How Integrating A Charity Partner Can Elevate Your Sports Event

Planning an event that “gives back” to the community you are serving is not only a good thing to do, it can actually increase the reach and registration numbers of your event. Choosing to integrate a charity partner into your sport event creates a sense of camaraderie, can give athletes extra motivation, brings in new supporters, and increases engagement levels of your event. This article will aim to summarize the importance of Interpodia’s fundraising tools and expand on how fundraising is a mutually beneficial operation for both organizers and registrants.

The Background of Our Charity Integration

When signing up for charity sports events, participants often must register for the event on one platform and then are redirected to another site to set up pledge pages. This fragmented process is inconvenient and leaves too many opportunities for dropouts. In response, Interpodia launched integrated fundraising in 2011 and it has evolved from there.

The tool began as a simple option to make a donation during online registration. Now it has grown into a broad selection of features and functions for fundraisers. Event organizers can easily integrate fundraising into their events and work with multiple charities. Interpodia has the capability to transfer the donation revenue and donor data directly to the charities, saving you time and money.

Benefits for Organizers

Charities unite organizers under a common goal. People are more likely to donate to organizations rather than individuals, so a donation page with the message “Donate to help my event reach $5,000 by December 1” is more compelling than “Donate to help me reach $5,000 by December 1.” It’s a subtle difference, but your organization will see more engagement as a result.

Fundraisers also allow more opportunities for organizers to network with new supporters and engage with donors. Building these relationships improves your marketing and public image, which may incentivize more people to join your organization or donate at the next event.

Benefits for Registrants

Sporting events promote people’s physical and mental health, but when people donate or sign up for a charity event, they feel even better knowing they’re making a difference in a cause that’s important to them. Feeling part of something bigger motivates participants to attend, be active, and meet new people. Therefore, charity sporting events nurture both physical and emotional wellbeing.

How Does it Work?

With Interpodia, participants have two options when signing up for a charity event: They can donate during registration and/or share their personalized fundraising page with their peers to donate and support their fundraising efforts. These simple processes make it easy for people to give and raise more funds for a good cause. We have also built in social media sharing to allow fundraisers to share pledge pages with their networks.

If authorized by the charity, Interpodia can issue CRA, IRS, and HMRC compliant sequential tax receipts to donors, who get their receipts immediately to print and keep in their records. An electronic copy of the receipt is also emailed to the donor.

Charities and organizers can view and export data of donors and those fundraising data for the communications or issuing receipts. For organizers, Interpodia can create a badge with real-time totals of all the donations made to registrants’ pledge pages. The widget can be embedded into your webpage, showing the total amount raised to date.

The End Goal

In addition to comprehensive event registration and merchandise management, Interpodia provides integrated donation processing for charity bike rides, runs, and other fundraising events. Our experience collaborating with event organizers and charities in North America and the UK allows us to develop the best ways to use technology to enhance their fundraising campaigns. Our end goals are simple: