IN A NUTSHELL
Funraisin helps Operation Bletchley to evolve their lifetime fundraising and optimise registration with two new Winter events
About the Charity
The Soldiers' Charity is the Army's National Charity, giving a lifetime of support to serving soldiers, former soldiers and their immediate families when they are in need. All serving soldiers, veterans and their families should have the opportunity to avoid hardship and enjoy independence and dignity.
What's the big idea?
Winter Operation Bletchley is a 31 day code breaking challenge that takes place in January 2023, with two routes/locations: Berlin and The Balkans. Each location will have a series of different codes to decipher, which are unlocked based on the distance covered.
Operation Bletchley was a Gold Award Winner for 'The Most Innovative Event in the UK' at the Charity Event Awards in 2022.
The Challenge
- Adapt to a changing fundraising landscape with increased costs of living.
- Evolve Operation Bletchley and increase repeat fundraising and lifetime value from their fundraising army.
- Increase their average ROI per participant by increasing their registration fee and adding a new incentive at £25.
- Acquire 1000 participants across the two events and raise much needed funds for soldiers, veterans and their families.
- Raise awareness for ABF The Soldiers' Charity.
The Solution
- Gamification: Alongside each code breaking challenge, participants can track their progress with mission badges, as well as how they’re progressing against key fundraising milestones. All progress is then fed into their lifetime fundraising total and Fundraising Army ranking across their entire history with ABF The Soldiers’ Charity - viewable from their logged in fundraising dashboard and their community hub leaderboard.
- Rewards: To encourage participation, fundraisers are also rewarded with unique merchandise for hitting fundraising milestones, including a pencil for their first donation, a bonus video code breaking challenge once they’ve raised £25 delivered by Dan Snow, a puzzle book at £50, a T-shirt at £150 and a commemorative pin badge at £250. Each incentive is personal to each mission. As missions and milestones are unlocked, triggers are sent with their latest challenge or reward.
- Optimisation: To optimise the event, we also looked at historic drop off points and average donation amounts to use as a guide to create new suggested dollar handles. We also looked at testing call to action buttons to increase click through rates.
£500,000
Raised since 2019
11,000
Participants since 2019
Results
In addition to our previous fundraising incentives, we collaborated with Dan Snow who delivered extra codes via video message. These could only be unlocked when a participant reached the £25 milestone on their fundraising page and in return is increasing fundraising.
Raising the registration fee to £15 and providing a mission only fee of £40 has hugely increased the return on the event. These two changes together have meant that with just under 1,000 participants across the two missions, the winter mission is set to, for the first time ever, perform better than our summer missions. Fundraising remains open until the end of February when we will know the total raised by the 2023 winter missions.
"Operation Bletchley is a unique event that we are extremely proud of. It began with just one mission in 2019 and has now grown to offer 5 different missions of varying distances and locations during the summer and winter months. Funraisin have been fantastic to work with and helped up to achieve our vision."
"With the virtual bubble bursting over the last 18 months and as life gets back to normal, the challenge will be to continue to grow the Operation Bletchley series, to keep our current participants engaged with fresh content and functionality and to tap into new networks and audiences. "
Louisa Orford - Senior Event Manager at ABF The Soldiers' Charity
What you could apply for your site
- Consider your audience's needs to make your event easier to access with varying fitness challenges and entry types.
- Consider creating ticketing options, bundles and price points that suit both the economic climate and incentivise acquisition and campaign engagement.
- Think out of the box for how you can integrate your cause into an event that’s entertaining and challenging.
- Consider seasonal giving trends and create options to purchase gift entries for your event ahead of Christmas.
- Add unlockable challenges or rewards to encourage participation and page activation.
