We’ve teamed up with Katie Waller, Event Fundraiser from MS-UK, to bring you the best practice tips to help make this year’s TCS London Marathon your charity’s most successful yet!

Ready to engage with your supporters and guide them through the London Marathon journey, from training up until (and after!) the big day? Read on… 

Regular post-sign-up communication

Building a strong relationship with your runners is a must – the team at MS-UK recommend reaching out to your fundraisers at least once a month. They often call or email their runners, to give support and advice, and even some easy fundraising ideas to get their London Marathon journey off to a great start.

Having an active Facebook group is another great way to encourage your runners and create a sense of community. Your supporters can share their stories, get to know other runners and celebrate one another’s progress. If your charity doesn’t have the capacity for this, or simply not enough marathon runners to create your own, here at JustGiving, we have our own Running For Good Facebook group – a welcoming community for running advice and motivation. Your supporters are more than welcome to join.

MS-UK also share monthly e-news, where they thank their runners for their support and share regular event updates and fundraising tips and tricks. They also offer Zoom calls with guest speaker for their runners, where they share training advice and answer any questions they may have about the London Marathon. Regular communication is a simple yet effective way to remain engaged with your audience and support them throughout their fundraising journey.

Motivate your runners with suggested milestones and incentives

We know that incentives are a great way to motivate your London Marathon team and get their fundraising pages activated. For example, this year, we’re donating £5 to the first 10,000 London Marathon pages created on JustGiving, to get your supporters’ fundraising off to a great start.

MS-UK believe that incentives are a great way to motivate your London Marathon team! They set up the fundraising milestones throughout the event timeline leading up to the London Marathon, to encourage fundraisers to meet certain fundraising targets by specific dates – giving their runners the motivation they need. This gentle push can be used for any fundraising event – big or small.

Suggest a ‘little and often’ approach to fundraising

With the current cost of living crisis, some may find it difficult to donate large amounts to charity or host big fundraising events. Taking a ‘little and often’ approach is an easy way to promote more inclusive fundraising – offer your supporters simple fundraising ideas to encourage donations in the run up to the London Marathon – no matter how small.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Bake sales
• Quiz nights
• ‘Come Dine With Me’ dinner parties
• Ask donors to donate the ‘cost of a coffee’
• Sponsor a mile and have the donor’s name printed on the runner’s shirt

Asking supporters who aren’t currently able to donate to share pages on their social media channels is another way they can get involved, without spending money.

Celebrate your fundraisers

Our final tip is simple: celebrate your fundraisers! It’s important to let your supporters know how proud you are of them, at every step of the London Marathon journey – from initial training, to the finish line and beyond.

Be sure to keep in regular contact with your runners, check in with them throughout the training process and thank them for their hard work, calling out their training progress, as well as their fundraising achievements.

Using a campaign page for your marathon team? Why not use a leader board to shout out top fundraiser of the week or month? Don’t forget to snap some great photos for your socials on the big day too!

Finally, we’d like to remind you to encourage your supporters to take advantage of the full features JustGiving has to offer. Personalising their JustGiving page with a profile photo, regular updates and a fundraising target will drive more page views and, in turn, donations. Don’t forget, your runners can sync their JustGiving page with their Strava or Fitbit account too!

We’re wishing you and you and your supporters the very best of luck with this year’s London Marathon! Want to learn more? Tune in to our London Marathon webinar with Katie and MS-UK, covering all of these tips and more.