Back to front: a new twist on the sponsored run
Howard Lake | 21 September 2010 | Blogs
Covering the distance in a half-marathon or marathon is a pretty impressive achievement. But friends and family might start to get inured to the same old request – “please sponsor me for running 13/26 miles”.
So I was pleased to see the different approach to fundraising taken by Irish athlete Sonia O’Sullivan’s at at this Sunday’s Bupa Great North Run.
She chose to be the very last competitor to start the half-marathon, and asked people to donate money to her chosen charities for every runner she overtook during the 13.1-mile race. By the time she had finished, she had overtaken 25,313 runners!
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She was raising money for UK blood cancer charity Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research and is a regular runner with the charity’s TV Times celebrity running team. O’Sullivan was also fundraising for the Children’s Leukaemia Association at Cork’s Mercy University Hospital in Ireland.
- JustGiving chosen as online fundraising partner for Bupa Great North Run event series (11 February 2013)
- Daily Mirror offers 3,000 places on the Great North Run (2 January 2010)
- More men now taking part in sponsored runs raising money than women (22 April 2014)
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.