So, you’ve assembled your London Marathon team and your runners are starting to panic about the daunting challenge ahead of them – training to get across the finish line, as well as hitting their fundraising target for your cause.

So far, over 12,500 people have already chosen JustGiving for their 2023 London Marathon fundraising, supporting almost 1,000 charities…

On your marks, get set!

Running a marathon is a huge physical challenge. Help your runners prepare for the big day with a training plan made just for them. Our friends at Runna have lots of tips to help runners plan their training through to April – be sure to let your team members know that if they sign up to Runna, they’ll get the first two weeks of their personalised training plan free, and a £10 donation to their JustGiving page with code: JustGiving.

Reveal your London marathon team 

Cue the fanfare! Now’s the time to announce your remarkable marathon team, the VIPs dedicating their time and effort to your cause. Make an announcement on social media or in your charity newsletter that your team has been chosen and introduce some of the members and their stories.  

It’s important to make your team feel special as well as build a sense of community among the team members. Create a 2023 London Marathon Campaign Page and send your runners your Campaign Page Creation Link to simplify their journey and ensure they’re connected to your campaign.   

Shout about your team and share your campaign page with your wider supporter network, encourage them to follow the team’s marathon journey and you could even make a call to action to support them by donating to the campaign.

Offer a helping hand 

1. Let your runners know about all of the support available to them, so they don’t feel like they’re facing the challenge alone. Here’s some stewardship tips from our friends at MS-UK.  

2. Your runners could be one of many getting an extra £100 donation to their JustGiving page. From January 1st 2023, every donation they receive counts as a competition entry – we’ll automatically enter them into our weekly draw.

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3. Our Running for Good Facebook Group, with over 2.7k members, is an amazingly supportive community which gives members a chance to chat to fellow runners, calm any nerves and share tips. Our expert coaches from Runna are on hand to answer any questions and will be sharing training videos in the group and on our socials too!  

4. As well as this incredible community at your fingertips, you’ll be able to direct your fundraisers to our London marathon hub on JustGiving – full of great tips, tricks and even a recipe or two for your VIP runners. Check it out here.  

Prepare the reports you’ll use most 

With your marathon team ramping up their fundraising, we know that keeping track of everything as well as supporting them can be difficult. Save time by using fundraising report templates to track your fundraisers’ progress and find any inactive fundraisers who might need a hand.  

Don’t forget to take into account your fundraisers sitting at £5 raised, who might have received a donation from JustGiving as part of our £5 donation incentive following its success in 2022. 

Now that your charity is well and truly prepared for the London Marathon, it’s time to help your supporters smash their fundraising goals… here are our top tips for getting their fundraising off to a great start.

1. Share, and share smart 

We always talk about the importance of fundraisers sharing their pages as much as possible. To make sure they raise as much as possible, it’s important to think about who they’re sharing their page within the first instance.   

Early in their fundraising journey, i.e. In the run-up to Christmas, you should encourage your fundraisers to share their page with the people closest to them – family, close friends etc. Even better, share this via Whatsapp or in a text so that it’s a more personal ask. In theory, the closer the network, the more likely they will be to donate… and in a lot of cases, donate larger amounts.   

Self-donation to kickstart their page before sharing it is a great way to set precedence for the donors that follow too, leading to fundraisers raising a whopping 84% more!  

When we analysed the behaviour of London and Edinburgh marathon fundraisers – those in the top 20% posted an average of 12 times, the top 5% around 20 times, and then the top 1% posted an enthusiastic 35 times!  

2. Make the perfect page 

Your fundraisers’ accounts are toolboxes full of ways to make their pages the best they can be, and in turn raise as much as possible. The more tools they use, the more likely they are to hit their target, fact.   

Encourage your team members to make the perfect page by sending them top tips on how to personalise it, write an engaging story and amplify their reach. Make sure they know that this is important throughout their fundraising, not just something to be ticked off at the start.   

Adding an update to their London marathon page and sharing it to social media too could lead to them raising 27% more! This could be a photo from a training run or even better, if they’ve connected their page to Strava or Fitbit, post an app update and they could raise a huge 111% more!   

3. Be creative! 

Let your fundraisers know that they can raise money by doing other things aside from simply sharing their fundraising page on social media. Give them some ideas and encourage ‘little and often’ fundraising – asking their work for matched donations, asking friends or local shops to sponsor a mile, giving something up, hosting a supper club, take on some dares, vote for a hilarious fancy-dress costume on event day … the list is endless!  

Rewarding and incentivising your fundraisers can give them an extra boost too!  

There you have it. Our ultimate guide to getting your charity and your fundraisers off to a great start in the run up to the 2023 London Marathon. 

Eager to learn more? Watch our latest on-demand webinar to get an exclusive look at JustGiving’s plans for the 2023 London Marathon and the key event fundraising trends you need to know to adapt your planning. Our fantastic charity guest speakers have plenty of top tips and best practices to help your charity raise more. 

Last updated: Tue 17 Jan, 2023