I’m delighted to put up my first interview with someone about an amazing Community Fundraising product. To give an idea of format- my interviews will normally be less than 10 questions, just enough to give an overview of the product. I’ll always put a link to the fundraising page at the end, and include a way to contact the brains behind them.
So- to kick us off I’m talking to Kerry Thomas about Miles for Refugees… let's go!
Firstly, can you briefly describe Miles for Refugees?
It’s a completely unique virtual event as it links the activity to the cause which you’re fundraising for. It’s an amazing way to show solidarity with refugees, to exercise, and to fundraise! Miles for Refugees is the thing I’m most proud of, in my professional career.
So, MFR wasn’t the first virtual challenge event, but it was in an early wave. What challenges did you find in year one?
In year one (2017) everything was unknown – but we were especially curious about whether people would like that it was cause-related- and how such a divisive cause would land.
Another big difference to the way I normally work is using an online provider- it was a massive learning curve, and there were some teething problems. Year one did do amazingly well for a pilot but had lots of things that needed ironing out. We also realised that to make Miles for Refugees the best it could be, we needed the whole organisation to be on board.
How have you used your learnings to develop year on year?
At the end of year one, we did in depth analysis – which meant we could do very targeted social media adverts when we launch in 2018. As well as learning the ‘who’ (age, gender, and locations of our participants) we also looked into the why.
We learned that the cause was the most important thing for most people, so we used that in recruitment. It was more important than I thought it’d be that people were picking a distance in the refugee journey- I hadn’t thought that would matter so much.
Another aspect we looked into was how participants wanted to be communicated with. Engaging with the charity and other participants was important- they wanted regular emails and liked getting feedback on what they were doing. This feedback meant we could also focus on social media in year two and the # on twitter took off.
At the end of year one we hadn’t seen any benefit from print ads in year one, so didn’t use them at all in year two.
We’ve taken the feedback from year to year we’re refining the online advertising from this year! We’ve also expanded the internal team involved- and hope the involvement of our digital will mean the external sign up process will be smoother.
It also came out that it is an important visual representation of miles people are moving, so year three will see some exciting developments there.
Year three is a chance for us to develop supporter journeys, and we’ll be testing different communications and tailoring experiences depending on fundraising and activity.
Any hiccups you weren’t expecting?
Last year the 1st of September (first day of Miles for Refugees) was a Saturday, and also the day I was coming back from holiday! I was sat in Helsinki airport desperately to contact anyone about the website not working. It was a huge hiccup and highlighted to need for out of hours tech support.
Tech is always tricky - there will always be people who struggle with setting up an online giving page or signing up online. We didn’t create the portal so it was hard for us to support and solve problems. Someone accidentally logged an 8-mile walk as 8,000 miles! We never managed to get the supporter to change it and we couldn’t change it ourselves so it knocked lots of information out of whack.
What about any positive surprises?
How many people signed up! Year one had low targets – to raise £30k and to have 100 people sign up. We had 200 people raise £40k!
Seeing the way that when Facebook targeting goes right you can see registrations increase in the hundreds. In 2018 we hit £100k income on a birthday. A positive hiccup was that our team was completely overwhelmed with numbers- a wonderful nightmare!
Does it get easier year on year to run a virtual fundraising event?
I don’t think it gets easier as the challenges change- but I think it would be easy to become complacent and be tripped up. For MFR, I think year three will be harder- as last year was such a high it’ll be hard to maintain. It’s also tricky as we’re constantly competing against other amazing causes and ideas, and the tech has to be great as people have high expectations.
Do you think virtual events will ever replace ‘live’ events?
No – things like London Marathon will continue to be the most amazing thing that people want to do but virtual events offer opportunities for those who want a challenge that fits into everyday life. I don’t think they’ll replace traditional events, but they will certainly increase.
Anything else you think fundraisers should know?
Really think about your USP. It needs to be more than ‘walk in this month’– how can you make it bespoke for the charity and show why the event and the cause are special? And, build in time to test the online platform!
Any ideas about what is next, after virtual events?
I wonder if virtual reality will creep in- similar to gaming where you will feel like you’re with people when you’re each in separate gyms or locations… a way to give the sense of doing the challenge collectively whilst actually doing it separately.
You can contact Kerry on LinkedIn, and find out more about Miles for Refugees here.
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