Pan-Mass Challenge rides against pandemic trend and raises $ 50M

BOSTON — Pan-Mass Challenge founder Billy Starr knew early on he wouldn’t be able to get 10,000 people together this summer for the annual cross-state bike ride that over four decades has raised more than $700 million for cancer treatment and research.

He also knew he couldn’t just take the year off.

When the pandemic forced other sports-related fundraisers to cancel or drastically lower their goals, the PMC went virtual and delivered $50 million for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The money helped the hospital pay for personal protective equipment, continue with clinical trials and other care, and even went toward rent or groceries for patients who couldn’t just wait until the virus outbreak was over.

“Cancer’s not going to stop just because we have a pandemic,” Dana-Farber President and CEO Laurie Glimcher said. “The Pan-Mass Challenge didn’t stop either, thanks to Billy.”

In disrupting the world of sports and virtually every other aspect of life, the pandemic also upended athletic fundraising — all those walkathons, underwear runs and video game challenges that charitable causes need to pay for their work. Many of the events saw a decrease of 40-50%, according to David Hessekiel, who tracks the multibillion-dollar peer-to-peer fundraising industry.

The Pan-Mass Challenge brought in $63 million last year, with every penny going to DanaFarber. Although the total went down this year for the first time since the 2009 recession, $50 million is “really impressive,” said Hessekiel, the founder of the Peer-To-Peer Professional Forum.

“This year, none of (the riders) were able to do it, and yet they were still able to raise $50 million,” he said. “And it’s done in the context of a field that has been devastated.”

The nation’s largest singleathletic fundraiser, the PMC began in 1977 when Starr and a few friends rode to the tip of Cape Cod in memory of his mother, who died of melanoma at the age of 49. Since then, it has grown to an annual event with more than 10,000 volunteers and riders on 12 routes ranging from 25 to 192 miles.

As the virus outbreak spread this spring, though, organizers announced they would go virtual: Instead of riding from Sturbridge to Provincetown, or some part of it, participants in the “PMC Reimagined” would climb on their bicycles at their own chosen time, on their own chosen course.

And instead of organizing a ride that had grown somewhat routine, Starr wasn’t sure what to expect.

“There ain’t no well-oiled machine about this,” Starr said. “This is new landscape. Nobody knew what this was going to be.”

To maintain some semblance of the event that riders had grown accustomed to — 87% return the next year, with some coming back for decades — the PMC livestreamed an opening ceremony and other festivities. The jerseys and other swag riders usually pick up at registration were mailed.

“Everything that you could do in a socially distancing world, we did,” Starr said. “We kept our people alive and kept our mission front and center, so that when our weekend came around, people got on their bikes.”

They also lowered their fundraising goal to $41 million, an amount that seemed fitting for the ride’s 41st year.

“We thought it would be ambitious,” Star said.