Race around your city for amazing fundraising success

May 6, 2018 in

Race around your city for amazing fundraising success

By Alexandria Utting

Paris, London, Dubai, and Brisbane? Queensland’s sunny capital is generally not the first city that comes to mind when thinking of the award winning television show, The Amazing Race.

However, Kate Condon, international director of the Rotaract Club in South Brisbane, brought the idea to Brisbane, coordinating the organisation’s third Race Around Brisbane, where participants gave the contestants on the television show a run for their money.

After sending 19 teams running around Brisbane’s CBD and raising $1200 for the Shekinah Foundation in Ecuador, Kate spoke with the Fundraising Directory about how you can run a race around your city too.

1. Don’t make it exactly like the TV show.

The amazing race is a highly successful TV show, backed by thousands of dollars.

Remember, you will have to adapt your idea to fit in with your financial and time constraints.

Kate suggests using the show as a starting point but “don’t do clue-to-clue” on the day.

It is much easier to make the race more like a scavenger hunt, “that way teams won’t run out of time or get lost”.

2. Don’t go it alone.

Like many other fundraising ventures, you need to have a supportive team behind you.

Kate’s team included a designer, a public relations professional and three other helpers to get the race up and running.

“It would have been impossible to do on my own,” said Kate. “I did not realise how much preparation time I would need and how long it would take to make all the questions”.

So, be organized and delegate tasks.

3. Do make the race unachievable.

Our race was “not achievable, but was the point,” said Kate.

Trying to “make the day as full on as possible” will ensure the participants get the most out of the race.

Having more challenges than could be realistically achieved is a good way to engage the participants for the whole duration of the race. But, make sure the questions are clear, easy to understand and achievable without money.

“You don’t want to have teams wasting time with a question that doesn’t make sense”.

4. Do give incentives to register.

“Early confirmation” is the key to running a successful day. You want to know how many people will be participating well in advance so you can cater for food, hats and sunscreen.

“The main problem we had, was people registering really late or saying ‘yes I’m going to do this but I don’t have a team’,” said Kate.

Kate suggests collecting money through Pay-Pal and giving a discount for people who register online rather than paying on the day.

6. Don’t forget any paperwork.

One of the most important things to remember is to fill out all the paperwork you need to for the public places the groups will gather before and after the race.

“We had a bit of a disaster where we didn’t fill out the paperwork for exchanging money or having a banner,” said Kate.

So, contact the council or park organisers well in advance and check whether you will need different paperwork for each thing you will be doing.

Originally published Dec 6, 2011