With sponsorable fundraisers, we have tried to innovate on the very basic setup of peer-to-peer fundraising. Instead of asking for donations, fundraisers ask for sponsorships directly tied to their activity.
Asking your friends and family for donations can be a daunting task. It is admittedly scary. We want to make this an easier task, and we believe that asking for sponsorships are relatively less daunting than asking for donations.
A fundraiser will ask for sponsorships of example £ 0.5 per KM they log in training in connection with a large challenge event. The activity can be anything, KM, Miles, Jumps, Days without Alcohol, Laps - anything! The tight connection between the ask and the activity makes fundraising less daunting and more natural.
The sponsors are asked to add their credit card details when the sponsorship is created and their card is first charged after the event or campaign has ended. Activity is logged by the fundraiser, a charity employee or a team leader. You can read more about the functionality here.
This feature was developed in cooperation with the Danish Rheumatism Association. They already used this concept for a challenge biking event called ‘Hjælperytterne’. They also deserve all credit for coming up with the concept in the first place. Without Hjælperytterne there would be no sponsorable fundraisers.
They spent a lot of time manually contacting all sponsors after the event as each sponsor had to wire them the final sponsorship amount. Some sponsors additionally never followed through on their pledge which resulted in lost donations.
Some key results from this very first version were that sponsors gave 15% more than donors. The abandonment rate on sponsorships due to declined payments and expired cards was below 4% which was acceptable, but something we will want to improve upon.
This one-time bike challenge event (though the concept continues with MS Challenge) was a non-stop 737 Km bike ride from Copenhagen to Düsseldrof! The riders themselves could take a break on the bus following them at all time, as long as at least two riders were on the road at all times.
Having sponsorships connected gave the riders that added incentive to be on the road as long as possible. Because only when they biked, did the bike on more donations for the Danish MS Association. This gave another dimension to the event and helped create a unique experience.
The Danish MS association also did something we expect will become new best practice. They asked us to enable sponsorships three weeks before the event ended until this point only ordinarily donations was enabled. Sponsorship was effectively used as a way to ask the same donors for a second donation. The results were outstanding and the average fundraised per participant was 16.695 DKK.
Here are some of the ideas we would love work with. Hopefully, it can inspire you to new campaigns.
Sponsor a person with X £ per day they go without sugar. Perfect combo of health awareness and fundraising. Sugar can easily be replaced with other vices of life such as alcohol or nicotine.
For the brave person going on diet. For each KG the person an amount goes to a charity. Hopefully, this will help on the motivation.
Laps in the pool. Organise a one-day event in the local swimming hall, sponsor per lap each participant does.
Okay, this is not new. But the added motivation from knowing each KM means more donations for the cause will be a great motivator when the participant is running by them self down the road a cold November evening.
Sponsor a person to leave the car in the garage and bike to work. Works for both health and environmental charities.
