5 Ways Spinal Research Raised £300,000 in London Marathon

LM Spinal Research Interview

How do you raise £300,000 for your charity’s cause with a small team and a limited budget? Today, you’ll find out!

We talked with Georgia Akers, Head of Events at Spinal Research, about exactly how the charity plans, promotes, and raises a heap of money towards its mission in the London Marathon using JustGiving.

And we get specific. Georgia shares…

  • How she recruits reliable and motivated fundraisers from day one
  • Keeps the hype going all the way through race day
  • The game-changer that raised an extra £100,000 and halved their dropout rate!

As you’ll see, it’s about getting in front of the right people, finding the strategy that works for you, and making the most of opportunities to gain support.

Let’s jump into it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. How to identify your potential for success
  2. Setting the right objectives
  3. Recruiting the best supporters
  4. The optimum London Marathon fundraising timeline
  5. The strategy that raised an extra £100,000
  6. Digital fundraising tools for success
  7. The JustGiving London Marathon Fundraising Hub

Small charity…giant results

Spinal Research is the UK’s leading charity funding the discovery and development of effective treatments for chronic spinal cord injury.

With work like that, you might think the charity has a team of 100+ people. But they’re smashing it with just a small but dedicated team of only 15 people, and their London Marathon team only two: Georgia and one assistant!

And despite their modest team size, the charity team of 184 London Marathon runners combined to raise £300,000 on JustGiving alone in 2024.

A screenshot of the Spinal Research London Marathon 2024 JustGiving Campaign Page, showing £298,059 raised by 5895 supporters and 178 fundraisers.
The Spinal Research London Marathon 2024 JustGiving Campaign Page.

How to identify event potential, then test and scale

Success in London Marathon relies on careful effort, and ongoing stewardship. How does Georgia tell if it’ll have a positive ROI?

GEORGIA AKERS, HEAD OF EVENTS, SPINAL RESEARCH

From there, she assesses if the value’s worth the cost. “If I think it’s worth it, I’ll purchase a small number of charity places to test the demand, then slowly increase.”

TOP TIP
Got runners in London Marathon 2025 who haven’t set up their fundraising page on JustGiving? Send them your charity’s unique Fundraising Page link to get their pages active quick and easy!

Setting the right objectives

Setting objectives comes down to your charity’s specific goals. For Spinal Research, the main goal in 2024 was building brand awareness whilst gaining new supporters.

GEORGIA AKERS, HEAD OF EVENTS, SPINAL RESEARCH

The charity also leverages London Marathon to build even stronger relationships with their existing community, whilst raising as much money as possible.

Group photo of the Spinal Research charity team.
The Spinal Research team. Photo provided by Spinal Research.

How to recruit new and existing supporters

The charity has an ongoing list of people who have expressed interest in the next year’s event, which they tap into when their London Marathon places are confirmed.

For further recruitment, they split their outreach into cold and warm audiences. Spinal Research attract cold audiences (reaching new people not familiar with the charity) with Facebook ads, and engage warm audiences (their existing community or people who know about them) through organic social posts and email.

GEORGIA AKERS, HEAD OF EVENTS, SPINAL RESEARCH

Then, as soon as people are accepted into the team, they get a series of resources via email to welcome them and help them start fundraising:

  • A prompt to set up their JustGiving page
  • Marathon training plans
  • Fundraising ideas and inspiration
  • Reminders for upcoming milestones (more on this later)
  • Personalised support
Photo showing two Spinal Research fundraisers holding their medals after completing London Marathon.
Two members of Spinal Research’s dedicated London Marathon fundraising team. Photo provided by Spinal Research.

TOP TIP
For more on how to attract and activate new audiences, get our free JustGiving Guide to London Marathon 2025.

The optimum fundraising timeline: how to keep people motivated all year long

Georgia and her team think about London Marathon all year long, as it’s their flagship fundraising event. And London Marathon wastes no time in releasing ballot places and charity places. They often do it the day after London Marathon, for the next year’s event!

Here’s the fundraising timeline we’ve seen work time and time again:

Graphic showing the optimum timeline for London Marathon campaign planning for charities, including Page Creation, Page Activation, Page Value, and Retention.
The optimum London Marathon charity fundraising campaign timeline, from the JustGiving Guide to London Marathon 2025.

To keep the excitement going, Spinal Research connects with their team and helps their team connect with each other through:

  • A WhatsApp group for answering questions and sharing ongoing inspiration
  • Showing up to cheer on their London Marathon runners during the event 
  • Hosting a post-marathon meetup at a local pub to meet and congratulate their fundraisers after their monumental effort
Photo showing members of the Spinal Research team cheering on a London Marathon participant at London Marathon.
The Spinal Research team cheering on a London Marathon participant at London Marathon. Photo provided by Spinal Research.

The £100,000 fundraising difference-maker

Here’s the one change to their fundraising strategy that helped Spinal Research raise an extra £100,000 in London Marathon 2024.

They mapped out a required milestone for their fundraisers, then had a backup plan if people didn’t meet it in time.

GEORGIA AKERS, HEAD OF EVENTS, SPINAL RESEARCH

This strategic milestone attracted more committed runners from the start. On top of that, their fundraiser waitlist let them to pull in new people if others had to drop out.

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Photo of a member of the Spinal Research London Marathon fundraising team running during the marathon.
A member of the Spinal Research London Marathon fundraising team in action during the marathon. Photo provided by Spinal Research.

What digital fundraising tools help you in your London Marathon campaign?

Spinal Research use JustGiving Campaign Pages for all their London Marathon campaigns.

It’s easy for the charity and their fundraisers to check in on their individual or collective fundraising total. Plus, everyone can see how they’re measuring up against others on the leaderboard – that bit of friendly competition encourages people to raise more!

Another time-saver is having JustGiving connected to their Salesforce CRM via the JustGiving API, which shows them all their fundraisers’ data in one place (including how much they’ve raised on their JustGiving page) – especially helpful for such a small team!

Photo of a Spinal Research fundraiser in a wheelchair during London Marathon.
Spinal Research fundraiser during London Marathon. Photo provided by Spinal Research.

What are your London Marathon goals for 2025?

Spinal Research is in the middle of their 2025 London Marathon campaign and aiming to raise more than ever next year.

GEORGIA AKERS, HEAD OF EVENTS, SPINAL RESEARCH

Georgia says, “The money raised will help our mission by allowing us to continue to fund cutting-edge research, advance clinical trials, and fund our PhD programme, which is training the next generation of specialists in the field of spinal cord injury.

Photo of Spinal Research’s specialist research team.
Spinal Research’s specialist research team. Photo provided by Spinal Research.

Spinal Research are heading toward their 2025 London Marathon fundraising goals by…

These smart strategies are helping them get donations every day. Our advice: adapt these strategies to boost your charity’s London Marathon campaign too!

Check out our 2025 London Marathon fundraising hub for even more resources to help you plan, promote, and succeed in the biggest fundraising event of the year 👇

EVERYTHING YOU NEED 

The JustGiving London Marathon 2025 Fundraising Hub 

Get all the latest London Marathon 2025 fundraising resources, incentives, and tools to build your charity a winning campaign.

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Brian's on the Content team at JustGiving, and passionate about educating charities in online fundraising, research, and inspiration to help raise more money and grow their brand.