One virtual event at a time, JDRF are working towards a world without type 1 diabetes

What were the fundraising challenges facing JDRF?

Like many organisations working in scientific health research, much of JDRF’s work is done with funding raised through mass-participation events, such as the London Marathon.

When the pandemic broke out in March, a whole programme of events had to be cancelled, leading to a shortfall in funding. Virtual events were identified as a solution.

This wasn’t JDRF’s first foray into the world of virtual events, so the fundraising team understood the potential upside they offered.

‘Working with Enthuse to transform physical events into virtual events has been one way to overcome the drop in funding.’

 

- Tom Borrett - Challenge & Sports Events Manager, JDRF

The charity’s first virtual event was a sponsored channel swim called ‘Make a Splash’ that took place in January 2017. The event exceeded fundraising goals and demonstrated to JDRF that virtual events could deliver a higher ROI with significantly lower upfront costs.

Since then, the events team at JDRF developed the ‘Make a Splash’ event, and introduced the ‘40 Day Step Challenge’ - a virtual event that challenges people to record 10,000 steps a day for 40 days. This number is significant, as it ties into the 400,000 people in the UK affected by type 1. This is a great example of highlighting your cause into the structure of your virtual event, which is something we’ve covered previously.

What were the benefits of virtual events for JDRF?

‘The thing that I noticed, first and foremost, when we rolled out ‘Make a Splash’ and the Step Challenge was the demographics of people signing up to take on the event.’

- Tom Borrett - Challenge & Sports Events Manager, JDRF

One of the most intriguing differences between physical and virtual events is the difference in demographics. JDRF found that the traditional demographic make-up of event participation for events based on cycling or marathon running skewed quite heavily male, and predominantly consisted of the 20 - 40 age group.

It is often said that virtual events remove barriers to accessibility, and JDRF found evidence to support that in the changing demographics of their virtual events. They registered greater participation amongst women, as well as increased engagement with both older and younger supporters.

The added convenience has also helped to attract more fundraisers. Not only are event-goers not restricted to people in the immediate geographic vicinity, challenges can be taken at a time and place that suits the supporter, or broken down into smaller increments. This means that people who would like to support a charity but may be put off by the huge difficulty of a marathon or a channel swim, are able to do so.

‘It’s opened things up to new fundraisers, who would have looked at doing the London Marathon and perhaps thought ‘absolutely not!’ Whereas doing 10,000 steps a day seems a lot more manageable.

- Tom Borrett - Challenge & Sports Events Manager, JDRF

There are other barriers to accessibility that virtual events can overcome. Many physical events require a lot of money for travel or other expenses, which limits participation. By taking events virtual JDRF were able to reach a wider and more diverse range of supporters.

’Not everyone can always access or get to our physical events. Virtual events allow us to be open and inclusive to audiences.’

 

- Amy Sommariva - Marketing Manager, JDRF

What features of the Enthuse Platform have been the most helpful?

’The single journey for registration, the ease of promotion and the creation of individual supporter fundraising pages for donations.’

 

- Tom Borrett - Challenge & Sports Events Manager, JDRF

This removal of barriers to accessibility, and the increased ease of participation, when compared to physical events, is one of the key benefits of virtual events.

For this to work properly, the platform needs to be easy for supporters to use. Sign-up must be clear and simple to understand. An all-encompassing platform will be more appealing to supporters than having to register for multiple different platforms (e.g. one for the event, one for online giving, one for tracking progress, etc).

‘Typically, fundraisers sign up through a virtual event website, and then donate through an online giving platform. The two weren’t integrated very well. We didn’t have a home page or a hub for everything.

 

Whereas with Enthuse you’ve got the integrated hub, landing page and fundraising capabilities. It brings everything together in one nice, clean website.

 

- Tom Borrett - Challenge & Sports Events Manager, JDRF

The Enthuse platform allowed JDRF to offer their supporters an integrated platform, with an easy sign-up process and an intuitive interface.

One of the key elements behind this is the Strava integration. This allows users to easily track their participation in challenges. It is particularly useful for ongoing events, such as the ‘40 Day Step Challenge’, which include ongoing participation over an extended period of time.

This allows participants to easily keep track of their progress, without the need to actively sign in every time. This ease of participation makes signing up for these challenges a more attractive prospect for those of us juggling busy work schedules and family commitments.

The Strava integration has worked particularly well with ‘Cycle For a Cure’ as people are taking on distance challenges. The fact that people can finish an activity on Strava, as long as they’ve got it connected to Enthuse, it gets added straight to the Enthuse event.’

 

- Tom Borrett - Challenge & Sports Events Manager, JDRF

The integration of Strava into the Enthuse platform allows participants to take accountability for their own targets. Strava’s time-tracking capabilities empowers event-goers with the ability to participate on their own schedules and share results with the people sponsoring them.

Strava’s leaderboard encourages friendly competition. This allows participants to compete against friends and family, and more accomplished athletes to showcase their skills for a good cause.

The backend of the system was also identified as a key feature, with the team at JDRF able to use the Enthuse platform’s intuitive dashboard to glean key insights (such as demographic and supporter data) to tailor future campaigns and build more successful virtual events.

Learn more about virtual events

Want to see Enthuse in action? Join us on 15th October 2020 for #BeMoreDigital Fundraising Day, where Enthuse will be delivering a fantastic session, ’Who did you last donate to?’

Click here to sign up now!

Learn more about how virtual events can help you to increase engagement and make up for lost fundraising activities with this free ebook from virtual events specialists Enthuse.