Learn Hardcore German: Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert. - We get the class trip financed by the club.

kriegen
- Very common in spoken German.
- Sounds more informal/colloquial.
- Often avoided in very formal writing (official letters, academic texts).
bekommen
- Neutral, standard German.
- Fine in both spoken and written language.
- Safer choice in formal situations.

So you can usually replace kriegen with bekommen without changing the meaning, but bekommen sounds a bit more neutral and formal.

Why is finanziert at the end, and why don’t we say finanziert wird?

This is not the normal werden + Partizip II passive. It’s a special construction often called the bekommen/kriegen-passive or Rezipientenpassiv (recipient passive).

Structure:

Subjekt (Empfänger) + kriegen/bekommen + Akkusativobjekt + Partizip II (+ von + Urheber)

In this sentence:

wir = subject (the receivers)
kriegen = conjugated verb
die Klassenfahrt = accusative object (the thing we get)
finanziert = past participle (part of what we “get done”)
vom Verein = agent (who does the financing)

So:

Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert.
≈ Der Verein finanziert uns die Klassenfahrt.

If you said:

Die Klassenfahrt wird vom Verein finanziert.

that’s the normal passive focusing on the trip as the subject, not on us as receivers. Both are correct, but they highlight different things.

Is Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert grammatically passive or active?

Formally, it is an active sentence (the finite verb is kriegen in the active), but semantically it behaves like a passive for the recipient.

The subject wir is not doing the action of financing.
Instead, wir are the recipients of the financed trip.
The doer/agent is expressed with vom Verein.

So grammatically: active.
Functionally: a type of recipient passive focusing on what is done for us.

Why is it vom Verein and not von dem Verein?

vom is just the standard contraction of von dem:

von + dem Verein → vom Verein

This contraction is very common and usually preferred in speech and most writing, except in very formal or deliberately emphatic contexts.

Case explanation:

von always takes the dative case.
Verein is masculine:
- nominative: der Verein
- dative: dem Verein
So von + dem Verein → vom Verein (dative, masculine, singular).

Why is die Klassenfahrt in the accusative, not dative?

In this construction kriegen/bekommen + Akkusativobjekt + Partizip II, the thing you get is in the accusative:

etwas kriegen/bekommen → Akkusativ

Here:

Wir = subject (nominative)
kriegen = verb
die Klassenfahrt = direct object (accusative)
finanziert = tells us in what way we get the trip: it is financed.

You can see the underlying “active” version:

Der Verein finanziert uns die Klassenfahrt.
- uns = dative (indirect object, recipient)
- die Klassenfahrt = accusative (direct object, the thing financed)

In the kriegen-version, the recipient (us) moves to subject position (wir), and the thing (the trip) stays accusative.

Could I say Wir kriegen vom Verein die Klassenfahrt finanziert or Vom Verein kriegen wir die Klassenfahrt finanziert?

Yes, both are grammatically correct. German word order is relatively flexible inside the mittelfeld (the middle of the sentence).

Variants:

Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert.
– neutral order, focus often on finanziert or vom Verein depending on stress.
Wir kriegen vom Verein die Klassenfahrt finanziert.
– slightly more focus on vom Verein (who pays).
Vom Verein kriegen wir die Klassenfahrt finanziert.
– strong focus on vom Verein at the beginning; “As for the association, from them we get the trip financed.”

All three are possible; the choice is mostly about emphasis and style, not grammar.

What is the difference between this sentence and Der Verein finanziert unsere Klassenfahrt?

Two main differences: focus and grammar structure.

Focus
- Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert.
  - Focus: we as recipients.
  - Implicit idea: something is being done for us.
- Der Verein finanziert unsere Klassenfahrt.
  - Focus: the association as actor and the act of financing.
Grammar
- Wir kriegen ... finanziert. = recipient passive construction.
- Der Verein finanziert ... = normal active sentence.

Both describe the same situation, but they answer different implicit questions:

Was kriegen wir? → Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert.
Wer finanziert die Klassenfahrt? → Der Verein finanziert unsere Klassenfahrt.

Can I omit vom Verein and just say Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt finanziert?

Yes.

Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt finanziert.

This simply means we get the class trip financed, without saying by whom.

Use with or without vom Verein depending on whether the sponsor is relevant or already known from context.

Is kriegen very informal? Can I use it in writing?

kriegen is:

Very common in spoken German.
Natural in informal writing (messages, emails to friends, social media, many newspapers, etc.).
Often replaced by bekommen in very formal or official writing (applications, legal texts, academic writing).

In an essay or formal letter, prefer:

Wir bekommen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert.

In everyday speech or informal text, kriegen is perfectly fine and very idiomatic.

Is there a difference between finanziert and bezahlt in this kind of sentence?

Both are possible, but they are not identical in nuance.

finanzieren = to finance, to provide the money for something (often more general, can include organizing how it’s paid).
bezahlen = to pay (the bill), to hand over the money.

In this pattern:

Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert.
– The association covers the costs, takes care of the financing.
Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein bezahlt.
– More literally: they pay for the trip.

In practice, for this context, they are often interchangeable, but finanzieren can sound a bit more formal/neutral, while bezahlen is more concrete (“they pay the bill”).

Could I use a normal passive here instead, like Die Klassenfahrt wird vom Verein finanziert? How does that change the meaning?

Yes, that sentence is correct:

Die Klassenfahrt wird vom Verein finanziert.

Comparison:

Wir kriegen die Klassenfahrt vom Verein finanziert.
- Emphasis on us as beneficiaries.
- Answers: What do we get? What is done for us?
Die Klassenfahrt wird vom Verein finanziert.
- Emphasis on the trip and on the fact of financing.
- Answers: What happens to the trip? Who finances it?

So the passive with werden is a process/action passive focusing on what happens to the object (the trip), while kriegen/bekommen + Partizip II is a recipient-focused construction.

Is Klassenfahrt always written as one word? Why is it capitalized?

Yes, Klassenfahrt is written as one compound noun in German:

Klasse (class) + Fahrt (trip, journey) → Klassenfahrt (class trip).

German writes such compounds together as one word, not separated:

Klassenzimmer, Hausaufgabe, Fußballspiel, etc.

It is capitalized because all nouns in German are capitalized:

die Klassenfahrt
der Verein
das Buch, etc.

How would I say this more “plainly” without the kriegen + Partizip II structure?

Several options, depending on what you want to emphasize:

Focus on the association (actor):
- Der Verein finanziert unsere Klassenfahrt.
- Der Verein bezahlt unsere Klassenfahrt.
Focus on us as beneficiaries, but in a simpler way:
- Der Verein bezahlt unsere Klassenfahrt für uns.
- Der Verein finanziert uns die Klassenfahrt.
With normal passive:
- Unsere Klassenfahrt wird vom Verein finanziert.

The original sentence is very idiomatic and natural in everyday German, but these alternatives are also correct and sometimes stylistically simpler.