Record £22m raised on Virgin Money Giving by 2015 London Marathon runners
Howard Lake | 12 May 2015 | News
Runners in the 2015 Virgin Money London Marathon have raised £22.1 million for charities through Virgin Money Giving, a record amount for the fundraising platform from the event.
Virgin Money Giving numbers
• just under £1,600: average amount raised per active fundraiser
• over 15,000: number of fundraiser pages created (9% year-on-year increase)
• estimated £625,000: extra delivered to charity due to Virgin Money Giving’s not-for-profit structure
The final total is expected to be higher as more donations come in.
The total raised online this year by Marathon runners using various platforms is now over £40 million. Virgin Money Giving points out that if they had all used its site and its not-for-profit fee structure, an extra £1.2 million could have been raised for charities.
Stephen Fry personalised video
Stephen Fry’s personalised video includes the name of the runner and the charity they are supporting.
New developments this year included the Stephen Fry video tool which let London Marathon runners create their own personalised video featuring the comedian, actor, writer and presenter to help promote their fundraising efforts.
Runners used it to create 6,200 videos which have been shared through social media, resulting in the films being viewed almost 200,000 times.
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Someone Special
Runners could also set up tribute funds to raise funds in memory of an individual. Jane Sutton, the mother of Stephen Sutton who raised remarkable sums for the Teenage Cancer Trust in 2014, set up one of these Someone Special pages earlier this year. She has raised over £22,000 so far.
Jane said:
“I made a promise to Stephen last year that I would run the London Marathon and continue raising money for Teenage Cancer Trust, the charity that helped Stephen so much before he passed away last May. I decided to fundraise using Virgin Money Giving as it was so easy to set up and more of the money raised goes to charity because it is a not-for-profit organisation, therefore the fees are much lower.”
£117m total from six London Marathons
In the six London Marathons since Virgin Money Giving was launched, £117 million has been raised by Virgin Money Giving fundraisers participating in the event. This is worth an estimated additional £3 million for charities, “due to Virgin Money Giving’s not-for-profit model and lower fees”.
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.