Walkathon Maven

Hey! Let’s do a walkathon and we can raise money for (your deserving cause here)!

Most of the large, national walk events started as a small, grass-roots effort with a bunch of families and their friends trying to raise awareness and money for their cause.

One of those large-scale special events is celebrating their 40-year anniversary.  Other walks are celebrating 20 years!

So let’s do it!   Let’s do a walkathon!  Wahooooooooweeeee!

Easy – right?

MmmmmmmmNo. But, I can help.

First things first. Get your docs in a row.  Paperwork!

Before you start on the journey of creating a walk and hopefully receiving tax-deductible donations,  you need to register as a non-profit and file some paperwork with your state and the IRS.  Filing and document fees have gone up so be prepared to spend some money to make this happen.

Choose a name.  Do your research and make sure no other organization owns it.  This is a good place to check.  While you’re at it, you should probably acquire your web domain and twitter handles, etc…

When the docs are done and you are official – you should open a bank account so you can write checks for expenses and distributions to your cause.  A few housekeeping questions include: Who will have access to this money?  How many signatures do you want on each written check?  What, exactly, are you going to spend the money on?

So much to think about before planning the actual event.  Good luck!

Forms, filings and fees:

I live in Massachusetts and here is a link to our Attorney General’s Office:   Check with the AGO in your state for the proper forms.

Federal guidelines on how to apply to be tax exempt:

Info on becoming a 501(c)(3)

Reading this article by the Sponsorship Strategist, about Olympic sponsorship made me think about how walkathons may rely too heavily on corporate sponsorship to meet their financial event goal.

Event sponsorship is a necessary evil of most walkathons.  For some start-ups, sponsorship dollars may be upwards up 50% of the event income.  This can be scary if the sponsor(s) decide not to return.  I have tons to say about sponsorship but will try to keep this focused for today.

For walkathons, event sponsorship should be limited to a small group of companies that would like to partner with your organization to further your mission.  This limited number will allow you to keep it exclusive and manageable for the staff that is tasked to cultivate the relationship.  The more sponsors you have, the more staff you need to manage them.  Your sponsors need constant hand-holding.  If they feel under-appreciated, they will break-up with you.  Just like most old-fashioned relationships.

Many mature events that slide backwards, either with donations or participation, tend to use sponsor dollars to make-up lost revenue.
They do this by selling-off the naming rights for anything and everything: Water stops, mileage checkpoints, snack stops, toe-trucks, rtc..

Having so many sponsors and levels (gold, silver, bronze etc..) dilutes the exclusivity of a sponsorship program.

Sponsorship can be subject to a flavor of the month syndrome and may not be guaranteed from year to year.  If you care for your walkers that care for your cause, then they will be back.

Walkathons need participants to bring donations to the event. You need guests to have a party, and walkers to have a walkathon.

Focused energy on finding walkers that share your mission will outlast the relationship you have with your sponsors, and will result in a longer-lasting constituent relationship with your organization.

The following logos belong to the sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics.   See the levels here.  I wonder how many people are on payroll to manage these relationships.

When a special fundraising event occurs, we celebrate it by sharing the news with anyone who will read or listen about it.  The subject gets dicey when you have an anniversary that ends in a 5, or a 0, and the reason for the special event is to fund something that everyone wants to go away – like a disease.

It is understandable that donors can get angry when a special event raising money for a disease, or cause, is still happening five, 10 or 20 years later.  Is there a conspiracy with the funds?  Has the cure been found and the money pipeline is too lucrative to shut off?

Gotta find the cause to find a cure.  Why is it taking so long?  How much money needs to be funneled into research before answers can be provided?  If you have ever spent time in a research lab, then you know that a fractional itty-bitty percentage of tests make it out of the beaker-and-test-tube-phase before they can be tested on animals.  A fractional itty-bitty percentage of the tests made on animals make it into a human drug trial. 

The clinical research trials on humans take several years before it can be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for marketing.   Nobody wants to celebrate something that should have been resolved years ago.   Nobody wants to take a drug that has been rushed through the clinical trials process to find that it will be recalled 10 years later and they only people getting ‘better’ are the class-action lawyers that are making millions off the pharma companies.  We’ve all seen the commercials.    Research is a process.  A long one.  And it needs your support.

Having said that, I read an article by Meghan Telpner on HuffPo about the money train.

One of my major pet peeves is when a company spends more on the marketing and packaging of their “pink product” than the total donation given to the benefitting organization.   Even more annoying is the when these companies just say “research” without naming the organization, researcher, or foundation.

Check out my LINKS tab to see the websites you can use as a resource to check out the financials and grades of some charities you may be thinking of supporting.   If you really want to financially help an organization or foundation, then writing a check directly to that non-profit would make more of an impact than buying some self-serving, shameful crap.