eXXpedition is a series of all-women sailing voyages that embark on scientific research missions to explore the world’s oceans and raise awareness of the environmental impact of plastics and other toxic materials.

They entered the Matched Crowdfunding Pilot with a campaign to raise funds for their Round Britain 2017 voyage. We spoke to Soraya, the office manager, about the success of Round Britain, how public interaction in their crowdfunding campaign went beyond financial donations, the challenges of maintaining interest online, and the surprising results of their rewards for donating.

Round Britain was a voyage spent around the shores of the UK and during the 28 days the team “collected over 100 scientific samples looking at plastics and toxics in UK waters, and doing outreach events". These outreach events included citizen science workshops, school visits, beach cleans and campaigning events with local community groups at various ports around the country.

Soraya discussed how the public interest in the crowdfunding campaign went beyond the financial donations. She noted that “although we did reach our target, almost more people were interested in knowing what they could do practically, hands on rather than donating”, which is illustrative of the non-financial as well as financial support that crowdfunding can lead to.

Despite the overall success of their crowdfunding campaign and the subsequent Round Britain voyage, Soraya acknowledged that running the campaign had been hard in places. Notably, she referred to the difficulties in online interaction significantly dropping off after initial engagement. In line with the other case studies we are featuring, the eXXpedition team found “that after the initial lot of sharing, it then becomes quite hard work to keep promoting it and keep making it interesting, so people do still want to look and see.” Soraya recalled this surprised her at the time, but having run a subsequent crowdfunding campaign, she “can see that it’s quite a common thread.”

Relatedly, the introduction of rewards to the crowdfunding campaign brought some surprising results. Firstly, Soraya discussed the difficulty in getting people to engage with the rewards nearer the end of the campaign, but reflected on potentially adding them in too later as a reason behind that lack of uptake. She then told us that a number of people had donated amounts equivalent to substantial rewards, such as a tour of the expedition boat used on eXXpedition’s voyages, yet had still not taken them up six months later. This suggests that people were intrinsically motivated to give to the campaign because they believed in the cause, rather than because they wanted something in return.

To find out more about eXXpedition, including information on their latest voyage, check out theirwebsite.