Multiple Voices: [00:00:00] Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere.

Multiple Voices: Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere, you don’t need to add me in there.
Jade Cunnah: Welcome to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. In this episode, we’ll be taking a look at one of our favourite on demand sessions in celebration of our first ever FE accelerator, Grant Writing. This accelerator will be an in depth masterclass to improve success. Efficiency and impact in your 2025 Trust fundraising.

Jade Cunnah: Our FE accelerator is coming up on Thursday the 20th of February. Now onto today’s episode, enjoy.[00:01:00]

Suzy Edington: Today I’m gonna be taking you through insights from the Just Giving events fundraising report that we have just launched. This is hot off the press and I’ll cover the key trends that’ve. seen on JustGiving, as well as some fascinating insights from our expert partners to give a holistic view of the events fundraising sector.

Suzy Edington: And throughout, I’ll be suggesting some tangible ways that you can take these learnings and apply them to your planning for 2025. So just a bit of background before we get going today. I am Susie and I look after partner programs at JustGiving. So I work with our amazing partners who integrate with the platform to deliver exciting new features and functionality and insight.

Suzy Edington: Alongside this, I deliver some fundraising consultancy either in a one to many way with insights and reports like today, or by working directly with charities in workshops to tackle challenges they face in their fundraising. I have been around in the sector in one guise or another for a very long time, um, and thanks to the fact that I work for an organisation who are remote [00:02:00] first, I’ve been able to move out of London to the lovely, slightly damp west country, uh, with my two kids.

Suzy Edington: So I’d love to hear your takeaways from the session today. If you’re posting on socials, please do tag us in your comments. We’d love to hear what you have to say. You can use at jgcauses if you’re using X or at JustGiving on LinkedIn. So what am I going to cover today? So first up, we’re going to get straight into some highlights from the new events fundraising report and take a look at the key trends that we’re seeing.

Suzy Edington: We’re then going to do a bit of a deeper dive into running as it’s such a critical part of so many charities event, event portfolios. Um, so we’re going to understand a bit more about why we’re seeing the trends there. We’ve gathered insights from our expert friends and partners in the sector to give a bit more context to this area.

Suzy Edington: We’re then going to move on and take a look at the world of virtual or social fundraising, so you’re thinking your month long challenges for that area. And I don’t want to be setting too much homework, but I will be sharing some key [00:03:00] actions for you and your team to take away and consider after this.

Suzy Edington: The session today is day to day and quite heavy on stats, so if you’re struggling to digest it all in one go, then don’t worry, you can always download the JustGiving fundraising report afterwards, which includes All of this plus much, much more. So to finish up, we’ll be taking a quick look at what’s inside the report and where you can find it.

Suzy Edington: So let’s get started and look back on the trends that we saw in 2024. It was a pretty great year for events fundraising, to be honest, and it feels like we’ve really come out of the fog of the pandemic and in person and virtual events are really having their day, which is so great to see. On JustGiving, we’re so proud to have seen continued growth in the number of pages created for sporting events.

Suzy Edington: So we’re up 3 percent on pages created year on year, and we’ve seen even higher growth in donations, so we’re up 6 percent in donations. So digging into what has driven that 6 percent growth in donations, we’ve [00:04:00] got two main metrics that we can look at. How many people started fundraising on their pages, and also, also known as the activation rate, and then how much those fundraisers went on to raise, so that’s the average page value that we’ve got here.

Suzy Edington: And I’m pleased to report that both of these were in growth through 2024. So not only did we see an increase in the number of pages, that was up to 3%, but we saw more people start to fundraise on those pages too. So we’re now up to 70 percent of those pages activating. This has been a really key area of work for us on the platform this year, improving the onboarding flow to encourage more supporters to update their pages and start fundraising straight away.

Suzy Edington: So it’s really great to see that this translates into real numbers for charities. We also saw the average page value increase. That’s now up to 741. 31.
Suzy Edington: So let’s explore what makes up the sporting events category. What are we talking about when we’re looking at these numbers and what drives those donations? Unsurprisingly, [00:05:00] uh, the most popular events are running events and they make up 43 percent of pages in this area and drive 59 percent of the donations.

Suzy Edington: 2024 was just a bumper year for running events, really, with field sizes increasing and more entries than ever. And this translated into fundraising, which is brilliant. So we’ve seen a significant 12 percent increase in total donations for running in 2024. Walks are the second most popular event type, and they make up 33 percent of pages.

Suzy Edington: As they have a lower page value than, say, something like running or triathlons, they only make up 14 percent of donations. However, again, we’ve seen a really strong year for walks in 2024, and they’ve seen a 7 percent increase in donations compared to 2023. So in our main sporting events areas, we’re seeing growth, which is hugely positive.

Suzy Edington: With running still dominating, we dug into the detail here a little bit more. We know that running as a hobby has grown since COVID with [00:06:00] running influencers, online running groups, running content, they’re all rising significantly. In fact, 22 percent of the population now report running between one and three times a week.

Suzy Edington: When we break down the percentage of event pages created by distance for our top events, it’s clear to see that half marathons are the absolute crowd favourites. They’re making up 62 percent of all fundraising pages created on JustGiving for organised sporting events. But importantly, when we review the percentage of total donations by event distance, it’s the full marathons that are the clear winner.

Suzy Edington: They’re bringing in 57 percent of the donation value. So I would recommend that you, um, look at your portfolio of events that you’re offering your supporters on your website. You want to make sure that you’ve got some of those half marathon options in there. They’re likely to be your best sellers. But I would recommend that you make sure you do have some marathon options in there as well.

Suzy Edington: We know that London Marathon places are like gold dust, but on the platform we saw growth across Belfast, Edinburgh and Manchester Marathons in 2024. So it’s worth looking at some of the options [00:07:00] around those events as well. Now moving on to take a look at page creation trends for running. So through 2024, we saw a 2 percent increase in the average page value for running events.

Suzy Edington: And this appears to be driven by pages being created earlier, with 29 percent increase in pages being created six months or more before their event date. So we’ve got a real sort of uplift around that eight, nine months before the event date period. The change of the London Marathon ballot date is going to have changed some of this behaviour, but it seems to be a wider trend that we’re seeing across running and other events types.

Suzy Edington: Um, interestingly, Run for Charity have seen that younger participants tend to sign up closer to the event date, while older participants have a bit more of a lead in time. With runners signing up early, it’s worth reviewing your stewardship journey and making sure that you’ve got some really good early touch points planned in.

Suzy Edington: If you can get people engaged with their pages early, they will go on to fundraise more. So make sure that you’re including the link to their fundraising page in emails, especially those welcome emails, um, [00:08:00] encouraging them to post updates, uh, onto their page and also linking their page to their fitness device nice and early on.

Suzy Edington: Um, and tracking those early painful, just getting back into running, uh, events that they’re doing. It’s all great content for them to be sharing and getting out there to boost their fundraising. Now helping us understand more about who those runners are, we have some insight here from our partners. Let’s do this as the go to platform for the

Suzy Edington: UK’s largest selection of endurance, endurance events. They have a unique view on the changes in the event marketplace and the view is really good. The UK running market is very buoyant, with running events growth growing significantly over the past two years on Let’s Do This. 2024 was the first year that event participation levels outpaced pre COVID levels, and there are early indications they will continue to grow rapidly through 2025, so we are still in this running events bubble.

Suzy Edington: This growth has been driven by an influx of younger runners. And [00:09:00] just so I can get all of the twos in a sentence that I possibly can, the percentage of runners in their 20s has increased by 22 percent in the last two years, up to 22%. Um, and this is particularly good news because according to the Let’s Do This Insight as well, these runners are also the ones that have shown the greatest interest in fundraising for charity by taking part in their event, with 10 percent of people in their 20s saying they would like to fundraise as part of their event.

Suzy Edington: Run for Charity also has some interesting insight on the demographics of runners. So Run for Charity enabled charities to gain places in challenge events without the commitment to having to buy places up front. Um, overall, they’ve seen the average age of runners drop very slightly. So they were 35. 6 and it’s down to 34.

Suzy Edington: 6. So we’ve lost a year in 2024. And as with Let’s Do This, they’ve seen the biggest area of growth in the younger participants in their 20s. Well, we can see on average that the 10K runners tend to be slightly [00:10:00] older. It’s interesting that the influx of younger runners are most likely to take part in 5 and 10Ks.

Suzy Edington: They’re also more likely to be female, with 69 percent of 5K runners being women. But interestingly, they have also seen that the percentage of women taking part in 10Ks, half marathons and full marathons has increased. Um, there just seems to be a lot more women getting into the running space at the moment, which is really positive news.

Suzy Edington: And there is more focus than ever on ensuring the quality of basic requirements at events to make these spaces safer and more appealing to women as well, which is great to see. If you’re putting on your own events and want to appeal to women, it’s worth not only making sure that you’re considering these things, making sure you’ve got good toilets in place, that you’ve got thought about the safety around getting to and leaving the event, etc.

Suzy Edington: But making sure that you’ve actually communicated that up front and it’s clear that that has been considered because you’re then removing a barrier of entry for women joining your events. So while younger runners doing these events at these shorter distances may have [00:11:00] less fundraising potential in the short term, it’s worth thinking about how you can increase your charity awareness in this cohort.

Suzy Edington: As they progress their running journey and increase their net worth, they have the potential to be amazing future fundraisers if you can really engage them with your cause. And crucially, these shorter events are likely to be events where you can pick up own place runners, so there shouldn’t be like a high upfront cost to acquiring the places.

Suzy Edington: So I’d recommend making sure that you’re working on partnership opportunities that might elevate your brand awareness in this area. Levering, leveraging relationships with influencers and considering your marketing channels as well. And then within that, thinking about how you can make your, show your causes appealing to this demographic.

Suzy Edington: Does your marketing messaging need tweaking a little bit to make sure that it’s, it’s pulling in this, this audience.

Suzy Edington: Now moving on to look at some of the insights from the latest Massive Pulse report. It’s obviously a central reading for all events fundraisers, and there’s loads of interesting insight in there. But [00:12:00] right now I want to focus on the insights they’ve got around barriers to event participation. So while events have had a bumper year, it’s clear that the cost of living crisis is still having an impact on people’s lives and their ability to take part in events and fundraise.

Suzy Edington: In 2023, the Pulse report showed that lack of fitness was the main barrier to increased participation on the back of COVID. However, that’s nearly halved since last year and it’s now only reported as an issue by 24 percent of respondents compared to 43 percent in 2023. Having less disposable income is now the biggest single factor in people cutting back on event participation.

Suzy Edington: Of those people who are participating in fewer events in 2024, 46 percent said that this was due to having less spare cash. So it’s really useful information when you’re looking at the price positioning of your events.

Suzy Edington: And sort of staying on this subject, now moving to look at ultramarathon events. Our partners at Action Challenge, who run the really popular Ultra Challenge series, have also shared some interesting insight with [00:13:00] us. Thanks. brilliantly successful year in 2024. They were up 10 percent in participant numbers, uh, and saw a 20 percent and a massive 20 percent increase in the number of participants choosing to fundraise.

Suzy Edington: And this is looking to grow, um, throughout 2025. They’re already up to 25 2020. five events. Um, it’s interesting to note that for the longer distance options, the majority of fundraisers choose the full sponsorship option, which involves a lower registration fee, but a higher fundraising target. But for the shorter distances, supporters are more likely to cover the full registration fee and then just fundraise what they can.

Suzy Edington: It appears that where there is a high cost to entry, people choose to offset this via fundraising. So that ties into the insights before from Massive that a lack of cash is still a bit of a barrier to people taking part in events. So it’s worth being aware of the price point that you’re putting your events in at.

Suzy Edington: Interestingly, run for charity see a higher dropout rate for events with no upfront cost. So there is a [00:14:00] benefit of asking for a fee to secure a place, but it may be worth setting the fundraising target higher and keeping the registration fee lower. If you’re trying to balance out and make sure you’re hitting your ROI.

Suzy Edington: Now we’re going to move on to virtual and social fundraising. So under this category, we’re talking about any charity created owned events, but where participants are taking on a challenge in their own way in their own time. So this includes things like crafting challenges. Marathons in a month, 10, 000 step challenges, you know, the sort of thing.

Suzy Edington: Now, I know Helen AF is also talking today about the rollercoaster that has been social fundraising over the last few years and whether they are in regression or resurgence. And I hate to steal her thunder here, but I’m going to call it now as a resurgence. Our partners at GivePanel have seen social challenges raise over 33 million in 2024.

Suzy Edington: So it’s a huge area of fundraising. The give panel, just [00:15:00] giving integration enables fundraisers to seamlessly create, just giving fundraising pages directly from Facebook and then use this page for their fundraising. And Give Panel is seeing cross platform fundraising on the rise with fundraisers flipping from using Facebook exclusively to using just giving to get donations to fundraisers who choose to use Just Giving and Facebook.

Suzy Edington: Um, to raise money Rose from 34% to 56% in 2024. And this is also helping to mitigate risks for charities. As we know, Meta is a bit of a fickle beast and likes to throw charities curveballs every now and again. I know there’s more on that this afternoon as well. And that can have a huge impact on fundraising.

Suzy Edington: Gift panel are also seeing that just giving fundraisers raise significantly more on average. So we’re seeing an average paid value on just giving of 168. versus 101 on Facebook. So one of the big benefits of fundraisers creating just giving page is that they can be shared across multiple platforms and networks with what’s whatsapp being one of [00:16:00] the most popular.

Suzy Edington: So my recommendation is to ensure that you’re providing tools to enable your supporter to be able to share their pages. easily across different platforms. So from JustGiveIn they can really easily share their page to WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook. So just make sure that you’re working on guidance to support them with that and maybe doing some nice pre written copy so they can do a copy and paste job to get it out to their various different networks.

Suzy Edington: Essentially, the more places they share it, the more times they share it, the more they’re going to fundraise.

Suzy Edington: Now, towards the end of 2024, uh, JustGiving, we surveyed supporters who’d set up fundraising pages uh, to take part in a social of, uh, virtual fundraising event. So this includes those fundraisers that came via the GivePanel integration, but also people that came directly to JustGiving, came to a campaign page, or through one of the branded microsites that our charities have.

Suzy Edington: with us. And what we saw was really interesting. So 77 percent of respondents said they hadn’t previously fundraised for that charity that they’d done the virtual event [00:17:00] for. But after the event, 97 percent of respondents said they would fundraise for the charity again. So this is clearly a great way to increase your reach to new audiences for your organisation.

Suzy Edington: We went on and asked them how they would like to go and support that charity again, and we saw 59 percent of people say that they would be interested in events and community fundraising in the future. So that included doing another virtual event, uh, or in a personal sporting event, hosting a community event like a bank sale, or setting up their own event doing a DIY event.

Suzy Edington: But 22 percent said they were interested in making a direct donation to the cause, either as a one off gift, um, or a regular gift, or getting involved in a lottery. And 11 percent were interested in volunteering opportunities. So we know that virtual events can be a really important part of your portfolio.

Suzy Edington: They can go for deliver a great ROI and net income for charities. But I wanted to highlight from this research was that they should be viewed as so much more than the initial value of the events. [00:18:00] I really want to encourage charities to think about all events fundraising really as a huge pipeline opportunity.

Suzy Edington: For a period of time, your charity has these people as a real captive audience, and you can build up this amazing relationship with your supporters, often in a one to one way, so they might be via email or phone calls. I started out, my first job was doing welcome calls to people doing cycle rides, and also obviously with social fundraising through your Facebook groups.

Suzy Edington: And they just don’t get that when they make a one-off donation to a charity via the website. So through these events, you can give them that like nice warm, fuzzy feeling, um, from supporting your cause. So make sure you’re thinking about what they might wanna do next. How can you keep that nice altruistic feeling alive for them?

Suzy Edington: And lifetime value should be the real measure that we are looking at here when we’re, uh, appraising virtual events. So that is all of the insights I’ve got to share with you today. If you enjoyed this session and found it useful, then I think you’re going to love the JustGivings event fundraising [00:19:00] report.

Suzy Edington: We want to help make 2025 your best year yet for events fundraising. We just launched our brand new free events fundraising report packed with even more insight and even more detail from JustGiving and our expert voices in the sector. So inside, you will find more about the trends and insights to help with your events fundraising season.

Suzy Edington: This includes more of a deep dive into fundraiser demographics and their behaviour. We’ve got more insights from us here at JustGiving what we saw on the platform. Uh, and we’ve got some more specific insights and actions from those expert partners. And there’s tons more. We’ve really put everything into this report.

Suzy Edington: So I hope you found it useful. Uh, you can find the link to download it in the delegate bag below, or you can head to the JustGiving resources area. So to wrap up this insight section, I wanted to highlight a few key actions your charity should consider and point you to a few more helpful resources. So the key takeaways and actions I’d love for you to take [00:20:00] from today.

Suzy Edington: So there’s been an influx of younger runners and they are keen to start fundraising. So the takeaway I would recommend is to look at how you can increase your brand awareness across a variety of different event types. What partnerships have you got that you can build on and make sure you’re building that base of fundraisers for the future.

Suzy Edington: We’re in a bit of a bubble at the moment for events and specifically running. Let’s make sure we can pull that out as long as we can by building up those relationships with these great new fundraisers. The cost of living is still a big barrier to participation. So while the events sector is booming at the moment, there’s still plenty of people that are feeling the crunch and are making the choice to cut back on their participation.

Suzy Edington: Supporters may be more willing to tackle a high fundraising target rather than forking out their own cash up front to take part in your events. And we’re still seeing page values increase. So that is a strategy that could well pay off if you can give them the support and love to try to meet those fundraising targets.

Suzy Edington: And in that vein, uh, I’d recommend that you review your stewardship activity. Fundraising pages are being created earlier than [00:21:00] ever, and this is having a really positive impact on page value. But don’t leave your fundraisers out in the cold, not hearing from you for months because you haven’t planned this out in your stewardship.

Suzy Edington: Plan in a nice multi channel touch points throughout that journey, and use that time to build up the connection with your cause and share their story with their network. Onto virtual and social events, they’re also performing really well at the moment. But Kometa is continuing to constantly move the goalposts, so it’s a good idea to be able to manage this risk with using the JustGiving integration as an option in this type of fundraising.

Suzy Edington: And when you do, make sure you’re thinking bigger than just social platforms. Make sure your supporters know where they can share their pages. They can share them pretty much anywhere. Um, A new development. I don’t know if you knew that every JustGiving page now includes a downloadable poster with a QR code that you can scan to make a donation to that page.

Suzy Edington: So fundraisers can even go old school and put up posters. And finally, make sure that you download your free copy of the JustGiving events fundraising report for even more juicy insights and tips. [00:22:00] Plus, don’t forget JustGiving resources to help you maximise your fundraising this year. The blog is really great.

Suzy Edington: There’s lots of good stuff in there and they help you keep up to date with trends and tips and developments on the platform. Um, so you can go to blog. justgiving. com have a read, like, and subscribe. Uh, our charity resource area has additional resources, including guides and webinars. The webinars are great.

Suzy Edington: If you’re new into fundraising as well, I recommend going back through the backlog of those. There’s lots of information in there. Um, our expert charity support team are on hand to help you with day to day questions. You can email them at charities at justgiving. com or contact them via the live chat. Um, and we’ve, if you’ve got just giving a charity account and want to talk to us about how you can make the most of that account, the tools available, whether that’s for an individual campaign events that you’re setting up, you can talk to our lovely success team.

Suzy Edington: We’ve got Ollie and Pav and they are brilliant and you can contact them at successteamatjustgiving.com. And we also have a fundraiser help area and dedicated fundraising, a fundraiser and donor support team. So your supporters can email or live chat with a member of our team for quick responses.

Alex Aggidis: Thank you so much for listening to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. If you’re enjoying this podcast, why not share it with a fundraising friend? And if you would like to give us a little like or subscribe, it really helps more fundraisers like you find us. Thank you so much. See you next time.

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