“Run Your Good Goals True” in Finland’s biggest running events; The Helsinki City Running Day and the Naisten Kymppi
The Finnish Athletics Federation in collaboration with the Charitable sector is for the first time in Finland allowing runner’s an option to fundraiser for their favorite charity as part of their participation in their popular running events.
The Helsinki City Running Day taking place on the 19th May is expected to attract around 16,000 runners. For the first time in 2018, this super day of running will host five different events on the same day: The Helsinki City Run, the Helsinki City Marathon, the Helsinki City Marathon Relay, the Helsinki City 5 – 5 km Street Run and the children’s’ Minimarathon. Naisten Kymppi taking place on 26th & 27th May is expected to attract around 14,000 runners. Across both these events combined, that’s around 30,000 runners who will now be given the option to fundraise for their favourite charity in the 2018 events.
The Finnish Athletics Federation supports the introduction which promotes an active and thriving running community across Finland. This co-operation creates a totally new opportunity in Finland to acquire fundraising through physical sport or sporting events. The model is well known outside Finland, for example through marathons like Melbourne and London who have proved that combining a physical challenge with doing good produces results.
How it works?
When registering for the event, runners are given the option to select a charity. After registering to the running event, the runner creates his/her own online fundraising campaign to support the cause closest to him/her. Participants will then send this collection campaign page out to their networks requesting a donation of support for their amazing effort.
All donations collected through the campaign pages go directly to the selected charity.
Charitable Organisations
The participant can choose to support from 16 different charities. Please see the charities and visit the fundraising section on our event websites (helsinkicityrunningday.fi/en/charity/) to see what amazing work these organisation are doing and you might see a celebrity ambassador that you might get to run with on race day!
The Finnish Athletics Federation is a non-profit organisation itself and through this new model they too will also have an online collection campaign where people passionate about supporting physical activity through running can fundraise. Particular focus will be to support youth athletics through the Kunniakierros campaign. The Kunniakierros is a joint fundraising campaign by the Finnish Athletics Federation and its member clubs. The profit of the campaign is used for youth and children athletics and physical activity work in sport clubs and their surrounding cities and has been in place for over 35 years. If you are passionate about seeing our younger community engaged in physical activity through athletics consider joining our fundraising collection team today when you are given the option to support a cause in the event registration process!
Fundraising in Finland
In Finland, running for charity is only at its beginning. In the recent years, some of the running events have donated portions of their profit to charities and on the other hand some charities have organized their own running events.
This co-operation between the Finnish Athletics Federation and the participating charities is the first true online multi-charity fundraising program in sporting events to come to Finland and is made possible through online software supplier AidBuilder.
Finnish Athletics Federation as a non-profit organization and just like in previous years, the profits of the running events will continue to go directly to its member clubs organizing activities around Finland. Now the runners may get triple benefit from the events: physical activity, support for the sport and support their favorite charity!
– We want to help the athletics field and also others doing good. It is not away from us if, for example, the runner supports a charity in the honor of a cancer patient mother, says Markku Haverinen, the Event director of the Helsinki City Running Day.
– We know many of the charities are running some very inspiring campaigns through their participation and we encourage as many of our International runners and local Finnish community to support them in their endeavors to do good, continues Haverinen.
