Why volunteering trips cost money

You’re giving your time to volunteer. The fee pays for the trip around it: accommodation, meals, coordination, support, preparation and the work of local partners. It means the community welcoming you doesn’t have to cover the cost of your stay.

It’s fair to ask why volunteering costs money, especially when providers don’t always explain their fees clearly. Here’s how our model works, including its limits.

What can you contribute in a few weeks?

In one, two or three weeks, you won’t solve deep-rooted problems, replace local professionals or become indispensable to a community. Your help can still be useful and appreciated. We want to be clear about what that means, without overstating it.

We look beyond the hours you spend volunteering. We consider three things: resources that stay in the community, ongoing support for local partners and time with other cultures that changes how travellers see the world.

Three ways your trip can contribute

1. Supporting the local economy

When you travel with us, the money spent on services at your destination stays in the local economy. Your coordinators, accommodation providers and cooks are local, and the local organisation runs the activities. We don’t use Italian intermediaries on site: every euro spent there goes into the economy of the community welcoming you.

Your stay creates work for coordinators, cooks, host families and suppliers, and helps the project plan its income. That income allows the community to welcome volunteers without using resources it needs elsewhere.

2. Helping projects keep running

An established project doesn’t depend on one volunteer. What matters is ongoing support. Two hundred volunteers a year bring more than two hundred pairs of hands: their time, energy and resources allow a community school to pay local teachers, maintain buildings, buy materials and welcome more children. Each volunteer goes home, but the project continues. The example below shows what can happen when that support stops.

3. Learning from other cultures

This is why HeyLocals exists. We believe assumptions about people we’ve never met are one of the biggest barriers to social progress. We believe spending time together, in person, across cultures is the most effective way to break those barriers down. As the world becomes more familiar, other cultures feel less threatening.

Change builds gradually. Every traveller comes home with a different perspective and shares it with family, friends and colleagues. One person’s experience may seem small, but together those experiences change society. Our goal is for one young Italian in ten to take a social-impact trip by 2035. That mission is written into our articles of association. Part of your fee helps fund it.

The fee, explained simply

We don’t give exact percentages here because they vary by project. You’ll always see the precise figures before booking. The fee has two parts:

Most of the fee: hosting you at the project

Most of the fee pays for your accommodation, meals, guidance and someone to coordinate your days and stay available. Covering these costs means you can contribute without asking the project to pay for your stay. The fee also guarantees checked quality and safety standards. We’re responsible for making sure “accommodation included” means more than a place to sleep.

The HeyLocals share: choosing projects and supporting you

Part of the fee pays for the work behind your trip: choosing projects, checking partners, preparing and supporting you, creating useful information and running the community. It also pays salaries, so we can employ people with the skills to provide reliable support.

A financially sustainable organisation can keep working towards its mission. We’re a benefit company: the common benefit is written into our articles of association and has legal value. The part of the fee that remains with us helps us bring more people into well-planned trips, towards that one-in-ten goal by 2035.

Siem Reap: what ongoing support makes possible

Here’s an example. In Siem Reap, Cambodia, our local partner runs a community school where volunteers support the staff in community teaching. Here’s what ongoing support can make possible:

These figures don’t mean that one volunteer “saves” a project. They show how a regular flow of volunteers, coordinated by local staff, can help fund activities, materials and staff. When that flow stopped, the school lost not only hours of support but also the resources that made it possible to welcome more children.

What we don’t do

Being clear about fees also means being clear about our limits:

• We don’t create projects for volunteers. The projects we support respond to community needs and exist regardless of who travels. If a project exists only to host foreigners, we reject it.
• We don’t give you responsibilities you aren’t qualified for. You support local staff; you don’t replace them. No educational or health responsibilities that require qualifications you don’t have.
• We don’t offer short-term volunteering in orphanages. Repeatedly forming bonds with volunteers who soon leave harms children. We explain this in the warning signs section of our guide to volunteer organisations.
• We don’t promise you’ll “change someone’s life”. We promise to tell you what it’s realistic to expect before you leave.

Common criticisms, answered

We know the criticisms of our model. Some are fair and deserve real answers, not slogans.

"With that money you could simply donate"

It’s a fair question. If your only goal is to transfer money in the most direct way possible, a donation to a verified organisation can be an excellent choice. You don’t have to choose one over the other.

Donations also involve fundraising, administration, payment, reporting and communication costs. The percentage that actually reaches the project changes a lot from one organisation to another. So the right question is the same in both cases: can you show me how the money is used?

Travel also brings time together, relationships, learning and predictable income for hosts. It can sit alongside donations.

"Short-term volunteering is voluntourism"

It can be, and when it is, it should be called by its name. It becomes voluntourism when the project is built around the volunteer: inflated roles, photos with children as souvenirs, claims of impact that are never measured. That’s different from a clearly defined support role, alongside permanent local staff, in a project that would continue without you. The right question is not "do two weeks help?" but "would this project work without me?". A “yes” is a good sign.

"You’re monetising poverty"

It’s the hardest objection, so it deserves the most direct answer. Traditional organisations have much to offer, but these trips still aren’t widely accessible in Italy. Opportunities are scattered, communication can be unclear and the time commitment is often more than people can manage. That means fewer people travel, less funding reaches projects and fewer people meet across cultures. We use communication, technology and organised processes to support our social mission, which we explain in our articles of association, our figures and pages like this. If there’s a better way to help one young person in ten take a trip, we’d like to hear about it.

Frequently asked questions