Funraisin introduces hybrid digital and real world fitness fundraising tools
Howard Lake | 22 February 2021 | News
Events fundraising platform Funraisin has partnered with District Technologies to offer a sponsored fundraising event experience that combines the digital and real worlds.
Charity runners will be able to raise funds using GPS augmented reality tools enabling them to explore and connect to new cities and locations. Runners can run a course with others anywhere in the world, and the event experience can be enhanced with new audio, video and augmented reality creative tools.
The aim is to offer a fundraising experience that is a major step forward from the virtual events that charity supporters embraced as successive lockdowns halted traditional mass fundraising events in 2020.
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Funraisin and District Technologies are offering the technologies globally, seeing them as an engaging different kind of fitness challenge for the year when movement restrictions begin to lift but not enough to permit a return to mass participation events in most places.
They describe as the collaboration as providing “an all-in-one digital experience connecting fundraising, enhanced fitness experiences and personalised communications, whether for virtual or in-person events.”
New tools for charity runners
Fundraisers will have access to existing tools such as gamification, leaderboards and distance tracking, but will also be able to use new tools such as GPS checkpoint locations, virtual rewards, and access through ‘unlockables’ to rewards such as augmented reality camera filters. All the activity-based and user-generated content link back to fundraising pages with live social feeds.
The new platform is designed to remove the need for fundraisers at charities and event participants to access multiple platforms to experience the events they initiate or sign up for.
Walking Stars
Australian nonprofit Cancer Council used this technology at the end of 2020 to deliver its Walking Stars event.
Originally a physical event involving a night-time walking half marathon through Melbourne CBD, the nonprofit switched it to a virtual event, enabling walkers to take on a 21km challenge in their own neighbourhood.
With the average runner recording six fitness activities in the GPS app, and 82% of participants using the app, the event raised over $180,000.
Keith Williams, CMO of Funraisin, said: “As we begin to get back to some new levels of mass gathering events, the need for digital wont be less important, it will be even more important for us all to advance digital offerings to meet consumers’ needs for deeper connected digital experiences with physical. If we thought our sector was under digital pressure before, tomorrow’s giving will be more intense and we are excited about this challenge and how many more charities are coming to us to help solve tomorrow’s giving.”
UK clients of Funraisin include Parkinsons UK , Pancreatic Cancer UK, and ABF The Soldiers Charity.
Ben Pember, CEO of District Technologies, added: “Whether your virtual event is a replacement for or a complement to a physical event, it must offer a compelling customer experience which adds value to people’s lives. At District Technologies, this is done by applying the most innovative tech available to customisable white-label app solutions.”
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.