How to motivate your marathon fundraisers and help them raise more money

Fundraise online

Your fundraisers will raise more online than using paper sponsorship forms. It’s faster, easier, with less hassle for your fundraiser AND your charity. What’s more, donating online – via credit and debit cards, and PayPal – is more convenient for their sponsors too!

Make your runners feel special and let them know they’re not alone

Build a separate database of your marathon runners and send targeted emails that speak specifically to them. Encourage them to send in their stories and profile them in your emails. Create a marathon team on JustGiving (here’s a good example) and encourage your runners to join. They’ll love feeling part of your special group and appreciate you sharing useful content.

Alternatively, you could create a Facebook group or run fortnightly meet-ups just for them… Training for a marathon can be quite a lonely experience, so we’ve recently set-up a Facebook page called JustRunning. It’s a page especially for fundraising runners, where they can share tips, help each other out and take part in our regular competitions. Anything that makes your marathon runners feel special will make them feel rewarded by your charity.

Put yourself in your fundraisers’ shoes… Or trainers!

Forget about your charity and your key messages for a moment. Instead think about the kind of questions your runners are asking and typing into Google in search of an answer. What trainers should I wear?What’s the best way to heal blisters quickly? What music will help me keep going when all I want to do is stop? How do I fundraise whilst training and working a full-time job? Are there marathon training groups in London I can join? If you save them time and provide answers to these types of question on your communications with them, it will make them feel good about your charity.

Don’t re-invent the wheel

Don’t worry if your charity hasn’t got the resource to create new and tailored content for your marathon runners. There’s lots of useful content out there already and you can help your supporters find it. Share links to interesting runner blogs you find and get bloggers to write special posts just for your supporters. For example, we’ve recently had top 100 mummy blogger Mirka Moore and determined marathon runner John Hibbs write guest posts for us here on the JustGiving blog. We’ve also launched several competitions for marathon runners, which you can encourage your fundraisers to enter. All our recent marathon-related posts can be found here.

Send words of encouragement

Marathon training is intense, so a few well-timed emails to your runners from your charity saying “well done” and “keep going” could be the difference between them being one-time fundraisers and loyal regular supporters.

Help your supporters help you

The best fundraising pages on JustGiving tell a really good story. Encourage your runners to tell their unique fundraising story and give them text, photos and videos about your charity so they can let people know why they’re going to the trouble of raising money for you. Explain why your charity deserves support and what their donations will buy, for example £10 will buy a school desk or £20 will help restore someone’s sight.

Send top tips

Encourage your runners to update their email signatures, business cards – anything that regularly profiles them – with a quick line about their fundraising. And remind them to keep all their social networks up-to-date on their training and fundraising through regular status updates on Facebook and Twitter. Our Facebook, iPhone and Android apps are all designed to help fundraisers keep their supporters updated. The more involved their friends feel in their marathon training, the more likely they are to donate.

Keep fundraising after the event

Around 20% of donations through JustGiving come in after people finish their event, so when you email your runners to congratulate them on crossing the finishing line in London, encourage them to keep on fundraising – it’s a good opportunity to update friends on family on how they did as well as make a final appeal for donations!