With nearly a year of Coronavirus under our belts, nonprofits have realized that virtual fundraising is here to stay.
Even as we start to think about moving back to some in-person events, nonprofits have realized that the convenience of virtual events can’t be beat.
If you’re looking forward to your next walkathon or race and thinking that you don’t want to risk an in-person event, a virtual walkathon may be the answer. Let’s see how it works.
For a detailed walkthrough, watch our free webinar, the Ultimate Virtual Walkathon Fundraiser Playbook on-demand:
A virtual walkathon or race is, at its heart, a peer-to-peer fundraiser. Participants raise money from their friends and family to complete a challenge.
A virtual race can be based on any type of exercise. It is usually walking or running but you could also think about cycling, swimming or a particular exercise that is more suited to your audience.
NStreetVillage activated their virtual walkathon participants to create a personal fundraising page and encouraged them to use the hashtag #SHEROWALK.
Let’s say you’ve chosen walking. As a peer to peer event, participants can sign-up and commit to a number of kms that they will walk in a certain time frame. This could be 5kms over 24 hours, 15kms over 2 weeks, or 55kms over 4 weeks – you can choose the timeframe and challenge, or let participants choose for themselves.
Participants would then be expected to raise funds from their friends and family via their own fundraising pages.
The last year has shown us that virtual fundraising is a powerful force, and that even in the midst of a crisis, our supporters want to give. All you have to do is give them the right opportunity. With the hope of a new year, people have a lot of optimism that can be channeled into a virtual walk or race.
There are many reasons why a virtual walk or race works as a fundraising event right now, and in the future. Here’s just some of them:
Parkinson’s Nebraska used the virtual format to create an amazing event. Their Walk the State challenge pushed fundraisers to communally walk the number of miles it would take to cross Nebraska.
Be sure to check out our 23 Virtual Event Fundraising Ideas for some other event ideas, if a virtual race isn’t the thing for you.
Being virtual, everything is obviously online! So instead of organizing a physical event space, focus on the online channels and platforms you will use.
Participants can complete the race or walk in their own time, and update their community through their digital channels – so you want to be sure you’ve got all the resources in place to help them with not only their challenge but their fundraising goals.
Peer to peer fundraising success really depends on having the right platform – and with a virtual event this is even more important.
We suggest getting started with what platform you are going to use, and scoping out any work that needs to be done to help you build it. You want to try and choose a platform that is easy to set up and use, can integrate with your existing systems, and one that won’t require any additional code or development.
Some of the essentials features you should include are:
Through CauseVox’s Peer to Peer Fundraising tools, you can access all of the features above and more! Oh, and did we mention that we’ve just rolled out new feature that will make your walks and runs even better? It’s called the Activity Metric.
This way, no matter what type of virtual activity or challenge you may be engaging your community in, it’ll be easy for you and your participants to set goals and track their progress.
Here’s a few examples of the types of activities your participants are able to track on their page:
Once you have decided on and set up your platform, it’s now time to promote your event and get people to sign-up!
Here are some of ideas and suggestions to help you plan your event:
Grace Center used the walk-a-thon concept and converted it into a move-a-thon! They asked participants to dance or move for four hours together on a livestream. It was an engaging way to stand out with a fresh concept.
Easily collect registration fees on CauseVox with Peer-to-Peer Registration.
Want to distribute t-shirts for your virtual walkathon? We learned from doing it ourselves that Merch by Amazon makes it easy for you to customize a t-shirt. Amazon prints them and distributes them for you – saving you a lot of time and hassle.
Nonprofits can sign up for an Amazon Merch account — this gives you a custom t-shirt listing on Amazon. A few key benefits to this include:
Approvals for a Merch account take a few weeks, but in some cases a few months. Plan to apply early! Once you have an account, you can upload a design.
It’ll take a few days for your design to be approved, and you’ll receive a link to your product like this. Then, we recommend ordering a shirt sample to see if you like the quality.
We gave each speaker at our Digital Fundraising Summit a gift card to cover to cost of purchasing a t-shirt – you may want to do the same for sponsors and select registrants!
An individual fundraising page such as this can help participants organize and promote their own fundraising.
To recruit your virtual walkathon or virtual race participants, you’ll want to:
Walk the State provided their participants with toolkit that included everything they will need to promote their fundraising event, including social media posts, to make it as easy as possible
Here are some of ideas and suggestions to help you promote your event:
We sat down with Kimberly Searles to discuss how she pulled off her successful virtual walkathon on our Nonprofit Leader Panel: How To Raise More Through Virtual Events: Watch the webinar on-demand:
Once your virtual race has started, it’s important to keep you community engaged. Not only do you want them to continue raising money, but you also want to provide them with encouragement to finish the challenge. Keeping them motivated is key!
Here’s some ideas to keep your community engaged:
Obviously the main goal of your virtual race is to raise much-needed funds for your cause.
Here are some tips for helping your participants raise more money for their virtual race:
702 Miles to Freedom is a run that’s raising money to build a trauma center in South Sudan. Their page does a fabulous job of sharing the stories of those affected, and giving a clear picture of what’s needed to reach their goal. One of our favorite parts is that they share it will cost $14.25 per mile to reach the goal, which makes it feel much more achievable.
Often people feel that if they’re unable to donate large sums of money to their favorite organization that they wouldn’t really be making an impact.
CauseVox helps donors and other participants focus less on the transaction and more about the story and impact through the CauseVox impact metric and customizable donation tiers.
The N Street Village team appreciated that the software allowed them to add an increment to their fundraising page so donors could see that their donation went to X number of meals for women in the shelter. People are more likely to give when they can see how their gifts get your organization to its goal.
“We heard a lot of feedback from new donors who came on as team members of friends that the impact meter was a big driver for them. They were able to see that their $4 donation made a real impact on the overall fundraiser,” MaKenzie noted.
In fact, a survey from Charities Aid Foundation found that 68% of their respondents said that it was important to have evidence about how a charity is having an impact. Descriptive Tiers are a bite-sized way to provide that information.
With descriptive donation tiers, you can show each donor how much each gift size really makes a difference:
Record Robotics hosted a BUILD-a-thon to raise money for their high school robotics team. They used their donation form with great effectiveness by sharing exactly what parts they could buy with each donation.
CauseVox is your race-day teammate.
CauseVox helps you raise more with less effort for your virtual walkathon or race by taking the complexity out of fundraising. We’ll help you:
Learn more about running your virtual walkathon or virtual race on CauseVox.
Book 1-1 Demo with our team to chat about how CauseVox can help you raise more through your virtual fundraising event.
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