• Streaming/Meeting Platform

• (Throughout the climb, participants can use zoom to keep in touch with each other, keep morale up and maintain hype)

• Live Streaming

• Ticketing Platform

• Fundraising Page

• Social Media

Click here to see our suggested platforms.

Mountain or Molehill?

Decide on what challenge you want to promote. Consider what experience your target audience will be interested in.

You may want to link it back to popular challenges such as mountain climbs, hikes, long distance cycle rides and even vertical challenges of abseiling or taking on the stairs up a really tall building! These can all become challenges of the number of equivalent steps completed individually or socially distanced walks and rides outdoors!

A TOP TIP is to use a fitness app that allows you to share your progress, this way participants can count and share their progress! An example is STRAVA.

To take the challenge from something completed alone, to the event to be at! Create some uniting factors:

• Have something that unifies the challenge. For Example, designate one person to adding up everyone’s steps from their individual accounts to display one total of steps taken on social media.

• Have a live stream / meeting link running, where everyone completes the challenge on the same day. For example, a zoom meeting streamed on Facebook live or YouTube live. So despite being geographically distant, there is a point where everyone is together virtually.

• Advertise the challenges everyone in your organisation is undertaking as a ‘super challenge’.

• Consider having a promotional challenge item you can share once people sign up, such as a coloured sweat band, water bottle etc.

Be sure to have a team to run the event. Roles they can take up are:

• Operating the platform

• Hosting the overall event

• Interacting with the audience

• Someone adding up the steps to preview one total on social media

• Troubleshooting

A TOP TIP is to have a trial run on the platform and streaming to familiarise yourself and help the event run smoothly.

You've got your challenge sorted, platform and team ready.

If you have any costs such as a promotional item, you may wish to have a sign up cost to cover this, or gain a sponsor to cover the cost.

There are many ways to sign up participants, from simply using a google to using online platforms such as Eventbrite.

A TOP TIP when using Eventbrite is to have your tickets as free on the site and ask contestants to use bank transfer/paypal to send the ticker money (so that Eventbrite doesn’t take part of the ticket price).

When choosing a fundraising target, remember this doesn’t need to reflect the event or challenge and you’re raising for a worthy cause!

We find targets between £/€/$100-250 or R2500 or QAR500 work best! But you may choose to go for more too.

Once you have decided a target, set up your fundraising page.

A TOP TIP is to set up a fundraising page for all participants or guide them through the process 1 on 1.

Be as creative as possible, consider making videos, cool posters and social media graphics. You need to get as much attention to gather sign ups, make fun and creative comparisons to mountain climbs and other big challenges and this years new challenge!

Next spread the word far and wide, utilise social media by making event pages, regular posts as well as messaging personally.

Potentially look into contacting the union and contacting other societies directly asking them to share your posts too.

As well as general posts about the challenge and how to get signed up, find stories from previous years; of people's experience and memorable moments.

Share these, but with a slight twist linking it back to this years challenge

You may also want to have prizes or awards. These can be competitive i.e. fastest to finish or fun!

So once someone has signed up, share your Institutional fundraising page and how they can make their own fundraising page.

These are three top ways we feel a participant can fundraise:

1. Firstly, have an ask. If your target is £250, ask for 10 people to donate £25 or 25 to donate £10! Simply saying donate, means you tend to get lesser amounts, and there's no harm in asking! More often than not, people will donate at your ask amount.

2. Secondly, Share. Share. Share.

Utilise all your Social Media platforms to get the word out. Share why you're doing this challenge, how you're feeling about it, what it means to you. When using WhatsApp and text message, don't always broadcast messages, even better don't broadcast at all, as these can be missed. Send direct, personal messages for a better response.

3. Lastly, arguably the most important, the projects. Share information about the projects that we hope to fund, and why they're so important.

A TOP TIP is as the challenge gets closer, keep a track of all the participants and how their fundraising is going. Share stories of people doing well, and what they're doing, motivating those struggling to keep trying.

Make sure you've informed everyone of the starting time. It may also be useful having a warm up for everyone to do. You could even message / email this out to all the participants. A TOP TIP is having all participants in a WhatsApp group so they can easily be updates.

Start the event with an opening Islamic / motivational reminder

Share the vision of Charity Week, by playing a short video about Charity Week

Ensure someone is keeping an eye on the chat box to build Interaction with the audience

• Ensure you’ve completed a trial run before the event

• Start the platform early, to solve on the day issues. But also time for people to join

• Have the team all ready, early

• Ensure you have sent clear joining instructions to all

During the challenge encourage everyone to make lots of social media posts and messages, to encourage donations.

This is a great opportunity to reflect on the experience, whether straight after or the day after, but don't forget to thank everyone who joined, and check up on them if they're well rested now!

The challenge has been fun, but there's a cause to support. This is the time to take those last opportunities to motivate those who haven't yet hit their target to make some last tries to share their page, and how the challenge went.

If you decide to have awards, be sure to announce and award them!

There are always hiccups or lessons that we learn, but do we make sure that the team next year will learn from these? Use our template event planning document to keep a record of how you put on your event and also any feedback to pass onto next year's team!