Tis the season
If you know any runners, you have likely started to see some posts, emails and announcements about fundraising for an upcoming race. Right now Boston Marathon fundraising is in full gear, but London Marathon is right around the corner and Tokyo Marathon comes before both of them. For us non-elite runners (raising my hand), often our best bet to run in one of the premiere races is to get lucky in the lottery or to raise money. Having gone the fundraising route a few times myself (with some big, scary numbers to raise) I’ve seen and experienced a few things that might be helpful to others trying to navigate these waters.
My background
I have never worked specifically in fundraising, but I have worked professionally in non-profits since 2007 and have picked up a few things along the way. The organizations that I have worked at rely heavily on fundraising and have both been involved in many different campaigns, and done so successfully. I have been indirectly involved in fundraising my entire career in non-profits, and directly part of some campaigns a few times.
Once you work in the non-profit world for a while, you realize that it can be a pretty crowded space. Outside of non-profits, are religious organizations, relief efforts and gofundme campaigns for all sorts of worthy causes (to name a few). Anyone who has connections on social media knows that new requests come in weekly, if not daily. Over my years, I’ve collectively raised over $25,000 for various causes and events (I realize that pails in comparison to many). Over $23,000 of that money came from marathon fundraising efforts. Here’s to hoping I can help you a little if you are just starting out.
Fundamental Understanding: Rule of 7s
I’m not sure it’s officially called the “Rule of 7s” but if I’ve heard this once, I’ve heard it over 50 times. The general premise of this “rule” is that it takes 7 impressions (or touch points) to motivate someone. An impression can be a post, a conversation, an email, an invitation, etc. Ultimately you would count every time someone comes across information related to a topic. I’ve seen far too many people post once to Facebook, Instagram or some other platform and then never come around again. With a seemingly infinite amount of things to spend money on, it takes at least a few times to make an impression. There are different groups of people in your life that will support you, and catering to each of them is an important element to getting results. Drilling down a little further, an effective technique I was taught was to publicly thank and acknowledge donors and tag them on social media. By doing this, others are seeing that you are getting supported and connections of your donors may also want to give to you too.
Choose a cause that is personal
Raising money or gaining support for something you don’t have a personal connection or true belief in, is never easy. People are generally smart and intuitive and can tell when others aren’t bought in to what they are doing or supporting. Most fundraising campaigns have a donor website to utilize, and crafting a personal story is going to be a key first step to gaining support. The Boston Marathon was the first race that I fundraised for, and I was fortunate enough to get a bib through the organization where I work. Many of my donors were fellow staff, board members, and I also received huge support from family and friends. There were a few unexpected donors, but no “out of left field” donations came in.
When I was raising money for the March of Dimes to run the NYC Marathon, I shared my personal story and had unexpected donations coming in left and right. The biggest difference was that my story was central to my family as opposed to my workplace. I was very fortunate to have incredible support for both fundraising campaigns, but they attracted different people.
Share your training progress
Even though you are fundraising and ultimately looking for financial support, people are generally interested and excited to see how your training is going – especially if you are a first-time marathoner! Some people may not feel like there are in a position to provide a meaningful financial gift, but they are happy to come on a training run with you. Having an accountability partner can be invaluable as well. When I first started putting in longer training runs, each week was a new distance record for me, so it was easy to overshare my progress – because it was exciting! Very few people are out running consistently, let alone anything in double digit miles and for weeks and months at a time.
The other reason to share your progress online is to show people that you are serious and dedicated to holding your end of the bargain to actually prepare to finish the race. I have absolutely no statistics to back this up, but my assumption is that people are motivated by the running first and the cause second. What I mean by that is people would decide they want to run a marathon and then find an organization to raise money for. There are certainly exceptions where people want to support an organization or cause, and the running is just a way to do it.
Recommendation: maybe be a little selective with what progress you are sharing and don’t think that people want an update after every workout you finish. It can quickly drift into obnoxious over-sharing territory and could become a negative.
Getting creative
Given that you aren’t the only one out there asking people to give their money to you (the cause you are raising money for), think about what might be a creative way to motivate people. Captain No-Statistics is coming back to say that the vast majority of donors that I’ve seen only give to the cause one time and specifically because of the fundraiser. The organizations I’ve worked for have been very clear about their lack of expectations for repeat donations for marathon-based donors.
In thinking how I could drum up some more donations (either by getting more donors or more money per donor), I solicited the help of a small child in my house. My young daughter has always been quite artistic, so I crafted a business arrangement with her in 2019 (she was 8 at the time) where I would pay her $5 (of my own money NOT from the donation) for every portrait she drew of a donor. The deal was that for every person that donated at least $50 they would receive a “custom” portrait based on the photo of their choosing. When one was not provided, I became an internet sleuth and found a picture from their social media for her to draw. After these mini masterpieces were finished, I would post the original photo next to the portrait and post it to Facebook and Instagram (my social media platforms of choice). The interest for these portraits skyrocketed and I turned into a very demanding client, putting her to work to crank out portraits and the donations came in. At times she was well behind in her production, and I must admit that quality control suffered somewhat dramatically in the final weeks.
I have seen other people offer to do things in exchange for donations – typically a collective large amount instead of smaller donations. For example, you could do a polar plunge (jump into cold water), cut or color your hair, do a training run in a silly outfit or anything you can come up with. The point is to have something interesting or motivating that people want to see happen. Sometimes friends are more motivated to see you run around town in an inflatable dinosaur suit more than they are to donate to your cause because “it’s a great one”.
Parties or events
From what I’ve seen, younger runners in particular, have had good success putting on a fundraising party or event. The general premise is that you may know someone with a talent or you frequent an establishment, and partner with them to bring them business and help you raise money. This may look like a specific day and time period where the establishment will donate a certain percentage of sales to your campaign. Other times a particularly talented (and hopefully charitable) person you may know would be willing to donate their services and the money spent on an event would go towards your fundraising. I’ve seen people do this with a paint night, for example. These events certainly don’t happen on their own, so you will need to put some sweat equity into making it happen (setting it up, inviting people, showing up yourself, etc.). Good news is your are sweating for your training, so why not sweat for your fundraising!
Utilize matching gifts
Many companies offer matching donation programs, where they will match an employees charitable giving to another organization, up to a certain amount. This is a huge benefit for people that can take advantage of this, because it means that you ultimately get double the amount. It does sometimes take a while for the matching gift to come through, but as long as you know it’s coming… that’s ok! You can do some research yourself to see if you have any connections at a company or otherwise you can poll your network.
A second way that I’ve seen/used related to this is to utilize a large gift that you know is coming in as a challenge to other donors. An example would be if one of your family members says they are going to give you $1,000 towards your goal. Instead of just posting that in, you can ask if you can hold off on acknowledging that gift and say that you have a donor that will match every dollar donated up to $1,000. It’s not a silver bullet, but who doesn’t like a challenge?? I would recommend running that by your family member first, but I can’t imagine there would be much push back.
Enjoy the process
I totally understand and can relate to being pretty scared about raising thousands of dollars, in particular when some charities say they will charge your credit card for what you didn’t raise. In talking with many other charity runners, they pretty much all say that raising money was “the easy part”. I’m not sure if that excites you about the fundraising or freaks you out about the running… Hopefully you are raising money for an organization that has a good support system, and otherwise I hope you can refer back to this post for some ideas and encouragement. I will say, it feels pretty incredible when you end up hitting your fundraising goal AND finish your race. Best of luck!