Social causes see increasing benefit from mass participation events
Melanie May | 29 July 2019 | News
Social causes are starting to see an impact on engagement and fundraising from mass participation events with the income raised by ‘non-medical’ charities rising, according to mass events agency massive’s annual Top 25.
The massive Top 25 ranks the most successful charity owned mass fundraising events for the year. While the Top 25 has historically been dominated by medical charities, with Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support regularly accounting for almost 70% of total income, figures for 2018 show that other causes are increasingly benefitting too.
While overall there was no significant change in YOY total fundraising income, with it down by 1% from the previous year, the Top 25 raised a combined total of £133.6m, with the percentage of income raised by non-medical charities increasing by almost 35%.
Massive’s John Tasker commented:
“This can only be good news for the sector and shows that even in a crowded market with the right offering there is strong demand.”
The three fastest growing events were Dryathlon with a 53% increase in income from 2017, Kiltwalk at 46% and Cupcake Day at 25%.
Overall, Race for Life and The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning stayed at the top, ranking first and second respectively. However, both reported falls in income, while Alzheimer’s Society’s Memory Walk event chalked up its 6th successive year of growth, moving up to third place.
In the six years since massive began the Top 25 this is the first year that there have been no new events entering the annual list. This was coupled with flat or falling income for some of the ‘older’ events, such as Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life, Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning and Walk the Walk’s Moonwalk, with massive suggesting that this signals a need for innovation both to introduce new events to the market and to refresh and renew some existing campaigns.
Tasker added:
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“Over the last six years we’ve regularly seen new events successfully launch and deliver significant income in their first year and older campaigns refresh to reverse declines so it does feel like there is space for more innovation.
“Two of the fastest growing events in the Top 25 were introduced less than two years ago and four out of five of events that are less than four years old grew in 2018 suggesting there is an opportunity and appetite out there for new mass participation events.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.