£2.3m donated on JustGiving over London Marathon weekend
Howard Lake | 5 June 2017 | News
JustGiving reports that it handled £2.3 million in donations over the weekend of the London Marathon in April, an increase of 11% on the previous year.
Overall, the 13,000 runners who used JustGiving as their fundraising platform for the London Marathon 2017 raised a total of £22.9 million for charities and good causes, an increase of 3% on the previous year.
The figures were announced by Keith Williams, General Manager ofJustGiving, at the Institute of Fundraising’s Community Fundraising Conference 2017 in London.
London Marathon pages outperform other marathons
Williams revealed that London Marathon runners typically raise more on the site than participants in other marathons. The average amount raised by a London Marathon runner on JustGiving was £1,919, an increase on 6% on the previous year.
The average page value of other marathon events on the site is of £1,226.
At the peak of activity, JustGiving was processing three donations every second. A record (at that point) 16,000 people were using the site at the same time. A total of 1.4 million people visited the site during the weekend.
Mobile continues to dominate activity on JustGiving. During the day of the London Marathon itself, 88% of its traffic came from mobiles.
What makes a successful fundraising page?
Williams told delegates that the most successful fundraising pages on the platform had a combination of three traits.
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1. Start early
Fundraisers start early. People who create their page 107 days before the race raise an average of just under £250 more – with a page average total of £2,166.
Some charities are already starting their 2018 London Marathon campaigns. For example, WellChild has launched its Marathon Campaign Hub to bring together all their marathon runners and their totals in one place.
2. Use the platform’s features
Successful fundraisers use more of JustGiving’s toolbox of fundraising features, specifically, and in order of importance:
- JustGiving’s Mobile app
- setting a fundraising target
- adding a profile picture
- posting photos.
People that use all four features raised 198% more than those who used none.
3. Use JustTextGiving
On average, fundraisers who used JustTextGiving with their traditional fundraising page raised £200 more than those who did not use this option.
Donations following Manchester attack set new record
JustGiving subsequently experienced heavy use following the establishment of the We Love Manchester appeal by the British Red Cross and Mayor of Manchester following the terrorist bombing last month.
The site handled 36,000 concurrent visitors who were donating a total of £200 a second to support the families and victims.
Keith Williams commented that this involved a peak donation of seven donations a second, adding “this broke all our previous records”.
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.