Walking for a good cause
A popular way of raising money for charity is to organise a sponsored walk. Almost everyone has a required level of fitness, it has broad appeal, it’s easy to organise and can be done at any time of the year.
Of course it will depend on the ability and fitness of the participants what kind of event you decide to organise. From a short 5km walk through to endurance events there’s probably no limit to the innovative walking events that can be organised for a good cause. However, there are a number of things in common ahead of putting on your hiking boots or runners.
So if there’s a charity or fundraiser close to your heart that you’d like to plan a walking event to raise funds for, here are some tips to get you started.
Planning: Deciding on what you want to campaign for, and on the content of the actual event itself is the first step. An organising group should meet well ahead of any expected event to discuss and brainstorm the nature of the event. Where will it take place, what kinds of people do you want to participate, how arduous or otherwise will the event itself be?
Set Goals: Linking up with your favourite charity will probably mean that they have a readymade mechanism that you can feed into. Most charities rely on donations to maintain their day to day services so the likelihood is they will have a person assigned to the task of dealing with voluntary groups that want to help in some way. They may have a piece of equipment they urgently need and that could form a target for the money you collect. If your fundraising efforts are generic, whereby you want to help organise a charity walk with the aim of collecting funds for the overall benefit of the charity, it can be challenging to compete with many other groups doing the same thing. So your discussions with the charity itself will be important, give them a number of proposed options that your organising team has come up with and take it from there.
Be Different: There are so many fundraising events out there, it can be hard to make yours stand out. If you are planning any event you’ve probably identified a particular need for the charity in question. A bed push, a mountain climb – anything that will mark you out as different will help raise the profile of your event. The promotional aspects of the campaign are also important. If you have a hook for the public to identify your event as standing out from the rest, then there could be an opportunity to promote your event more widely through the local media. So, take a couple of advance photos of some of your team wearing branded t-shirts, for example, write a short press release and distribute this to the local newspaper or radio station. They will do a lot of the leg work for you if they like the sound of what you are doing. And set up a social media page putting up regular updates and directing people to your crowdfunding page. Crowdfunding: Standing on the street with a collection bucket remains a very popular and beneficial way to fundraise, especially for well-established charities that have an annual flag day, for example. But if you want to set something new, you might also want to consider crowdfunding as an option. You’ ll most likely still get the majority of your fundraising done locally through traditional means like bucket collections or selling lines or tickets, but online is a way of reaching a wider target market, especially if what you are doing fulfils the dual role of being important and also a bit different from the norm.
You could also target people from specific interest groups through online campaigns, especially when you link this in to targeted promotion through your social media campaign. There are lots of online platforms out there offering crowdfunding services, but remember to point out to those who contribute in this way that they will likely pay an extra administration fee which goes to the crowdfunding service provider.
The Public: Remind the public at intervals of progress ahead of the event. Release photos of participants as they go through their paces in any advance training programme, consider inviting members of the public to sign up.
Also make sure your event is covered in terms of insurance – usually the charity will advise you on this – and remember to contact the Gardaí if your event takes place in a location likely to have an impact on things like traffic. Good safe management is very important, you want everyone to come back in one piece, having achieved the goal set out, and hopefully, having made a sufficient impact on the public to garner their financial support for your chosen charity.