Earlier this year, I found out that I had secured a charity place in the 2027 London Marathon. Twenty-six point two miles. One ridiculous costume.  A five-figure fundraising target. Apparently, I like a challenge.

I have spent much of my career as a fundraiser and now work as a fundraising consultant, so I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about fundraising: income mix, supporter journeys, stewardship, cases for support and, fundamentally, relationships.

Preparing for the London Marathon has put me on the other side of one of those relationships. Over the coming months, I will be getting up early to run increasingly ridiculous distances in the dark, cold and wet. At the same time, I will be asking friends, family, colleagues and professional contacts to support a charity through me. Those long runs have given me quite a lot of time to think about challenge fundraising, its place within a charity’s income mix, and particularly about the person wearing the charity vest.

Because they are not simply participating in an event. For those few months, they are fundraising for you. They are taking your case for support into their own networks. They are asking people who trust them to give to your organisation. They are giving you their time and attention and putting some of their own social capital behind your cause. For a small or medium-sized charity, perhaps without a large events programme or dedicated events fundraising team, that is worth paying attention to.

Challenge fundraising matters

The scale of challenge fundraising in the UK is difficult to ignore. The TCS London Marathon was already the world’s largest annual one-day fundraising event, now extended to two days for 2027.  Participants in the 2026 event have raised more than £90 million for charity, following a record £87.3 million in 2025. And fundraising isn’t simply something participants happen to do alongside these events. Enthuse’s 2025/26 Mass Participation Report found that 59% of participants said looking for a way to raise money for charity was a motivation for taking part. Some charities have sophisticated challenge events programmes and specialist teams managing hundreds of participants. But many smaller and medium-sized organisations will have a handful of people taking part in events on their behalf.

You might have five.

You might have two.

You might have one.

That doesn’t make stewardship less important. Arguably, it makes each relationship more valuable.

Start by treating them as a fundraiser

I think this is the shift in perspective that matters most. Rather than beginning with, “What do we need this person to raise?”, start with, “What do they need from us to help them raise it?” Someone may be incredibly enthusiastic about your cause and completely comfortable running a marathon, cycling 100 miles or jumping out of an aeroplane. 

That does not mean they know how to fundraise. Help them.

Have a conversation when they sign up. Thank them properly for choosing your organisation. Find out why they are doing it and what connection they have to your cause. Help them get their fundraising page up and running. Give them a simple pack or one-page guide with fundraising ideas. Give them useful statistics, stories and examples of impact that will help them explain why somebody should sponsor them. This is not just good practice in theory. In Enthuse’s Charity Pulse 2025 research, 87% of charities surveyed said giving participants information about how the money would be used was important in helping them fundraise. Around three-quarters also identified fundraising tips, fundraising ideas and encouraging people to start early as important. The most successful campaigns are started 6 months from the date of the event. 

Your fundraiser is doing the asking. Make it easy for them to make a good ask.

Keep in touch

Challenge events often involve months of preparation. There are going to be a lot of miles between somebody accepting a charity place and standing on the start line. Don’t disappear during them. Steward your challenge fundraisers in the same way you would think about stewarding other important supporters. Keep in touch. Ask how the training is going. Celebrate milestones. Comment when they share an update. Encourage them when the novelty has worn off and the Sunday morning training run has become considerably longer. None of this needs to involve a complicated supporter journey or expensive technology. It does require somebody to remember that there is a person out there giving a significant amount of their time to your organisation.

Help them reach beyond their immediate network

There is another reason I think challenge fundraisers occupy an interesting position. They can introduce your organisation to people you may never otherwise reach. Friends and family are the obvious starting point, but challenge fundraisers may also be talking about your organisation at work, on LinkedIn, with professional contacts, in community groups or with local businesses. Help them do that well. Give them copy they can adapt rather than insisting they invent everything themselves. Suggest different ways of asking. Explain matched giving if their employer offers it. Give them fundraising ideas they can realistically fit around training, work and the rest of their lives. And champion them through your own channels. Share their fundraising page. Tell their story. Celebrate what they are doing. They are lending you their network. You can lend them yours.

If you can, show up

There are practical things charities can do too. If budget allows, good-quality branded technical clothing is useful. A running vest that somebody trains in for months does considerably more work for your brand than something that sits in a drawer because it is uncomfortable to run in. And on the day itself, be there if you can. Meet your fundraisers before the event. Tell them where you will be cheering. Have somebody from the charity waiting along the route. I haven’t run my marathon yet, but I suspect that somewhere around mile 20 I will have some fairly strong views about the value of seeing a familiar face.

The relationship shouldn’t end at the finish line

This may be the most important part. Tell people what they achieved. Not simply: “You raised £5,000. Thank you.” Tell them what £5,000 means to your organisation. What will it enable you to do? Who will it help you reach? What changed because they spent months training and persuading other people to give? And then keep in touch. Not because every challenge fundraiser needs to be pushed immediately towards another ask. They may want to run again. They may become a regular donor. They might volunteer, introduce a corporate relationship, advocate for your cause or eventually become a trustee. Or they might collect their medal, swear never to run another marathon and happily remain someone who once did something extraordinary for your organisation. All of those are legitimate outcomes. Good stewardship isn’t about extracting the next gift. It is about recognising the value of the relationship.

A different view from inside the running shoes

I still have a lot of training between me and the start line in 2027, and an equally significant fundraising challenge ahead. But being on this side of challenge fundraising has already made me look at it slightly differently. When somebody agrees to take on a challenge for your charity, you haven’t simply acquired a participant with a fundraising target. For a period of time, you have someone willing to give you their effort, their attention, their networks and their personal endorsement.

For small and medium-sized charities in particular, that is an opportunity worth stewarding well.

If you would like to learn more about how challenge fundraising could work with your charity, contact Craigmyle to discuss.