Partners · Churches & Missions
Every mission trip your church sends is built on trust: parents trusting you with their teenagers, the congregation trusting you with its offerings, a partner community trusting you to show up. BonaVia is designed to protect the people on the trip and to turn the trip itself into support for the mission behind it: coverage for the team, and a sponsorship back to your church.
Why churches partner with BonaVia
A service to your people. A service to the mission.
Your people’s need first: a mission trip is the biggest purchase many of your families make all year that nothing protects. Most health plans thin out or stop at the border, the airline owes a rebooking and little else, and when something goes wrong four hours from a paved road, the church office is who gets the 2 a.m. call, with nothing to offer but prayer and a phone tree.
Then the mission’s need: the work runs on perpetual fundraising, and every channel costs volunteer hours. The sponsorship attaches funding to money your people are already spending on travel: no new spend, no another car wash.
We share up to 40% of what we collect with your church as a sponsorship, tracked in plain dollars, a statement the pastor can read aloud. Two teams a year plus the congregation’s own vacations adds up; the napkin math below is the shape of it.
No fee to partner, no minimums, and your people pay the same price they would pay for the same coverage anywhere else. Your co-branded page exists the day you sign up; the work is putting a link in the bulletin.
BonaVia is the licensed producer; coverage is underwritten by our licensed carrier partners. Your church introduces the road and names the cause: the licensing, the disclosures, and the paperwork stay on our side of the table.
Every covered traveler carries the plan card in their phone’s wallet with a 24/7 assistance number riding on it, so when the call comes from a guesthouse two time zones away, the team leader has a number to hand over, not a shrug.
The napkin math
A church that sends two teams a year, illustratively:
Illustrative volumes and typical-partner sponsorship credit from the BonaVia working model, not a quote or a promised rate. Sponsorship credit is credited per covered trip and varies with member travel.
An estimated 1.5 to 2 million Americans take short-term mission trips each year, and roughly two-thirds of those trips leave the country [industry estimates; Barna Group], most often for the places where the work is needed precisely because the infrastructure is thin. The CDC notes that trauma centers are uncommon outside urban areas in many destinations [CDC Yellow Book, 2024]: the same remoteness that makes the trip worth taking is what turns a rolled ankle into a logistics crisis.
An air-ambulance evacuation back to the US runs $20,000 to $200,000 or more [U.S. State Dept / CDC, 2024], more than many churches’ entire annual mission budget, and the US government does not pay a citizen’s medical bills abroad [U.S. State Dept, 2026]. Many US health plans stop at the border. The travelers on a mission team, students, retirees, first-time passport holders, are usually the ones carrying the least protection, and the church stands behind every one of them.
Emergency medical and evacuation benefits are designed for exactly this trip: help with treatment costs and, where medically necessary, transport to adequate care.
A team lands in Central America; the two checked duffels carrying the clinic’s medical supplies don’t. On international itineraries, bags are mishandled at about 9 per 1,000 passengers, five times the domestic rate, and most of those are delayed, not lost [SITA, 2025]. Baggage-delay benefits are designed to help the team buy essentials and keep working while the bags catch up.
A student volunteer goes down hard on a build site four hours from the nearest orthopedist. Emergency medical and evacuation benefits are designed to help with treatment costs and, where medically necessary, transport to adequate care.
A team leader’s father is hospitalized 48 hours before the flight. Trip-cancellation benefits can help recover prepaid, non-refundable costs for covered reasons, so a family emergency doesn’t also become a financial one.
Mission travel is not a niche
$0
what the US government pays toward a citizen’s medical bills abroad, while many foreign hospitals want payment before treatment begins.
U.S. State Dept, 2026
$20K–$200K+
the cost range of an air-ambulance flight home, often more than the church’s entire annual mission budget.
U.S. State Dept / CDC Yellow Book, 2024
9 per 1,000
bags mishandled on international itineraries, five times the domestic rate, and mission teams check the duffels that hold the clinic.
SITA Baggage IT Insights, 2025
2 in 3
an estimated share of US mission trips that go abroad, toward the places where trauma care is scarce by design.
Barna Group; CDC Yellow Book, 2024; industry estimate
Figures are risk context, not a description of coverage.
I
A short conversation about your teams, your destinations, and the cause the sponsorship should feed. We respond within two business days.
II
A co-branded page with your church’s name and cause: mission scholarships, the Honduras team, the building fund. Ready for the bulletin, the newsletter, and the group chat the day you sign up.
III
The whole roster is covered in one group purchase, matched to the destination, the dates, and the work. The same page covers members’ own vacations between mission seasons.
IV
We share up to 40% of what we collect with your church as a sponsorship, tracked in plain dollars, a statement the pastor can read aloud.
Your church names the priority. Member travel through your BonaVia path adds sponsorship credit toward it.
…or anything else your church cares about: you tell us who. Always a sponsorship your congregation can see.
Out on the road
Talk to a partnership director
Fifteen minutes, and you’ll know exactly what this looks like for your church, and what it could send back to the mission.
Tell us about your organization and how your people travel. A partnership director reads every note and responds within two business days.