Runners are More Successful Fundraisers

June 3 is National Running Day Never heard of National Running Day?  Well, that’s because it’s brand new.  But basically, National Running Day is a national initiative put together by many of the organizations in the running industry to promote running as a healthy and easy way to stay in shape.

We at GiveForward couldn’t agree more about getting people to start running.  In fact, we just signed up for the Chicago marathon ourselves and in recognition of National Running Day we came up with our top five reasons why we love running.

1. It’s free
2. You can do it anywhere
3. Once you finish a long run, you can eat awesome quantities of food like pancakes and waffles.
4. It’s one of the best ways to prevent diabetes, heart and lung disease.
5. Runners have good butts (it’s true)

Bonus reason: Running a 10K or marathon is probably the easiest way to personally raise thousands of dollars for a cause you care about.

In fact, we recently ran some numbers (no pun intended) and found out some interesting stuff about our users who have run for charities and other good causes. It turns out runners and people running marathons and 1/2 marathons for good causes have been some of our most successful fundraisers on the site.

Here are some quick facts that we learned:

• Marathon runners who set up fundraising pages on GiveForward raised on average $3695 for their charity or cause.
• 1/2 Marathon runners and triathletes who set up fundraising pages raised on average $3306.
• Runners doing 10Ks who set up fundraising pages raised on average $992.

Another thing we found interesting was how many runners actually meet their fundraising goals.  Over 80% of the runners particiapating in running event like 10Ks and marathons met or surpassed their fundraising goals. (Go Runners!!)  That’s an amazingly high number when we compare it to all other non-running related fundraisers on the site, of which less than 50% meet or surpass their goals.

Pretty interesting stuff right?  If you’re a runner and you have any thoughts as to why runners end up reaching their goals at such a higher rate, we’d love to hear from you.

Okay, that’s it for now.  Hope everyone has a great National Running Day, and if you’re still reading this, please step away from the computer and go for a run!