How do you feel when you’re asked to sponsor yet another friend on an ever more outrageous challenge they have signed up to? A little weary perhaps? You wouldn't be alone.

With that in mind, what is the long term future of event fundraising in the UK?

The October edition of Fundraising Magazine included an interesting article by Priya Kantaria on the growth in virtual fundraising events.

But what is a virtual event? Essentially it is where people sign up to a challenge that isn’t a one-off event organised by the charity. Examples include the British Heart Foundation’s My Marathon and Alzheimer’s Research UK’s Running/Swimming/Cycling Down Dementia. Supporters sign up to raise sponsorship (or pay to participate in) a personal challenge that they can complete at their own pace and according to their ability.

To make such virtual events a real success, it appears that investment in technology and marketing are critical. You need to get lots of people to sign up and you need a donor-friendly, motivational technology platform to support participants to raise as much as possible as easily as possible. Gamification has become a significant feature of these platforms in recent years, to increase supporter motivation and buy-in.

Done well, this virtual event approach reduces costs and risks for charities and can make fundraising more accessible to a much wider group of supporters/participants. Those must be good things for keeping event fundraising fresh and a useful tool in the charity fundraising toolkit.

What strikes us is that, although there are a growing number of technology platforms to support virtual events, they don’t yet feel particularly accessible for smaller charities. These platforms seem to need quite a lot of customisation and integration with the beneficiary charity’s own systems, creating a significant barrier to participation for smaller charities.

Notwithstanding this, we agree with Fundraising Magazine that the future of event fundraising is likely to be centred on the growth of virtual events. It is surely only a matter of time before one of the online giving platforms comes up with a genuinely off-the-shelf solution for virtual event fundraising, including gamification options.

Moreover, there are many event providers out there, most of whom offer ‘open challenges’ in which anyone can participate and raise funds for any charity (although sometimes the charity needs to have signed up with the provider). Some of these also offer marketing and fundraising technology support for participating charities. This could be another way for smaller charities to participate in ‘semi-virtual’ event fundraising; that is they could promote a range of ‘real’ events organised by a third party provider allowing supporters to choose challenges that suit them both in terms of ability and when they take place.

If you’d like to chat about your charity’s fundraising strategy please contact us at julian@almondtreeconsulting.co.uk to arrange free initial telephone discussion.