Walk for Kids Help Phone 2010: The benefits of personalised fundraising pages for corporate partners

HomeMade has been lucky enough to recently work with the Canadian arm of the brilliant Kids Help Phone organisation. Together we have created a set of corporate partner fundraising pages for 2010’s Walk for Kids Help Phone across Canada. Over 20,000 people Walked last year raising over $3 million to ensure Kids Help Phone can continue to offer 24-hour support to young people.

Learning from the initial success of the pilot corporate pages in 2009, we’re sure this year’s event will raise even more cash. The pages provide a dynamic extension to the partner’s own site – a sort of bridge between the main Walk event site and their own digital world. By being easy to refresh, the pages enable the Walk’s corporate teams to stay up-to-date with the latest number of Walkers, funds raised, exciting team news and all their pictures or videos. Creating a co-branded and customised hub for each of the Walk’s corporate partners has shown initial evidence of an increase in both participation and income. Let’s hope this continues as the campaign grows. The pages have been designed to make individual Walkers feel a motivated part of a fantastic event while also being proud of their employer’s overall contribution and role in the Walk.

Walkers and corporate team leaders can share ideas for raising more cash, build morale and keep their entire team and wider family of supporters connected with the event. Importantly they can feedback at the end of the event, say thank you to all sponsors and help with the process of keeping the wider supporter community aware of progress through sharing stories and assets for Walkers to distribute. 2010 sees five times as many corporate partner pages being delivered as were produced in 2009; we hope this increase will support a considerable growth in revenues for the Walk for Kids Help Phone.

This project got me thinking more about the benefits and challenges associated with event-fundraising. What is the likely value of a customised page for a corporate partner? What factors might this sort of work impact – participation, revenue, return, delight, repeat participation, unrestricted contributions from the corporate partners?

I went to have a look and see if others have written about some of these benefits previously; there’s not a lot out there in the ether. It would be good to hear back from people who have found other benefits, disagree about the observations made here or have discovered other drivers which generate positive impacts on event fundraising. So, for what they are worth – some thoughts:

1. Customised pages really help a corporate partner feel they have a solid connection with the event they are supporting. For their staff and wider family of friends it enables them to wear the partnership proudly online while showing the scale of partnership – “the event is willing to create a dedicated registration and event hub for us”. I think this is a lovely commitment from the charity / event. When a partner works to promote the event internally and directs staff to their dedicated pages – it must surely also increase a sense of belonging and pride within the staff team.

2. It might be set up as an activity which will “wash its own face” – the pages do not have to cost a huge amount of money; could they be sold to the corporate partners as an extension of their event relationship potentially?

3. Participation among the partner staff has been seen to grow when it is clear other staff are involved, when teams within the business can set each other challenges and when the “welcome mat” which is laid out at the point of registration includes content and information specifically relevant to the partner. When your employer and all your peer group say “this is a really good thing to do” you’re more likely to want to get involved. These corporate pages with leader-boards and customised content tick all the boxes associated with these factors.

4. Incentivising participation is the event fundraiser’s first hurdle; second is driving solicitations from the participants; third making sure the participants turn up and have a brilliant time at the event; final challenges: getting any offline cash into the bank and signing everyone up for the event again. The open connection with a partner can really help with the participation, can set up a great competitive spirit to drive higher fundraising goals and makes the event a “must attend” moment to reduce non-attendance on the day. I think the provision of an overview of the achievements of the company also make it easier to share the success within the company – “we’re really proud of our Walkers – get behind them now – or sign up for your place” – is much more effective when connected to a dedicated set of pages which tell the partner’s story.

There must be a handful more of these sorts of benefits – so feel free to share your thoughts.

Hopefully the added benefits of these personalised corporate pages will drive even more revenue in 2010 than ever before! Good luck Kids Help Phone and good luck to all the Walkers!