This week’s fundraising idea for your youth group is to plan a walk-a-thon fundraiser. We’ve written before about how to organize a sponsored bike ride, so this is a similar concept.
The way it works is that your young people will walk a certain amount of miles, with people sponsoring them for completing the challenge. There are many different options for how this can be done though, so here’s our list of 5 walk-a-thon ideas:
1. Hike
Organize a hike along a nature trail, in a forest, in the mountains, etc. This will make the walking part a lot more fun for your youth group, as they’ll have interesting things to look at along the way, plus it gives them a chance to learn how to read a map.
With this option, it might be hard to calculate the distance that you’re due to walk. However, if you’re doing the hike in a state park, their visitor information center should be able to advise you how long the nature trails are.
2. From A to B
If this youth group fundraiser is being held to raise money for a project in your local community, the walk-a-thon could start where you hold your youth group and end at the location you’re raising money for.
If that’s not a particularly long distance, walk back to your youth group location, where you could then have some kind of party to celebrate its completion.
3. From A to A
If there’s nowhere in particular you’d need to walk to (as per the previous example), your walk could both start and end in the same place.
This option gives you more flexibility as to which walking route you take, meaning you can take a more scenic – or safe – route.
4. From A to Z
This is a great choice if you’re raising money for a mission trip or for a charity that’s based overseas. The first step is to calculate the distance between your youth group’s location and the location of the charity you’re fundraising for that’s in a foreign country.
There’s a good chance that this could end up being thousands of miles, which might sound impossible to achieve. However, there are ways of doing this that aren’t too daunting.
Plan the walk-a-thon and add up all of the miles walked by your young people. For example, if you have 75 youth in your group and they each walk 16 miles, that’s 1,200 miles combined.
Another option is to give each of them a pedometer to wear over the course of a month. Assuming they walk 2.5 miles a day (which is only 5,000 steps on average), they’ll walk approx. 75 miles each within a month. A youth group with 50 young people all walking that distance will therefore walk 3,750 miles.
5. Treadmill
This final idea doesn’t have the fun of the outdoors but can be a good alternative, particularly if you live somewhere that inclement weather could hamper your walk-a-thon-efforts.
Contact your local gym or fitness center and ask if they’d be willing to let your youth group use their treadmills for free. Your group can then spend a few hours walking as far as they can (or for a set distance).
Why would a fitness center let you do this for free? Emphasize the good publicity it’ll get them and try to get your local news station and newspaper to cover it. This publicity will hopefully have a double bonus in that even more members of the public will want to support your youth group fundraiser.
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So those were the 5 walk-a-thon ideas – here are our 5 bonus tips when planning a fundraiser like this:
1. Fancy dress
Make things even more fun by having your young people dress up. This will have the bonus effect of intriguing members of the public into what’s going on, so make sure you carry buckets with you to collect more money as you go along.
2. Safety
Make sure you don’t have any issues by doing a risk assessment first. This is particularly important if you’re going to go hiking in the mountains or will be walking alongside busy roads that have no sidewalk.
If you’re doing the walk-a-thon in the summer, make sure your young people are wearing sunscreen and carrying plenty of water.
3. Maximize fundraising
When planning how far to walk, try to make it a round figure like 10 or 20 miles. This will make it easier for people to sponsor your young people x amount per mile.
Your sponsorship forms could also offer two different fundraising options for people to choose from. One is for them to sponsor x amount per mile, while the alternative is to donate a lump sum. Suggest some amounts on the form (such as $10, $25, $50, $100), but also offer an “other amount” option.
4. Set targets
Set an overall fundraising target for how much you want to raise with the walk-a-thon, along with targets for how much you want each of the young people to raise.
This isn’t meant to make the youth feel guilty if they don’t make their target – make sure that’s clear to them. The reason is so that they can say to potential sponsors, “I have a fundraising target of $250 and have been sponsored $75 so far”. This will then hopefully encourage these potential sponsors to go ahead and donate towards the young person’s target.
5. Measuring the walk
To work out how far a walking route is, use a tool like Map My Run. You can then adjust the route until it’s a certain length.
If you liked these 5 walk-a-thon ideas, you may also like our other ideas for youth group fundraisers.
Question: Have you ever organized a sponsored walk? If so, what other tips can you offer?
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