London Marathon runners raise £2.4 million online before the race
Howard Lake | 15 April 2004 | News
Runners in this weekend’s Flora London Marathon have raised £2.4 million online at online fundraising site Justgiving.com, even before the race has begun.
At noon today, 3,818 runners had collected more than £2.4m through their online fundraising pages on the event’s official Web site. Justgiving say they expect the total to reach £3m in the week after the race.
Online events sponsorship is clearly growing rapidly. In 2002, in its first year as the Flora London Marathon’s official partner for charity fundraising, Justgiving collected £200,000 online. In 2003, the figure rose to £1.4m.
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The total raised online by London Marathon runners will be even higher. In 2003 £250,000 was raised online for four charities using Bmycharity.com’s online sponsorship system.
A Justgiving survey of its charity members in 2002 revealed that it took up to six months to collect event sponsorship through offline methods, and that 80% of charities did not reclaim Gift Aid on event sponsorship gifts. By contrast, Justgiving reclaims Gift Aid on every eligible UK donation, saving charities further management costs.
Runners raising funds through Justgiving include many famous names from the worlds of sport, television and politics. Model Nell McAndrew has raised almost £28,000 on her fundraising page. Peer Jeffrey Archer, former leader of the Conservative party Iain Duncan Smith, royal biographer Andrew Morton, former England football manager Graham Taylor and actor Johnny Lee Miller are amongst the celebrities using the online fundraising service for this year’s London Marathon.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.