Average number of donations made to fundraising pages for UK based sporting & challenge events varies significantly by event type.

In the second of our two articles about donations to fundraising pages we look at the number of donations given to fundraising pages by the type of event. The analysis uses data from January 2009 to end August 2011 and comes from the fundraising pages of AltaContact’s charity customers including Kidney Research UK, Sue Ryder, Anthony Nolan and The Stroke Association.

Results for number of donations per fundraising page

Longer distance running events Iead the field with the London Marathon ahead by some distance. Fundraisers average over 40 donations per page. Walks bring up the tail with an average 9 donations per page.

Here’s the full table:

It’s interesting to speculate for the reasons. We suspect that there are two key factors. First fundraisers participating in difficult and respected fundraising events like the London Marathon are likely to spread their donation request nets very widely. Second the % of persons approached who actually give may be higher for events like the London Marathon compared to lesser known and less taxing events. The second point is particularly relevant for online donations where it is easier for potential donors to pick and choose the donation requests they will respond to. Simply potential donors don’t have the awkwardness of turning down a donation request in a face to face situation. 

Readers may recall the order of average values of donations discussed in the earlier AltaContact article.

It’s most striking that the order of type of event is almost identical for the two averages. As a reminder here is the table of average donations per fundraising event.

Again it’s interesting to speculate why this pattern occurs.

We suggest this reason. The harder the event the more justified fundraisers feel in asking for donations i.e. a donation is their reward for the effort of participating. And to explain the differential from the London Marathon to other marathons we think that fundraiser’s perception of the social respectability of asking for a donation for the London Marathon is much higher than for other marathon events. This argument can certainly be used to explain the difference between running a marathon, which may be a once in a lifetime event, compared to walking which can be done frequently throughout the day.

It’s also worth looking at the average fundraising return per fundraising page by event, using the two data tables.

Here are the results:

Fundraising and event managers may find that the totals are near the targets they have provided for event participants, which would also suggest that fundraising and event managers can have a strong influence over fundraising revenue.

Can fundraising and event managers use this data for future predictions of fundraising returns on events?

We think so. Knowing that a London Marathon fundraising page may return around £1400 and that a page for a walk may return around £150 is worthwhile. It gives an excellent base from which to try and increase the returns on the fundraising pages both in terms of number of donations and the average value of donations.

For the London Marathon a 10% increase alone in the average number and value of donations would increase the value of each fundraising page by £288.96. The average value of a page on a mass participation Walk would increase by £31.49. These could be targets worth pursuing.

If you have any questions please drop me a line to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it