in Costa Rica at Tropical Adventures!

As we prepare for our year-end holiday activities and begin to implement our exciting new 2008 projects, I thought it only fitting to look back and share with you our accomplishments and learnings from the last couple of years and thank you for your generous support.

Since its inception in 2005, our organization has grown at lightning speed. In just this year alone along with our over 220 volunteers from around the world, our small foundation made quite a mark as we:

• Raised funds to replace the roof for the Hone Creek Elementary School
• Began a project to grow organic food to feed the poor in Puerto Viejo de Limon
• Taught English and tutored hundreds of children throughout the country
• Saved thousands of sea turtle eggs from being poached
• Saved hundreds of iguanas from being eaten or killed
• Painted a high school in Guanacaste
• Taught environmental education to hundreds of school children
• Planted over 6,000 trees and medicinal plants
• Cleaned countless of miles of beaches
• Painted a retirement home on the Talamanca Indigenous Reservation
• Hosted an international corporate “green retreat” with 125 participants

More amazing to me, however, are the personal stories from our host families and children in our schools. Watching them prosper financially, educationally and emotionally over the last couple of years has been the most rewarding part of my job.

Sometimes it’s as simple as watching a family earn the funds to be able to buy a front door where there were none before, or be able to buy themselves a stove for cooking. Other times I see children developing stronger skills in school or stronger self-esteem. I see these positive changes as a direct effect of the presence of our amazing volunteers and our ongoing projects in our communities. It truly makes me proud to be part of this organization.

In 2008, in addition to our ongoing projects we plan to open a Spanish language school, expand our work with sea turtles underneath the water, begin working with a dolphin research program and a monkey refuge center, run a Summer Camp for families, lead eight free medical and dental clinics throughout Central America and expand our educational programs in our elementary schools. By 2009, we are working towards implementing a program to help drug addicts and creating a rehabilitation program. There are currently only a shocking total of 8 beds available in Costa Rica in their social medical program for those needing rehabilitation assistance, with a waiting list of thousands.

As you know, the cost of these projects is great and does not get covered by just the price of our volunteer packages.

As is true for many non-profits, we are running at a deficit. Right now we are about $40,000 in debt. However, we’re happy to say we have a solid, 2-year plan in place, which we believe will enable us to be fully self-supportive. In the meantime, we are hoping to find a way to pull ourselves out of the current debt that we have.

In the event that you may be planning any year-end giving, we’d love for you to consider Tropical Adventures. Any amount would help. Even if you only have $1 to spare, we’ll gladly accept your generous gift. We accept credit cards, PayPal and checks.

To make a donation by credit card or PayPal, simply click here to visit our secure website or call our toll-free number at 1-800-832-9419. Checks may be made out to the “Tropical Adventures Foundation” and may be sent to our US address:

Tropical Adventures Foundation
1775 E Palm Canyon Dr.
Suite H-341
Palm Springs CA 92264

We’re also offering a wide variety of Tropical Adventures apparel and gift items available at our Online Marketplace, such as t-shirts, hats, mugs, calendars, etc. Proceeds go directly to support our programs.

We can’t thank you enough for all your generous and loving support from this year. Please know you have our best wishes for a safe and wonderful holiday season. And we hope to hear from you soon!

Scott Pralinsky
Executive Director

We're very excited to announce that we have our new online store up and ready in time for your holiday shopping! For a couple of years now our volunteers have asked us about buying t-shirts and other products with our Tropical Adventures logo that they could bring home to share with their family and to help support us as a non-profit foundation.

Well, we finally have many products available, including t-shirts, mugs, jackets, sweatshirts, clocks, hats, calendars, magnets, posters, prints and much more!

Not only will you love the quality of the products, but you'll feel great knowing all the proceeds go directly to support our non-profit foundation and the communities we serve here in Costa Rica!

Please visit our new online store today by clicking here! Shop early and spent $75 and you can receive free sipping in the US! See our store for more details.

One of the nicest parts of being a Costa Rica-based non-profit organization and being very small is that all of our volunteers become a significant part of our family. Each and every person who takes time out of their lives to share of their talents, resources and energy is valued tremendously by not only Tropical Adventures, but also by our host families, children, schools and communities.

Costa Rica and the people here are so wonderful, it's pretty tough not to fall in love! It's not unusual for our volunteers to continue on in a relationship with Tropical Adventures and the communities here. It's especially normal for our volunteers to continue on with their relationship with their host families. Many of our volunteers have flown back to visit their host families, bringing with them husbands, wives, children and friends. These are relationships that last span the globe and last a lifetime.

Occasionally, an individual or family is so moved by what they see of our work as an organization here that they feel they want to participate on a deeper level. That was the case recently when The Millar Family made a most generous donation of $10,000 to our Tropical Adventures Foundation.

Garth, Brenda (Millar), Aidan, Callum, and Rory from Alberta, Canada were our very first family to arrive as volunteers back over a year ago. They actually drove all the way from Alberta to Costa Rica together! It was a most exciting experience for all of us. Since then, we've had many families join us as volunteers. As a matter-of-fact, family volunteering has become one of our most popular programs.

It is because of the generosity of people such as the Campbell Family that our foundation is able to continue on the work that we do here in Costa Rica. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts, as do the children and families of the communities we serve! Without such help, we would simply not be able to exist.

Anyone else interested in making a tax-deductible donation should contact Scott Pralinsky, Executive Director, for more information, or merely click here to make an online donation.

Thanks again!

We are very happy to share with you that the Beer and Burger Fundraiser held Tuesday night, September 4th, by Helping Hands Costa Rica was a huge success! All together we raised $1316 that HHCR then donated towards the Casa Milagro / Tropical Adventures Foundation drive to replace the Hone Creek Elementary School roof replacement. This is how it breaks down...

$572 from came from the Silent Auction, $100 from the Bake Sale, $68 from 50/50 Draw, $389 from ticket sales and $187 from Various Donors.

We would like to thank the Time out Tavern for providing wonderful food, service and atmosphere. The place was packed and it looked like everyone was having a really good time. For this event we had 20 very generous donations for prizes/items from Sponsors throughout Costa Rica. Their information will be on our website.

With the $770 that we've already collected and the $1316 from last night our current total is $2086. We are half way to our goal of $4000!

Please visit our current website for more information about Helping Hands CR (HHCR) and the Casa Milagro / Tropical Adventures Foundation's efforts to replace the roof on the Hone Creek Elementary School.

If you were unable to attend this event and would like to make a contribution to our Hone Creek Roof Replacement Project you can do so online here.

Or in Costa Rica you can make a direct deposit into the Tropical Adventure Foundation bank account using the information below:

In person:
Banca Promerica
Account name: Tropical Adventures
Account number: 4-383202
Dollars account

Electronic Transer inside of Costa Rica from Banca Promerica or other bank:
Banca Promerica
Account name: Tropical Adventures
Cedula Juridica: 3-101-411461
Cuenta Cliente: 11600104003832024
Dollars account

Thank you all again for your generosity!

As you probably know by now, our non-profit foundation, the Casa Milagro Foundation, has teamed up with Helping Hands Costa Rica to build a new roof for the Hone Creek Elementary School near Puerto Viejo here in Costa Rica. Teaching English in this school was actually our very first volunteer project when we began back in 2005.

The fund raiser will be held on Tuesday, September 4th from 5:30 to 9:00 pm at the Time Out Tavern in Escazu. Tickets are only $10 and include beer, burgers and door prizes.

All proceeds go towards replacing the badly damaged roof at the Hone Creek Elementary School.

Here are the directions to the Tavern: 300 Mts South of the Costa Rica Country Club, Beige building with black pillars. Their telephone number is: 289– 3217.

If you can't make it, but would like to donate toward the roof replacement, please click here. We would really appreciate it! We're still quite a ways away from our goal of $4,000 and could certainly use the help!

The Hone Creek Elementary School was our first project location way back when. So we have a soft spot in our hearts for this place. When they told us they needed a new roof (among many more urgent needs), we got to work on raising some awareness and money to help them out.

Then Helping Hands Costa Rica came to our rescue. This is a new group that has started up with great momentum and is lead by no other than the magnificent, bright and energetic Evangeline Mathura. Helping Hands announced recently that they will commit to raising enough funds (approximately $4,000) to replace the roof at the Hone Creek School.

Many thanks goes out to Evangeline and all the wonderful people who are part of this group. If anyone would like more information about other needs that the school and communities we work with have, please don't hesitate to contact me. I'd love to speak with you about it.