Running for a Cause: WITNESS and the New York City Marathon

Like many nonprofits, one of our favorite ways to raise money is by bringing together supporters in non-traditional activities. For example, while our muscles are still sore from from the New York City Marathon where we brought together a fundraising team, we look forward to this Spring when we’ll do the same with the city’s Five Borough Bike Tour.

Real Business has a good story about the challenges and opportunities involved in this type of fund raising. For example, Team in Training has raised some $1.4 billion over the last 25 years.

With success like that, other nonprofits are turning to sporting events but in doing so it’s hard to get your voice heard when trying to recruit volunteers to join.

Says WITNESS’ Hannah Ayers in an interview with Real Business:

As an organization, we do experience the challenge of getting our message through the noise, but that encourages us to be more creative and compelling in our messaging. I imagine we’ll see the same thing with charity marathon teams: Organizations and the runners themselves will discover that they need to be more creative to get the attention of potential supporters.

Visit Real Business to learn more about how nonprofits and volunteers are participating in marathons, triathlons and other events in order to support their causes.

You can see photos of WITNESS, our volunteers and supports from this year’s New York Marathon on Flickr.