Virtual Events: The Future Of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising 3314

Virtual Events: The Future Of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

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The Fundraising Landscape is Changing
The market for doing good and social good is not solely “owned” by non-profits anymore. And while this is exciting, it is also putting new pressure on organizations to figure out how to organize and interact.
 

Part of being a leader in the social good movement, is being actively engaged on behalf of the nonprofit sector and facilitating new approaches for doing in the world.

As the landscape continues to change, Blackbaud and everydayhero are at the forefront, prioritizing innovation and thought leadership. Part of being a leader in the social good movement, is being actively engaged on behalf of the nonprofit sector and facilitating new approaches for doing in the world. For example, we were one of the founding influencers to launch the #GivingTuesday global movement. In just a few years that movement has grown from a spark of an idea to a global campaign, which raised $168 million in 2016. At everydayhero, our goal is to continue to stay at the forefront of finding new ways to embrace social good.

Staying Ahead of the Curve with Virtual Events
Driven by digital disruption, mobile, social, and wearable tech, Virtual Events are an exciting new type of peer-to-peer event that brings fundraising, fitness and communities together to unite people virtually around your cause. Virtual Events take the ideas of traditional fundraising events like a marathon or fun run and leverage online channels for participation. Virtual Events remove physical barriers and create unparalleled engagement, turning your supporters into passionate advocates that will raise more money.

With Virtual Events, organizations can easily acquire new donors and fundraisers by offering an exciting new event type that leverages the apps and social networks they love. Thanks to everydayhero's unique integrations with popular fitness apps like Strava and MapMyFitness, participants can connect fitness and fundraising in an entirely new way. These integrations allow supporters to participate in Virtual Events on their own time, in the location of their choice, on their own terms, while sharing their efforts and still feeling connected to the greater collective effort.  Every mile they do, every hour they give, every calorie they burn is energy giving focus to your cause. When they connect their MMF or Strava to their everydayhero page, their fitness activities automatically upload to their supporter page and to the collective effort. They can also add their fitness efforts manually. When they share these efforts, it inspires others to support them, which inspires them to keep going. As we like to say, #EverythingCounts.  

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With Virtual Events, thousands of individuals can join together in an effort to reach personal bests or a collective goal.  And, as an organization, you create unparalleled engagement by uniting supporters around your cause as part of a digital community working toward positive outcomes. By providing real-time feedback and acknowledgment through data visualizations and quantified communications, supporters raise more money.  We see a 46% increase in funds raised for charity when athletes link their fitness with their fundraising pages.

How it Works

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Running Down Dementia 
Alzheimer's Research UK (ARUK) is currently the largest dementia research charity in Europe with the goal of finally finding a cure for dementia.  Fundraising events are key to ARUK and they currently invest in over 20 events each year.
 
Using everydayhero's Virtual Event functionality, ARUK embarked on a new campaign in 2016, which would prove to be a mainstay of their fundraising events.

Running Down Dementia was an event run in association with ARUK's partner parkrun. The aim was to have participants run 100 km and raise £100 ($124), and they wanted to give fundraisers the chance to complete%u2028this in a way that was suitable for them. By logging kilometers on a walk to work or a 5km run over the weekend, the supporter could reach their goal in a way that was most convenient to them. Using everydayhero's integration with MapMyFitness and Strava, each participants actions were directly linked to their fundraising page, bridging the gap between effort and encouraging more donations.
 

"everydayhero's platform offered a wealth of functionality that other platforms really can't provide, which allowed us to create something truly unique for our supporters through our Virtual Event."
 – Kenneth Foreman, ARUK


Running Down Dementia was hugely successful%u2028for Alzheimer's Research UK. Initially they set out with a conservative target, trying to reach $185,000.  They were extremely pleased to have surpassed their goals, raising $273,000 by the end of the campaign with over 4000 participants signed up.

Hear Kenneth Foreman, Alzheimer's Research UK Sports and Event Manager tell their story:
 

Alzheimer's Research UK - Virtual Events from everydayhero UK on Vimeo.


Interested in hosting your own virtual event on everydayhero? Let us know. And remember, virtually, anything is possible.
 
News everydayhero Blog 03/20/2017 6:26pm EDT

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