The Guide to Major Trusts 2025-26. DSC (Directory of Social Change)

Getting the best out of, and for, marathon fundraisers

Howard Lake | 25 March 2010 | Blogs

The London marathon is officially the largest single fundraising event in the world and this year over 36,000 runners will take part and most likely raise over £45m between them for charity. All good, but I was a little surprised to see on the front cover of Third Sector this week how much of an issue runners who “fail to pay” has become.
London Marathon 2010 poster
The event is hugely popular and open ballot places were committed in record time with the organisers receiving more than 120,000 applications in less than three days. Most charities will also have found themselves in receipt of more applications than they had golden bond places (the cheapest allocation given to charities). Consequently a nice little sub-market in places has developed.
I’m not here to pass judgement on conditional advertising deals or event packages but when marathon places are changing hands at effectively well over £1,000 it’s no surprise that fundraisers need to ask for sizeable pledges just to cover their costs (which often include events supports, free advice etc. for runners).  This makes it all the more stressful when runners don’t meet their fundraising obligations. So what can we do to minimise the chances of getting caught short?
Thankfully, it appears that the majority of charity runners are committed to meeting their fundraising obligations. For those more inclined to moral turpitude (and indeed to maintain best practice for all runners) there are some positive steps we can take. The list below has been compiled from personal experience as well examples of best practice taken from various charity and events websites.
General ideas

Communications ideas

Process ideas

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This clearly isn’t an exhaustive list so what other ideas would you add?
 

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