Charitable fundraising in road races is world-wide and can be as involved or as simple as you wish.
Here we’ve included a few ideas that may help you better understand how it can work for your charity.
Affiliate Program
The RAK Half Marathon operates an affiliate program for licensed charities to assist in their fundraising efforts. Affiliated charities benefit from having their logo, web link and cause displayed on our website, along with a custom sponsorship form for individuals and teams to download to assist in their fundraising.
How do we become an affiliated charity?
You will need to submit a copy of your official license to us with an introduction to your charity and your full contact details.
We also require a copy of your logo for us to display. Please see our Guidelines for logo specifications. All of the above should be sent with your designated contact details to our Charity Coordinator
How can we get people running for our cause?
You can request an amount of registrations (either individual or teams) to be reserved for your charity. Any unfilled places by the close of regular registration must either be paid for or released back to us.
You can register both individuals and teams yourselves using our Group Booking Form that we can provide on request. The completed form must be received by us, along with the appropriate registration fees no later than the close of regular registration. Incomplete registrations will be rejected.
Additionally, you can encourage registered runners to download one of your custom sponsorship forms and collect sponsors themselves.
Who finds the runners to raise funds for our charity?
Although we advertise our charitable awareness campaign to all our runners, we cannot make anyone run for charity and we do not get involved in fundraising on your behalf. The event is merely a ‘vehicle’ to be used by your charity as a means to fundraise through participation.
How do we collect the money?
Whether runners have registered as a part of your group or individually, the responsibility for collecting the funds rests entirely with you. We encourage charities to get full contact details of their fundraisers and request copies of the sponsorship forms. Additionally, you may choose to have all raised funds paid directly and only by check; payable to your charitable institution.
How do we maximize our fundraising?
There are so many ways for this to be done; we suggest you research how others do it. Most charities require runners to raise a minimum amount for the charity in order to receive one of the registrations from your group. Additionally, some charities choose to offer tiered incentives to their fundraisers with rewards (often donated by corporate supporters) to the highest fundraiser etc.
Charity T-shirt?
Absolutely! The best way to create awareness of your charity and your supporters is to provide everyone running for your charity with a custom t-shirt. These are often co-branded showing your charity and the event being participated in and could also include the runner’s name, or a message – the choice is yours. Although these T-shirts are provided by the charity, upon request we are happy to provide license of our event logo to re-produce on the shirt.
Free Publicity
Don’t forget to get someone to take photos of your runners, your volunteers and even group photos too. They’re great for your publicity of your participation and useful for promoting future involvement. Send us copies and a report to help us publicize your efforts too!
Thank you for helping others!
