Fundraising challenges that involve fitness activities are a huge bugbear of mine. I was an events and marketing professional long before I was a personal trainer, so here’s my unique take on what’s wrong and what to do to make it right.
Fundraising challenges: who are they for?
Here’s our key problem: charities need money in order to keep themselves going. Many of them have genuinely noble aims of raising awareness, funding research, or providing support. And that shit’s expensive. The problem is, so are fun events. Things like concerts or shows or balls, which you can charge the right people good money to attend are also costly to run, so your fundraising margin is low, although you’re making an attractive offering.
Things like raffles and bake sales also don’t tend to make a brilliant impact financially, plus they’re not particularly thrilling in the digital era. It would take flogging a lot of cupcakes to keep an international charity afloat.
So some wise person came up with fitness challenges. Picture the meeting: “How about if we get loads of people to walk a bit every day for a month. We can tie it in with some of our own numbers, or our colour to give it a nice neat theme. We can send out packs and get everyone to share their fundraising pages online, plus photos of their progress to get attention.”
I wasn’t there, but it will have gone something like that. Charities need money. So they think of ideas for how to generate income. It’s rarely about the people they serve, and that’s where the idea deviates from the rails…
Fitness and charities, a history
When you think about it, these events have existed for a long time, as things like large public marathons have now been popular for decades. And there we actually have the tip of the iceberg of our first problem – marathons and other “extreme” fitness events such as Ironmans and desert treks aren’t inclusive; for charities aiming to raise as much as possible, the masses need to be targeted. Organising a marathon is a bit like putting someone on the moon – it’s not exactly open to everyone.
Of course, the analogue era wasn’t anyone’s best friend in terms of reach. Life was lived at a slower pace. I remember many sponsored walks and swims taking place throughout my childhood, manually completing sponsorship forms and then chasing up cash afterwards. For charities, this would’ve been a slow turnaround, but I’m sure there was also a steady trickle to the flow.
However, with the move to digital, everyone suddenly has an international reach, the ability to let the world know what’s going on in the very moment, plus the facility for people to donate via the internet. Everything is far faster, and so too are the challenges.
Now for the science: what’s wrong with fitness challenges?
The events professional fully sees the problem charities have. And the pandemic obviously changed a lot of things very quickly, and made their lives difficult and stressful. Mass participation events were out, as well as other public events. At home fitness challenges rode the coattails of the home fitness boom that took place due to facilities being closed and people having a different opportunity to train.
So, three years into the pandemic, here we are with a different sponsored social media ad for a plank challenge or a walk-a-thon or a spin bike usage (no, I don’t mean as a clotheshorse) incentive each week. They’re often presented as “easy” to participating, involving “no equipment”, and either require no minimum fundraising target or a nominal one (whereas things like marathons and treks often have a four-figure or higher target, to cover the charity’s costs – they’ll pay for places at those events or the organisation of the trip).
The thing is, in fitness terms, these challenges involve poor programming. In fact, it’s probably not programming at all, because in all likelihood, the challenge has been put together by the fundraising and marketing teams, rather than a fitness professional. Every challenge I’ve ever seen has involved exercises that are inaccessible at an intensity which is inappropriate. Because the challenge is issued in a blanket way, with no consideration for personalisation or adapting to the needs of the participant.
Often, it’s about being a slave to a theme: the charity has a number which is important to them – an anniversary, or a fundraising target, or a key figure which relates to their aims and objectives – and bases a challenge around it, such as completing 150km of activity in a month (for context, this is roughly the distance between London and Birmingham). Let’s break that down over a 30-day month: 150km in a month is 5km per day, but any good trainer will tell you to allow for rest days (so will that thing you call a life). Factoring in two rest days per week, we’re down to 22 days, which means we’re up to 6.8km per day. I walk pretty rapidly, and 6.8km would still take me a good hour. Do you have between 60 and 75 spare minutes per day for 22 days to devote to walking?
The next example I’ll use is a real favourite of charities: the plank challenge. I think this one is selected because people think planks are easy (they’re not) and familiar (that’s a maybe). For a lot of people they are actually somewhere between difficult and dangerous. They’re easy to get wrong. They’re inadvisable for those with particular health issues. And there are never any modifications offered within charity challenges.
So what should we do instead?
Charity fitness challenges: the solution
Often, fitness goals that clients want to set come down to one of three things: they want to be more active, they want to move better, or they want to do things which are more difficult.
And those things are all brilliant accomplishments. Here are some suggestions:
- Encourage people to up their existing activity level by 1-5%
- Challenge people to perfect their form with a specific exercise (both by practicing the movement and training other important muscles)
- Suggest that people build their skills in order to master a new one
- Invite people to go out and have some fun with movement
Yes, I threw a wild card in at the end. Because does it have to be arduous, really?
If you’re a charity which currently does things wrong and would like some help, hit me up! If you’re a person looking for a coach, you can come and train with me in Horsham. I promise I won’t make you plank every day for 30-days.