I’ve been reading some of the twitter coverage of the London Marathon today and two things stick out. The first, is the good news that fundraising appears to be significantly up. Bmycharity are reporting funds raised through their site up by 47%, while Friday was a record day for fundraising on the JustGiving site.
More interesting, however, is to read the tweets from many charities who are actually at the Marathon and cheering their runners on (as well as tweeting their runners on). Action Aid and Shelter among others are there in person.
So my question is, when the Mini-Marathon rolls around in June, will you be out with your fundraising team, waving banners and cheering wildly as your supporters run their hearts our for your cause?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Conor 04.26.09 at 3:57 pm
its been great to read the tweets, for many reasons…to me its a demonstration of the power of Twitter and how charities should and could be using it.
Aside from that I agree with your point. Seeing these charities there cheering on their supporters is the way it should be. Any time I was involved in the mini marathon we always did something for our runners, somewhere for them to come before and after, to cheer them on. I sometimes questioned it from a cost perspective (and imagine many will come up against that this year). Looking back on it though I think it was the thing to do.
I posted on my blog last September about creating Raving Fans “they are so excited about the way you treat them that they want to tell stories about you”.
By being a Raving Fan you can create them.
damian 04.28.09 at 2:02 pm
… and now more than ever do you need to inspire that raving fandom-ness amongst donors. If your donors really really really like you, they’ll pull out all the stops when the going gets tough, they’ll stick with you during the hard times. And, as most donors are promiscuously supporting several charities, when they start cutting back, you want to be sure it’s one of the other charities they drop first.