Your next adventure could be paid for by strangers. Photo: Callahan/SurfEXPLORE
Travel ain’t cheap. You’ve got transportation, food, amenities, entertainment… When it’s all said and done, any trip (big or small) is going to give your bank statement a drastic makeover. So what if you want to go on a surf trip to Indo or a backcountry pow-wow in British Columbia but you don’t want to live off Top Ramen for a year in order to fund it? Well have no fear, financially lacking thrill-seekers, because there’s now a way to crowdsource your vacations.
Fortua, a new website allowing users to ask for funding for voyages, quietly launched about a month ago. Typically, people crowdsource art projects and then in return, they give the backers perks like tickets to the film premier, or a signed copy of an album. So with Fortua, a travel website, you must be wondering what the backers are receiving in return. Joe Walsmith, founder of Fortua, calls the returns received by donors “insights,” or insider tidbits that may help the donor on their own journey. As explained on the website, this includes, “gear insights, logistical tips and recommendations, preparation and execution tips, insights into what worked well and what didn’t, must sees and must dos based on experience, and other new, useful and compelling information.”
Photo: Fortua
Now another thing you might be wondering is: why would I want to fund someone else’s vacation in return for simple information? I immediately thought the same thing – “This is stupid…I’m not going to pay for someone to sip piña coladas on the beach just so they can tell me to remember to bring bug spray on my next Caribbean vacation.” But upon further review, the expeditions featured on the site aren’t your typical vacations. They’re mainly journeys to a place that are for a good cause, for example: “Cycling for Change – Cycling 3,400 Miles to Break the Cycle of Human Trafficking” or a “Three Day Outdoor Retreat” for inner-city elementary school students.
So perhaps Fortua isn’t exactly a miracle solution to funding your next big trip. But what did you expect? Did your really think that random people were going to just give you money to travel to Indo and score perfect waves? Maybe there’s still a chance. If you added in some sort of charitable aspect to the trip – if you were able to give back in some way – that might be a convincing factor for people to back you financially and send you off to get barreled out of your mind.
