Proposal #54: Educational Tours Inc.
I propose to make CISV an international travel agency offering all our existing programmes, educational programmes for the whole family and soft skill trainings for managers.
Rationale:
CISV's educational purpose and goals refer to making participants interculturally competent.
- There are a lot of CISV participants that call CISV a "bubble" and they struggle with implementing what they learned in CISV in their everyday life, also because it is hard to explain and share the experience and to express it. If CISV were a travel agency that did programmes for whole groups of families/ friends- people would have this experience with a group that has an everyday life together and it would be easier to implement what each individual learns in CISV into the everday life.
- We do have recruiting problems. Making us a travel agency would imply proper PR and marketing which we could reach more people with and better target our clientele. People are willing to spend a lot of money for a 2 weeks all-inclusive club, I bet they are willing to pay the same money for an intercultural adventure if it was promoted in a proper way.
- Semi-voluntary: The fact that we are a volunteer organisation is a nice atmosphere but it makes us inefficient, unprofessional, it hinders growth and achievement of goals in various ways. The CISV travel agency could be a semi-volunteer company where bureaucracy is managed by employees and the programmes are carried out partly by volunteers. Also, programme chars/ Committees would be hired and had to fullfill certain requirements (like knowing the goals of their programme, for example).
- From non-profit to profit. With our profit, we could support other organisations as well as our own - This could be a solution to the "CISV is only for the rich kids" problem.
Respectfully submitted, Babsi (AUT)
2 Comments:
(I usually try not to be the first one to comment, but this time I will, before my thoughts fly away...)
- Being a volunteer organisation is one of the key values of CISV. It is something to be proud of, and our 50+ year history is a fantastic achievement, given that all in all it's just a few individuals that work in Newcastele for pay. Nevertheless I find it interesting to challenge the volunteer-doctrine. Can CISV's impact be stronger, if we ran offices in all of our NAs instead of volunteer boards?
- The other interesting question Babsi rises is to challenge the non-profit doctrine. What is non-profit anyway? There are a whole bunch of companies out there, who smartly re-invest their income at the end of the year, so that they balance out at 0 for the taxes. Anyway, I'd love to elaborate the idea of creating a for-profit branch and see what part of CISV could be monetized. I think the "manager-training" is just the tip of the iceberg.
In the United States (at least), a non-profit is just that--a company that is licensed by the government doesn't have to pay certain taxes because they do not make a profit.
In this case, I'd argue that Babsi's proposal is not to create a for-profit offshoot organization, but to instead diversify or replace our current fee-based revenue stream with one that is supplemented or replaced with funds through diversity trainings, special programs, or leadership trainings. Much of the material we use in CISV programmes and activities could be highly desirable in the professional training arena.
In addition, by diversifying our income, we would be able to begin chipping away at some of the cost-based exclusion we acknowledge is an inherent part of participation in international programmes. Wouldn't it be awesome if delegates' attendance a village or other camp was covered?
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