LOGISTICS

To get started, please fill out this survey. This will let us know how we can best serve your trip’s needs. From there, someone will contact you for more information about your trip. This person will make sure you know all of the appropriate people to connect with for your trip.

Be in ongoing communication with your in-country (receiving) team for country-specific info and ministry opportunities while you’re there. Your in-country contact(s) will be able to assist you with certain aspects of planning your trip. It would be very helpful to get their input on your:

• Budget
• Trip Dates
• Housing
• Customs / Security
• WiFi and Phone Usage in Country
• Contextualized Ministry in that Culture

It is vital that you consider ahead of time how you will handle your trip’s money. These categories will help you organize your thoughts: budgeting, accessing money, tracking income and spending, and finalizing the books after the trip is over.

16 Weeks out – Make a rough draft of a trip budget

14 Weeks out- Determine actual costs

13 Weeks out – Finalize budget

11 Weeks out – Research and decide how you will get and use money in-country

6 Weeks out – Share trip budget with other trip leaders and brief them on how to track expenses

Budgeting is made a lot easier when you have a tool that does a lot of the work for you. For trips where finances do not run through Cru, we’ve created this Cru Strategic Partnership Trips Budget Tool. If you have your own tool you trust, feel free to use that. Otherwise check it out. It will make your life easier to start your planning with the budget tool you’ll use throughout!

Whether you use our Budget Tool or not, here are some budgeting tips to keep in mind:

• If your Mission Trip happened previously, contact that trip’s team leader for a copy of their budget and any explanation/changes that are needed.

• If you are the first team sending to this location: talk to your Cru Partnering Rep to see if anyone has been to the location before (scouting/vision trip), spend time on Google looking up prices in the area, and ask your Cru Partnering Rep for help. They may be able to obtain a sample budget from a similar location.

• If you attend one of Cru’s trainings in person or virtually, remember to include any conference costs that may apply.

• Depending on the level of partnership with Cru, check with your Cru Partnering Rep contact to see if there are any applicable Administrative Fees (these may update year to year).

• If you are traveling internationally, consider if International SOS enrollment is required.

  • SOS is travel assistance that Cru requires participants to enroll in unless you have a service that provides equal or better services. The cost for non-cru staff participants is $3.50/person/day for the duration of your trip. See this page (link to come) for more information.

• Create your Budget with 85-90% of the anticipated number of attendees in mind. This will prevent you from financial losses in the event that you have less participants than expected.

• Once your budget is complete, we recommend adding a small buffer in case of emergency. Our recommendation is 4% of the overall budget. You can spend the buffer – BUT remember that the buffer serves as an emergency reserve of sorts. Ideally, the buffer would only need to be spent in the event of unforeseen expenses, not to get another mission trip t-shirt.

Research and decide how you will get and spend your money in-country. Though many vendors around the world accept credit cards, there are many places that operate on a cash-only basis. If you will rely heavily on a credit card, be sure to plan ahead and determine if you can use your personal credit card and get reimbursed by your organization, or if your organization can provide you with a credit card that has a spending limit high enough to cover your trip’s in-country expenses. It is also very helpful to contact the financial institution that issued the credit card and inform them that you will be spending a good deal of money in a certain foreign country during a certain date range – the same is true of your ATM card.

Consider getting a cash advance from your organization into your personal bank account (or consider opening a Charles Schwab checking account) – this will enable you to access your trip’s money via ATMs and prevent the need to exchange all your cash in the U.S. and carry it to your international location. Charles Schwab is a nice option because they do not charge international ATM withdrawal fees, plus they reimburse ATM usage fees. Still, some trip leaders find it helpful to carry in a small amount of cash to help get started until they are able to access an ATM in-country. Be sure to avoid exchanging currency at an airport, as these tend to use unfavorable exchange rates.

Though we do not advise this, if for some reason you need to carry all your trip’s cash with you while you travel to your destination, and you are carrying $10,000 USD or more, you must report it to U.S. Customs (to help better protect you). Please note that dividing up cash among your trip participants does not satisfy this law. Also, you may be required to report the currency under the local laws of your destination upon arrival. When family members are traveling together, you should aggregate the cash to determine whether you are at the $10,000 threshold (e.g., if the husband has $5,000 and the wife has $5,000, then a declaration is required).

If your mission trip is raising financial support, whether as a whole or with individuals collecting their own donations, it is vital that you keep track of how much money has been raised. You will need to have enough income to support your budget.

It will be important that you accurately track how much money your trip spends, both before and during the trip. Not only is this likely necessary for your organization’s tax reporting, it is part of being a good steward of the finances God has provided for your trip. The budget tool mentioned above can help you do this by categorizing each expense with a budget category. In this way, you can compare how much you have budgeted to what you have spent.

Keep in mind that it may be necessary for you to keep track of cash you give to your team in the form of per diem for expense reporting purposes. Check with your organization about any requirements for this and be sure to have a way of tracking per diem when it is distributed (signatures from all recipients may be required).

At the conclusion of your trip, discuss with your organization’s finance leader about any policies regarding the following:

• Ministry reimbursements

• Any excess funds (either excess student donations or remaining budget funds)

• Any deficits incurred

APPLY FOR PASSPORTS

If you’re going on an international mission trip, determine a good deadline for when new passports should be expedited depending on if a visa is needed or not. Our recommendation would be…

• If you need a visa, start expediting them 12 weeks prior to departure

• If you don’t need a visa, start expediting them 9 week prior to departure

Click here for more passport information.

VISAS

If applicable, apply for visas. For general visa information from the U.S. Dept. of State, click here and search for the country you are visiting. Contact your Cru Partnering Rep to see if there is existing visa resources for your location.

TRACK WITH YOUR PARTICIPANTS

Double-check everyone has the required visa / passport by collecting a copy of the passport photo page for all trip participants. Decide what’s the best method to keep these.

• You may want to collect them and leave them in a safe place at home. You may decide to collect them and bring them on your trip. Or you may prefer to ask everyone on the trip to carry the copy of their own passport photo.

After the trip, shred or delete all passport and private information you’ve acquired.

These logistics make up the most expensive parts of your mission trip. They also require the most planning and forethought and cannot, for the most part, be figured out at the last minute. In order to properly budget for your trip, you need to look into these three areas early on to find at least an estimate of how much they will cost.

16 Weeks out – Research flight itinerary options and cost estimates

16 Weeks out – Research lodging options and cost estimates

14 Weeks out – Determine actual costs for lodging

14 Weeks out – Determine actual costs for in-country transportation

6-11 Weeks out – Book airfare

5-9 Weeks out – Finalize lodging and in-country transportation

Contact travel agents to get quotes for airfare. We recommend this in order to reduce the risk of losing money in case of cancellations or other issues. Before booking, you will need to have collected all passenger information. If you have ten or more people on your trip, you can look into group bookings, which can usually save you money, and also carries the benefit of allowing you to hold seats without having specific traveler information (or even knowing who exactly is going).

Here is contact information for the travel booking services we work with:

• Ryan Kiekhoefer, High Point: ryan@highpointgo.com | (972) 284-1311

• Rita Barrett, BCD Travel: rita.barrett@bcdtravel.com | (800) 969-1595

• AFC Travel: staff@afctravel.com | (800) 599-2925 | You will be matched with an agent

Research different options for your trip’s housing. You can search lots of hotel options via booking.com, and view rental properties via airbnb.com. While hotels can be easier to book and don’t require that you think about having enough space for all your participants in a single property, AirBnBs can be more conducive to team meetings, more comfortable, and potentially less expensive. Sometimes you can get a better rate if you have someone in-country go directly to the place to book than if you reserve online.

If you use booking.com, they often have free cancelation up to 24-72 hours prior to your stay. If you are unsure about the place you want to stay, this is a helpful way to get something locked in, while still having the ability to change if you need to. It also comes in handy if you need a reservation for a visa application. Just be sure it states “Free cancellation by [date]” before booking.

If you use airbnb.com, note that their system assumes that the person making the booking is the person staying at the property. Therefore, if you are booking on behalf of the person traveling, or you are booking multiple properties for your trip, consider having the person actually staying at the property finalize the booking instead. This will avoid potential legal issues if the AirBnB host isn’t keen on booking with a non-renter.

Apart from your international air travel, you will likely need to consider ahead of time how you are going to get from the airport to your lodging, how you will move about in your international location, and how you will get from your lodging back to the airport. There are many ways you could do this and it largely depends on the place you are visiting: trains, subways, light rails, buses, taxis, Ubers, or even ferries. Some of these require that you purchase tickets ahead of time because of limited capacity. Lean on your in-country contact to help you determine what would be appropriate for your team. You should also consider parking costs if any vehicles will be parked at a U.S. airport.

In some cases immunizations may be required for your international mission trip. Determine what (if any) immunizations are needed by trip participants. If immunizations are required, it’s your job (as the trip’s leader) to ensure each trip participant gets any required immunizations.

Unless your organization has a comparable or better international travel service, you will be required to complete Cru’s SOS Enrollment Form. This automatically creates an International Participant Risk Form that is emailed directly to your participants for them to sign online. Make sure each participant is signed up for the international travel service (either Cru’s SOS or your organization’s equivalent).

Keep a copy of all participants’ emergency contact information. You may be able to access that from the participants’ registrations, or you may ask participants to fill this out. Take a physical copy of emergency contact information with you on the trip.

Enroll your trip in the U.S. Department of State’s STEP program.

It is often helpful to create an emergency card (with information such as emergency phone number(s) during your trip, address of the hotel you’re staying at, etc.). Here’s a template emergency card you can use.

For international trips, we’d recommend checking in with a previous trip leader to that location, a trip specialist within your organization, or your in-country connections for tips on using phones in-country. The in-country receiving team will know about internet security requirements for your trip location. But here are a few options to consider:

LOCAL SIM CARDS

It’s becoming more and more common that getting SIM cards for your location is the best course of action. If you are getting SIM cards, you can research whether you can order them in advance or get them upon arrival. In some airports, they’ll even have local SIM card vending machines. There may also be some locations where you need to have a person who is a resident to sign an “application” to get a local SIM. Do a little research and/or talk to your in-country contact to see if they have any insight. If you go this route, have everyone on your team call their phone provider prior to leaving to have their phones internationally unlocked.

Tip: In some locations, you will have to include a passport photo with the paperwork to get a SIM card registered in-country, so it’s a good idea for each participant to bring 1-2 extra photos with them.

GET AN INTERNATIONAL PLAN

You can also ask your phone provider what it would cost to have an international phone plan for the duration of your time traveling to/from your location and in-country. Something like this is helpful (even if it’s only one person on your team) so you have phone capabilities the moment you land in country. However, this route doesn’t usually provide as consistent or as high of quality connection as a local SIM card.

GET WIRELESS HOTSPOTS IN-COUNTRY

In some locations it may make more sense to buy a few traveling wireless hotspots for the team. They are a small device that, once you set up a plan through a provider, gives you access to surf the web and use apps (like iMessaging, WhatsApp, etc.) on your phone. If your mission trip will primarily be traveling in small groups, this is also an option (i.e., get 5 hotspots for a team of 15; then you can send a hotspot with groups of 3 participants).

OPT TO USE WIFI

In many locations, having a phone app is the primary way that students communicate (i.e. WhatsApp). If internet connections are widely available on campus and in your housing location, you could consider a number of your team using their phones by only connecting to the internet.

• It is suggested that you use a VPN on any international mission trip – to both secure and non-secure locations. This will ensure that you can access any logistics or financial tools needed. And it will keep all your info safe!

• Cru requires a VPN on all internet-accessing devices at certain international locations – be sure to talk with your Cru Partnering Rep to find out if this applies to your trip. You may also need to get your computer and phone encrypted (this will help protect your data if your device gets lost or stolen). For any location – always follow the directions of in-country leadership if they have specific tools or processes to follow for the security of their long-term presence there.

To create a great experience for you and everyone on the trip, you’ll want to foster a warm and welcoming community. One way to do that is by being proactive in communication. Using this template letter can be a great way to share with trip participants what to expect. If your trip involves students (college-aged or younger), you might consider using this template parent letter as well. Parents appreciate knowing you’re taking good care of their kids. Once you’ve created your own letters, decide the best way to distribute them.

You would also benefit from double-checking every participant completed all of their necessary steps, including:

• Filling out a registration

• Passport & Visa (if applicable) are in hand

• Paid Deposit

• Fund Development

• Filled out International Participant Risk Form

As the trip gets closer you’ll want to give your trip’s participants an itinerary, packing list, and any other pertinent travel information.

Fill out the Mission Trip Survey to report the ministry impact of your trip.