Expedition Advice: How to approach people

Welcome back!

This week I’ll be following on from last week’s blog: “Expedition Advice: Where do you start?“. This time I’ll be writing about how to approach potential collaborators, patrons, sponsors, the list goes on.

Now this one may sound patronising, but I’ve read (and have been guilty of writing) some absolutely terrible approach letters. There are so many aspects to an expedition, it can be hard to condense it down to something concise. Making a good first impression is important, especially if you’re approaching a busy person, in short, keep it concise, but don’t be vague.

I usually try to keep things to a maximum of 500 words (preferably less), following a structure similar to this, and it usually works for me:

• Introduce yourself, who you are, what you’re background is.
• A brief sentence (two at a push), outlining why you are contacting this person (essentially a summary of what you will write below).
• Describe your expedition, where are you going, when, how long, and what are you doing.
• Brief introduction of your team, speak about who you are associated with and your collective skills, for example, “team members have recently completed expeditions supported by the Royal Geographical Society and the Natural History Museum”), sell yourselves and show that you know what you are doing.
• On that note, make sure you name drop at every opportunity, do you have an impressive patron? Make sure you mention them. Anything that makes you look more credible.
• State clearly what you want from this person/group, I usually start with a couple of questions, for example, if someone has worked in the location I am taking an expedition to, I may ask them about the nearest hospital, or ideas for research focus. Make sure you don’t leave the email completely open ended. For example, “any help you can offer would be much appreciated” will often be ignored.

Also, a couple of general points to remember.

• Make sure you know what you’re talking about, do your background research.
• Don’t go overboard with fancy/flowery language, and avoid TLAs… (Three Letter Acronyms). You’re trying to gain support from this person/group, the last thing you want to do is to make them feel stupid by trying to sound too clever.
• It’s an obvious one, but be positive!
• However, don’t go making big promises that you may or may not be able to fulfill. Under-promise, over-deliver.

That’s all for now!

Ben Toulson

 

Got something to add? Don’t agree with what we’ve written, let us know below, let’s open up some discussion!

If you would like to write an expedition advice piece for the blog, do let us know by sending an email to director@fxpeditions.org!