If a charity run or walk seems like a good fit for your organisation, here is an overview of some things you may want to keep in mind when planning the event.

THE PLANNING PHASE

Choosing a Route
When planning a mass participation event such as a walk or run it is important that you first take some time to carefully consider the route your participants will be following. Your choice of route will play a central roll in other decisions you make concerning resources, staff size, security, transportation, volunteers, signage, and ultimately the satisfaction of your participants.

When mapping out the course, first determine the type of event you would like to hold. Most fundraising events try to be as inclusive as possible because, simply put, more fundraisers translates into more donations for your cause! If your goal is to be as inclusive as possible that means you want people of all ages and physical abilities to be able to participate in your event. That said, when choosing your route it is a good idea to not only look at a map but get out there and actually walk the course yourself. When surveying the road, pay attention to elevation gain, traffic, road conditions, and any other factors that could potentially make participating in your event strenuous for the less physically able. You may also benefit from contacting a local running or walking club for suggestions of routes that may fit your participant’s ability levels. Some common route distances for charity events are 5k, 10k, Half Marathon and Marathon.

Safety

Participant safety is something to strongly consider when mapping out your route. How much traffic travels along your route? Are there adequate pedestrian lanes that will keep your participants a safe distance from the traffic? Does your route require that your participants cross any especially busy streets? Is any stretch of your route undergoing construction? Will the course be open to the public making it easy for non-registered people to come in contact with your participants? Asking yourself these questions will help you chart your course around any potential hazards and allow your participants to have a fun, care-free experience on event day.

Transportation
When choosing the location of your route, also keep participant and spectator access to transportation in mind. If you want crowds of spectators to turn out and easy access to the event for your participants, make sure that the course is in close proximity to public transportation and parking for those who have automobiles. If your event is not in a metropolitan area, it may be a good idea to hire busses and choose some meet up locations where people can catch a ride to the event site.

Resources and Staff
The number of participants and spectators you expect on event day as well as length of course are the two main factors that will determine the size of your volunteer staff and resources needed. Here is a list of items commonly used by event walking and running events:

Two way radios
Rope, tape and cones for course marking
Signage for start and finish areas
Signage for services and support areas
Portable toilets
Trash cans
Food
Water
Tents
Tables
Stage for awards ceremony
PA system
Generator

Looking at your course map, you will be able to strategically position your water stops, trash cans, portable toilets, concessions stands and so on. When placing these resources, keep in mind that many people will want to gather around in the finish/celebration area after the event so you may need additional resources in that area. When planning for food and water for your participants, you may want to ask a local market to sponsor the event in the way of donated oranges, bananas and water that you can position along the course. For your spectator concession stands, you will need to determine what types of food you will sell and if you will need to prepare or cook food on site. There are many companies that you can hire to staff and prepare food at your concession stands or you could use your volunteers. In either case you should check to see if you need a special permit to sell or prepare food for the public.

Legalities of a Charity Walk or Run
Speaking of special permits, there are several legalities to consider when planning a charity walk or run. Now that you have chosen your route, have you looked to see if you need permission to use this planned route? You may need to speak with the local council or the person who owns the land. Have you checked to make sure there are no other events planned on your route come event day? Have you obtained liability insurance for your event? Ideally, your insurance should cover any medical problems that occur during the event as well as damage to the land and surrounding property. With the size of event you are expecting, are you required to schedule police presence or request road closures? Do you have permission from the organisation you are raising money for to use their logo and name?

Considering every city, town, or district have their own set of regulations, how you address them will depend on local law and requirements. What we highlighted above are only some of the larger items you should investigate. We would suggest contacting your local council for more information.

FINDING PARTICIPANTS

Marketing
Now that you picked an event location and have all of the necessary approvals and permits, its time to start spreading the word! Traditional event marketing consists of mail, tv, radio, newspaper advertisements and signs posted up about town. These methods can be effective, reach large audiences, and should be looked into but they can come at a high cost. Don’t let that get you down though – the internet has spawned many highly targeted, low-cost, and sometimes free marketing channels that are ideal for creating a buzz about your charity event. Here is a list of some web marketing options that you may want to consider:

Build a website – This is a must. Nowadays, any successful event has an official website where they can direct the public, media and interested sponsors for more information.

Facebook, Twitter, Social Media – There are countless online communities and fan pages out there that are filled with people passionate about the same cause you are raising money for. Get involved with these people and immerse yourself in the online conversation. Build a Facebook Fan Page or Twitter page for your event, invite your new online friends and encourage them to recruit their friends to get involved for the cause.

Paid Search Advertising – Google and other search engines allow you to bid on keyword phrases and place an ad at the top of their search results. Try bidding on keywords such as “London charity events” or “London fundraising run”. Create compelling ad copy and entice the user to click through to your official event website for more information.

Submit Your Event to an Online Events Calendar – There are many websites that will give you a free event listing on their online calendar. Submit your event profile to as many of these as possible and make sure to include a link back to your website in the description.

Email Advertising – Does your organisation already have a list of members who subscribe to your monthly newsletter or email announcements? Send your contact list an attractive HTML email with information about your event and a link to your. Make sure to include “share” buttons in your emails to make it easy for the recipient to pass it on to a friend. Also, on your website, Facebook page and Twitter page, include a feature where the visitor can join your mailing list.

Participant Registration

Something important to consider from the start of the planning phase is how you will collect contact information, entry fees, and fundraising commitments from people who want to participate. Until recently, most events collected participant data and entry fees in person in the event office with a paper registration form. To streamline the staff workload that comes along with paper-based registration, you may want to find a technology provider that specialises in event management software and online event registration. An integrated online event management system will allow you to build a custom online registration form, link to that form from your website, and collect your participant contact data online. We would suggest that the technology you choose include a merchant gateway integrated with the registration form so that you can seamlessly and securely collect payment online during the registration process. Depending on your technology provider, the data collected on an online registration form should be captured and stored in a database that you can log into, manage the data, run reports, email participants and process cancellation refunds if needed.

Examples of questions that could be included on a charity walk registration form are:

Name
Address
Email
Phone
Age
Gender
Emergency Contact
Shirt size (if you are offering a free shirt with the entry fee)
How did you hear of this event?
Number of times you have participated in this event
Team Name (if you are offering team fundraising)
What is your fundraising goal?
What distance will you walk?
Will you be attending the pre-event celebration dinner?

If you hope to grow the size of your email database, it is very important that you make the Email question compulsory so that every online registration has an email address associated with it in your database. You will be able to use this email to send out reminder emails about changes to the event schedule or important notices about fundraising. Any fully integrated online event management system will also need the email address to send out an automatic confirmation email letting the registrant know that their payment has been accepted and spot saved for event admission.

Fundraising Tools

Some more advanced event management systems include an online fundraising platform that you can integrate with your online registration form. What’s great about this is that every person who registers online will automatically have an online fundraising website created for them. The fundraiser can customise their website, ad images, set a fundraising goal, blog about their progress and training for the event, and communicate with their donors. The donor can visit the fundraising site and make an online donation with their credit card at which point the donation amount is added to the fundraisers goal total and money is sent to the charitable organisation. Many organisations are moving their fundraising efforts completely online because the general consensus is that people are likely to donate more if they are able to do it online from the comfort of their own home.

Communication up until event day

The key to a successful event is to steadily build the registrant’s excitement and anticipation from the day they register all the way up until they arrive on event day. Participants that register months prior to the event may loose interest or slow down their fundraising efforts if they are not engaged and encouraged on a regular basis. This is where collecting your registrations online will be very useful. Since you have a database of registrants including their email address, you will be able to send out reminder emails and keep the communication going up until the event. Some content ideas for a weekly newsletter could be:

Updates and special announcements of developments to the event schedule or added entertainment
Fundraising Tips
News and articles from the organisation your event will be raising money for
A training plan for those getting in shape for the event
Special contests for the post-event awards ceremony
Free prizes and incentives for those participants that recruit friends to join the cause

You should also send one final email to your registrants 2-3 days before the event including:

Event start time
Instructions on how and where to check in upon arrival
Schedule of events
Reminder to bring extra money if they want to buy merchandise or food at the celebration party
Summary of prizes that will be awarded to the top fundraisers
The cost of late registration if anyone wants to bring a friend to the event
Weather forecast so that people dress appropriately
List of hotels in the area for anyone who plans to stay the night

AFTER THE EVENT

You and your staff may be exhausted after the long build-up to a successful event but believe it or not, you should already be thinking about next year’s event! Considering everyone had a great time, send out a follow-up email and offer your registrants a discounted rate for next year’s event if they register for it now. Or offer them a “returning participant” coupon that they can use when you activate next year’s online registration form. Another smart thing to do is send an online survey out to your participants and ask them what they liked and what can be improved upon for next year’s event. You can offer your participants a free gift or registration discount if they complete the form for you. This participant feedback is extremely valuable and will help you get a sense of the participant experience on the ground that many event organisers are so often shielded from on event day with so many administrative tasks to juggle.

When a charitable person makes a giving, either he digs his pocket for whatever he’s got or he meticulously writes a check for a particular amount and gives it to a thankful receiver. A philanthropist, on the other hand, makes a funding to a foundation or an organization, where that money is invested for a bigger social benefit. A philanthropist can make grants for a certain time period; say for five days, ten years or throughout life. A charitable man’s giving is used and exhausted, but the philanthropist’s power is preserved as it’s used in the long run. Charity is for today but philanthropy is forever.

Today, many nonprofit organizations have come up with their philanthropic missions to serve the poor and the needy in developing countries of the world. These organizations mainly work on multiple fronts such as education, health care and family welfare. They have been tremendously successful with their simple and highly effective solutions to create real changes in the lives of these people and to the society at large. They are encouraging more and more people to come forward and take up philanthropy to support their cause.

Almost all of us have done more or less a little bit of charity. Even a small kid donates his pocket money for some charity. But most people are unaware of the procedures of philanthropy. Questions like how to precede, whom to get in touch with, whether the money will actually reach the people who need it or is the organization accountable for its projects – often stop people to go forward with the deed. If these are the queries that come in mind, the solution is to do some active research work on some nonprofit organizations and know what they do and how they do it.

One can be assured once he or she has gathered enough information and positive reviews about the nonprofit organization. This will ensure that every dollar that is given will be used for the benefit of mankind. If someone is really interested to make a contribution, he or she can choose the kind of project they want to donate for and proceed with the donation.

Have you considered volunteering for a place which recycles clothing and sends it to developing countries? It’s a great way to help aid those people who are suffering in developing continents and it reduces the amount of clothing which is put into landfills. This is helping the environment and suffering people.

Have you considered joining an environment group? This is a great way to clean up the local areas, help wildlife which is suffering and also educate younger people in the importance of helping the planet. It also is a fantastic way to replace the trees which have been taken down in the paper industry.

Have you thought about mobile phone recycling? It’s a strange idea but if you haven’t got time to help out you can collect people’s handsets and get cash for mobiles when it comes to disposing of them correctly. Getting cash for mobile phones will enable you to either keep the money or donate it to the charity you wished to work at. Don’t forget if you collect peoples handsets it’s advisable to inform them that you will be receiving cash for mobiles you no longer use so they are not under any false understanding.

The government have made cuts to many areas of spending, something that is set to continue. One area in which money is being saved is by charity funding being reduced. Some have lost around half of their funding while others have lost it all. Many rely on this funding as well as individual charitable donations. More than 2,000 charities are being forced to close services and it is particularly having an impact on smaller charities.

Compared to pre-recession figures, the total amount of charitable donations by individuals has dropped by around £700 million a year. Fewer people are giving money to charity and those who are giving are tending to give less.

Cash charitable donations makes up a higher percentage of giving that any other type of donation, 50% of the total. This is an area that is impacted by people’s personal circumstances. With the financial situation of many people very different to a few years ago this means a lot of people are unable to give as often as they would have previously. This is the area of charity that suffers most in an economic downturn.

People giving to charity in connection with natural disasters has been impacted less. Donations for those affected by disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan have been as high as would normally be expected. These are more emotional decisions, for example based on seeing the devastation on television and being compelled to help out. In these circumstances people often give without thinking about their finances so much.

One area where the news has been good has been with charity shops. For one thing, more people are looking to work in charity shops. More people are unemployed so are free to volunteer their time or work for low wages. They would rather be doing some work or earning a little than be at home earning nothing. The most significant thing about charity shops in an economic downturn, though, is the number of people buying from them. With people having less disposable income it means they are less able to afford to shop at more expensive outlets. This is driving them to charity shops. It can be a great way of giving to charity for people struggling financially. Rather than spending more money by giving to charity, people are spending less money while still giving to charity.

Although the news is good with regard to charity shops, overall charities have been negatively impacted by the recession and its aftermath. Funding for charities is being reduced and people are donating less.

Rick Steves, the founder of Rick Steves’ Europe travel empire, which includes the travel agency, guide books and TV show, said he’s giving the money to a local arts center to help the community and make a political statement. He will donate the money over 10 years.

“Over the last decade, my tax burden has decreased even as public funding for important local programs and institutions has been decimated – a trend I find alarming,” he said in a written statement.

He’s asking other rich people to make similar donations.

“I see it as a civic duty for businessmen like me, who’s directly benefited from our vibrant communities to do our fair share,” he wrote.

Steves is no doubt in the minority among the rich in feeling under-taxed. The top 1% pays 38% of the nation’s income taxes even at the low “Bush tax cut” rates.

And he’s not the first to make the request. A group of professors at Yale and Cornell earlier this year launched a similar campaign to get the wealthy to give their tax breaks to charity.

Yet giving the money directly to charity – and making sure it’s spent well – may be a more efficient way of creating and saving jobs than giving it to the government in the form of taxes.

And Rick Steves is right when he says that the wealthy benefit greatly from their vibrant communities – a fact too often missed in the discussion of the wealthy who “make it all themselves.” Whether they already do enough for those communities in the form of philanthropy and property taxes, however, will always remain in the eye of the taxpayer.

Do you think the wealthy should give their tax cuts to charity?