Money and Funding

(written by Clara)

One of the first things I had to learn when we started planning for The Adventure was this: Expeditions to cold places are expensive! As anyone who has ever been to an outdoor store can confirm, there is no upper limit as to how much can be spent on equipment. The tricky part is to know

• where to best buy things,  
• what you really need vs. what is nice to have, and   
• when to save money, and when to jump in the deep end of the pool and invest in high-quality, no "no-name" gear. 

 All of this takes countless hours on the internet looking at price comparisons (which is especially tempting during revision time), a voice of reason that tells you when to quit buying things (C: "But what about this super handy microfiber travel towel, it's on sale for only €29,99!" T: "I usually take a kitchen towel.") and, as was the case with some expensive but necessary gear such as the sleeping bags, enough shamelessness to call up the sales manager and ask for a discount, which is really fair enough given that they earned around a thousand bucks with a single click and that we freed up about a third of their storage space, because those things are HUGE!

Another problem I encountered was that after looking at three-digit prices for a prolonged amount of time, you lose perspective of what's a good price and what isn't and start thinking of a €30 cotton sleeping bag liner as a good deal (it's basically a bed sheet, but with less fabric on it so you can fit it inside your SB). I call this phenomenon the "You probably don't have enough real problems"-Syndrome.

Another way altogether to approach this subject is to try to get some funding/sponsoring from charitable funds and/or companies. Again, I quickly learned some basic rules. Rule no. 1: To apply for grants you have to plan well ahead of time. We started seriously looking into this in mid-January I think, by which time we had already missed a few good opportunities just because there are only one or two deadlines every year and quite a few of them happened to be between November and January-ish.

However, we struck lucky with the Scottish Arctic Club who awarded us a small grant coupled with an invitation to attend their annual gathering in Fort William in November to talk about The Adventure so that of course is extremely exciting! The SAC has been around for 45 years and one of their main reasons for being is to "[...] make modest awards to encourage young people to explore the Arctic", which I think is really fantastic. They also seem to have a really cool library but I guess you would have to visit Glasgow to check it out. Take a look at their website for more info (www.scottisharcticclub.org.uk).