Perhaps one of the biggest events in the fundraising calendar is The London Marathon. Having runners at this event is a really valuable opportunity for raising funds for your charity. Not only do you raise money from donations, but by supporting your cause the runners are a great way of spreading the word on your mission and making it visible to others.
Even if you have the best fundraising campaigns running, there is always room to make them even bigger and even better and really pull in those all important new donors and donations.
Following the successes in April this year, Just Giving asked 3 charities what top tips they would give to other charities considering using The London Marathon 2020 in their campaigns next year.
- Know And Support Your Runners
Your fundraising runners are quite literally giving your cause their blood, sweat and tears. The gruelling training, the blisters, the tears of frustration of pushing through barriers and tears of joy when they get to the other side. All of it to raise funds for your charity. These supporters deserve for you to really make the effort to know them and understand them.
Look at your supporter journey and ask yourselves some questions.
Who takes part in The London Marathon? What are the common motivations? What are their queries, concerns and goals?
Using the answers to these questions, you can put together a few different persona’s of the majority of runners and use this to support your fundraisers in the best way. It’s less about sharing information you want them to know, and more about giving them the information they need to know to be supported in their fundraising journey.
The more support you can give along their journey, the more successful their fundraising is likely to be, and thus yours.
- Share Stories
A great way of really getting people involved in your cause is sharing people’s stories for running. They are supporting you, so you should support them too! So often, they have a personal tale or journey that they have been on to get to the point of running the marathon and what their reasons behind doing it are. These stories are fabulous content for your website and blog, and are likely to be shared well on social media channels as well.
Sharing these stories with your wider community :
– Encourages donations from more than just the runners friends, family and colleagues.
– Motivates people to start their training and look forward to joining in future events.
– Shows recognition and gratitude for your runners, giving them a sense of pride in what they are doing. - Be First Off The Mark
People don’t tend to like being the person to donate on an online fundraising page. Maybe it’s because they don’t have a benchmark figure to gauge what their donation should be, but whatever the reason, it’s a great idea to encourage your fundraisers to lead by example and make the first donation themselves.
This goes for page sharing as well. Fundraisers can’t expect friends and family to share their fundraising page if they haven’t done so themselves first. Tell them not to be shy – They are doing an amazing thing for an incredible cause and deserve to shout from the rooftops about it. Share, share and keep sharing!
Keep in regular contact with your fundraisers to encourage and motivate them to do these little things that go a long way. - Take Your Runners on a Different Journey
Your runners are already some of your biggest supporters, but there is a way to build their affinity to your cause even more and give them even more motivation to bring in the donations, and that’s to show them firsthand what their fundraising money is doing.
Whereever possible, it would be an amazing idea to let your runners meet someone that has directly benefitted from money previously raised. Let that beneificiary share their journey, their story and show exactly how much of an impact your charity’s support has had on them.
Your runners are raising money for people exactly like that beneficiary. The donations they receive and the money they raise can change someone’s journey and give their story a happy ending.
That is powerful motivation for your runners to go out and push even harder with not only their training, but their fundraising efforts too.
- Prepare and Research
There are strict procedures in place to take part in The London Marathon for both individual runners and charities.
To find out more and start the ball rolling for your charity, head to their website https://www.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com/en-gb/charity/charity-ballot/charity-faqs/