Affiliate Disclosure & How We Make Money
Honest, upfront answer to a fair question: how does Volunteer World Guide pay its bills, and does that affect what we recommend?
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What this site is
Volunteer World Guide is an editorial planning resource. We do not run volunteer programs ourselves. When you book or apply through a program, you are dealing directly with that provider under their own terms.
How we are funded
We support the site through a combination of:
- Referral / affiliate links to specific third-party volunteer program providers and travel-related services. If you click through and book, we may receive a referral fee at no extra cost to you.
- Editorial sponsorships, clearly labelled where they exist.
- Direct support from readers (newsletter, occasional partnerships, etc.).
We do not run on-page advertising networks or pop-ups that auction your attention to third-party advertisers.
What this means in practice
- A link being affiliate-linked does not mean we recommend it more strongly. Many of the most useful resources we link to (UNICEF, government travel advisories, NGOs) pay us nothing.
- We will recommend against a program — including programs we could be paid to link to — if it breaches our ethical volunteering standards.
- We will not insert affiliate links into ethics, safety, child-safeguarding or medical guidance content.
What we will not do
- Write fake reviews.
- Hide a commercial relationship behind generic “partner” language.
- Promote orphanage volunteering, unqualified medical practice or exploitative animal contact — regardless of how attractive the commercial arrangement.
- Allow a sponsor to dictate editorial conclusions on safety or ethics topics.
Disclosure standard
Where a link or block is sponsored or commercially placed, we label it. Where a page contains affiliate links, this page is the standing disclosure. If you ever see something that looks commercial but is not labelled, please tell us via the corrections process.