London Marathon runners raise £5 million via Justgiving before the race
Howard Lake | 14 April 2005 | News
One in three charity runners in this weekend’s Flora London Marathon are using Justgiving to raise funds online for charity, and they’ve already raised £5 million in advance of the race.
At 10am yesterday, 8,492 runners had collected almost £5.3 million through Justgiving’s online fundraising pages, including nearly £1m in automatically reclaimed Gift Aid. At the same stage in 2004 the total stood at £2 million, rising to £3.4 million after the race.
Justgiving is the Flora London Marathon’s official partner for charity fundraising for the fourth year running. Each runner can quickly build a web page, personalise it with a photo and message and email it out to friends and family who then donate by credit or debit card. Justgiving processes donations electronically and automatically reclaims 28% Gift Aid.
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More than £250,000 was processed by Justgiving in a single day on Wednesday 13 April, and Justgiving is confident that the record donation levels will continue over the Marathon weekend.
The rapid rate of adoption of the Internet as a fundraising tool by London Marathon runners demonstrates the value of online sponsorship events. In 2001, just £9,000 was raised online for the London Marathon, but four years on, 630 charities now encourage their runners to use Justgiving for the race.
According to Justgiving’s marketing manager James Grieve, the average donation through Justgiving is £36.
Donors can choose to donate up-front before the event or to make a pledge. Donations together with the 28% Gift Aid reclaim is transferred into charities’ bank accounts before the event in many cases. Pledges are automatically debited from donors’ accounts after the event.
“The £5m raised through Justgiving thus far is already in charity bank accounts,” said Grieve.
To date Justgiving has helped over 1,000 charities raise over £25 million online.
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.