Charitable Travel to generate unrestricted funds for charities
Howard Lake | 27 January 2020 | News
Social enterprise Charitable Travel is to launch in April this year offering travel agency and tour operator services and donating a share of its income to charities that partner with it.
The Charitable Travel brand has been developed by the not-for-private-profit social enterprise Fundraising Futures CIC. It will offer an array of worldwide holidays, hotels, flights and ancillary products.
It has begun approaching charities who wish to partner with it in terms of inviting their supporters to book with them and generate a donation.
Customers booking with Charitable Travel will be able to donate to the charity of their choice. In addition, as a social enterprise, the company will donate surplus profits to support disadvantaged communities in destinations where tourism is key to the local economy.
Melissa Tilling
Charitable Travel is led by Chief Executive Melissa Tilling, a fellow of the Institute of Travel & Tourism, who founded the CIC after stepping down as managing director of leading tour operator Funway Holidays in August last year, after 11 years with the company.
She has over 30 years’ experience leading and delivering holiday and short breaks to UK travel consumers.
She told UK Fundraising why she set up the enterprise, saying: “I have enjoyed my commercial career immensely but now want to devote my travel industry future to working hard offering our travel-for-good message.
“My intention is to blend commercial success with underlying compassion, selling a wide variety of quality and competitively priced travel products as a way of fundraising to benefit charity and giving rather than simply to create private profit”.
A different way to raise funds for your charity
Tilling’s preparations for working with charities includes undertaking a Masters in charity management, hence her recognition of the value to charities of earning unrestricted income.
She is keen to point out that the company is not an overseas challenge event provider.
Charitable Travel will launch as part of national independent travel consortium Worldchoice, which will ensure “a wide selection of quality and value travel products… and that the financial security needed when booking a holiday is assured.”
Travelling for good, with Charitable Travel
Social enterprise model
Charitable Travel has been recognised pre-launch as a certified member of Social Enterprise UK and is seemingly the first ‘mainstream’ travel company member to be certified by SEUK in the UK.
Charitable Travel also holds an ‘Aspiring’ Social Enterprise Mark with the international accreditation body.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.