# London Marathon runners raise £5 million via Justgiving before the race

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2005/04/14/london-marathon-runners-raise-5-million-justgiving-race/
- Published: 2005-04-14T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

![](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/files/images/news/3166.jpg)

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.

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.

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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.

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