SheGives Campaign for Boston Marathon Charity Runners Goes the Distance!

 

We launched our campaign to support charity runners in the Boston Marathon two weeks before the Marathon. Our first Roll Call of Runners for Extraordinary Causes listed runners we knew directly — SheGives members and nonprofits on our slate. And then members and friends of SheGives started sending us links to a wider circle of friends, neighbors and co-workers.

We asked everyone whose fundraising page we linked to to help us make the campaign viral — to send around our video and the daily Roll Call to their twitter, facebook, etc. feed, as we were doing.  And for everyone whose link we posted, we also asked them to, in turn, go back into the Roll Call and find someone they didn’t know and donate to that person’s fundraising to keep the circle of giving going.

In the end, we posted links for 110 Runners & 46 different charities.

From when we first posted each link through yesterday these runners & charities raised an additional $219,818.87 in total during the time they were on our Roll Call!

(This amount doesn’t include any additional amounts raised for causes who we linked to that do not show giving amounts, like Stepping Strong.)

We are proud to have inspired so much giving — not all of that is owing to our campaign, of course, but we certainly triggered a big push. We know this because many runners fundraising had seen momentum drop after months of canvassing their circle of family, friends and coworkers, and then saw it spike after a few days in the broader community on our Roll Call.

We were thrilled to see so many “SheGives Inspired!” notations on fundraisers’ donation scrolls!  (Take a look at Jennifer Gove’s fundraising page for Lovin’ Spoonfuls, for instance)

And we were moved and even more committed after getting many, many notes like these:

“Love the idea of the Roll Call of Extraordinary Runners. I gave a donation a few days ago to a stranger running for the Martin Richard Foundation, and felt so good doing it.”

     – Fundraising for Friends of Wellesley METCO

 

 

“Thank you for doing your roll call! It’s such a great way to get the word out about all the amazing people who are making their footsteps count for so many outstanding organizations, particularly in our hometown of Boston. Thank you all the support you are giving each and every fundraiser :)”
     – Team MR8

 

“I appreciate all the help SheGives gave us. It was huge.”
     – One Fund Runner

 

We had some pretty powerfully inspiring people adding big impact to our campaign. One of our SheGives members introduced us to Gillis at BostInno who ran a story on our Marathon campaign, read it here, which they then rolled out to their twitter feed of over 38k.

And SheGives Founding Member Erin Gates penned a moving piece on this year’s Marathon linking to our video and campaign on her Elements of Style blog here (she has well over 300,000 page hits a month).

And we had all of our members tell their friends, family and coworkers that they spread the word too.

Here’s how we tracked increased giving to runners on the SheGives Roll Call (an imperfect science): we noted the amount that each runner had already raised on their publicly available fundraising pages on sites like crowdrise the morning we put them on our Roll Call. And then we went back to those sites and tracked 3-5 days after being put on our Roll Call. Ditto as of the day after the race.

No one we know of has done anything like this campaign for the Marathon before in Boston — launched a community-wide campaign to drive support for all of the charity runners in the Boston Marathon. This is a first that we are really proud of. Thank you. Smart Women. Smart Giving.

We did this to make some small positive contribution to Boston’s triumph after last year’s Marathon bombings, to connect to Boston’s incredible giving community and to thank runners like Joe Torpy, who is carrying Richard Martin’s photo in the AP photo above, which says it all.  This is Boston.  This is the City that we are.   And SheGives is committed to being a part of the goodness.

Here are just a few of the other comments we received:

“I appreciate you publishing not only the One Fund team’s links, but ALL charity runners. Going to be a great race….”
     – One Fund Runner

 

“I am proud to be running the Boston Marathon as a member of Team MR8! Your efforts to shine a light on various non-profits and help to raise awareness and potentially funds for these causes is awesome! Thank you!”
     -Team MR8

 

“I love what you’re doing!!!!”
     – Fundraising for the Rett Syndrome Association

 

“Thanks so much for your work on this…it’s pretty incredible.”
     – Fundraising for the Melanoma Foundation of NE

 

“Thanks for all of your help. An honor to be on your roll call!”
     – Fundraising for Susan G Komen Foundation

 

And from various members of the public by email and on our twitter feed we are getting:

“What you are doing for Boston is incredible SheGives!”

 

“Brilliantly generous idea to support ALL of Boston.”

 

“SheGives you are amazing!”

 

“The Roll Call is a totally awesome idea!”

 

SheGives is a private Boston-based foundation launched in September 2013 that supports a slate of extraordinary nonprofits in the Greater Boston area.   SheGives is not seeking public donations for itself.  See a list of the heavily diligenced 501c3 tax-exempt nonprofits selected for our slate that are seeking direct donations thru their websites here.

SheGives Campaign for Boston Marathon Charity Runners Goes the Distance!