One of the more unique fundraising challenges on the site in December was the GRIM challenge, organised by Michael McGrath, co-founder of the Muscular Help Foundation. His team of 48 created scores of fundraising pages, raising almost £10,000, all of whom you can see in video on the BBC website delivering their unique Muscle Huka (pictured below).
As well as working for the charity on a voluntary basis, Michael is a motivational speaker and the only disabled person in the world to have reached both North and South Poles! I asked him to explain a bit more about the charity and the GRIM event, and give us some of his top fundraising tips.
Tell us more about the charity and who you support.
The Muscular Help Foundation (MHF) is a small charity with a razor-sharp focus – the charity delivers unforgettable Muscle Dreams designed to help children and young people in the UK whose lives are afflicted by the muscle wasting disease muscular dystrophy (MD), the opportunity to live a dream, or perhaps fulfil a cherished ambition.
Muscular dystrophy is the single biggest genetic killer of children in our world today. It is a relentless and unforgiving disease. With some 60,000 UK sufferers being robbed of their mobility, independence and finally for those with the most severe type, mainly children, their lives – MHF is in the business of delivering experiences for people directly affected by this debilitating disease.
What is the GRIM challenge?
The GRIM challenge is an eight-mile assault course through mud, slime and water on land used by the Army to test out vehicles near Aldershot. The course was used by the James Bond film makers to shoot a hovercraft chase in the movie Die Another Day, but those taking part in this “fun-run” won’t have the luxury of any powered transport, just use of their muscles!
How did your recruit people for the challenge?
MHF recruited its Muscle Warriors as they became affectionately known, mostly through its network of friends and supporters, but also by engaging local and regional media.
We emailed press releases to relevant targeted media in the catchment where those who had already signed up lived, further driving interest and in the process establishing what we jokingly called ‘mini muscle celebs’ – like local villages where everyone appears to know everyone!
How have you encouraged/helped people to raise their target?
We created a fun, light-hearted e-campaign called GRIM Muscle Monday Updates. We had three GRIM Team Leaders who sent these weekly updates to their respective teams. The team structure established a competitive spirit that quickly grew.
There were six GRIM Muscle Monday Updates, each one with different content, like “Make Your GRIM8 TEAM the WINNING TEAM” and each one contained Muscle Warrior Winning Attributes (1 attribute per week).
Finally, each weekly email included top fundraising tips (we used the Justgiving links here), a relevant motivational quote and also (this worked really well) an injection of inspiration from YouTube – the campaign message would say, ‘Switch your PC speakers on and watch this 46 second injection of Muscle Warrior spirit by CLICKING HERE‘ [which takes you to an infamous Rocky Balboa motivational moment]
Do you have any tips you would pass on to other charities?
The more effort you put in at the front-end, the greater the end result will be – raising funds is of course a key objective but never ever lose sight of the fun factor! Get close to your participants. Never ever take them for granted.
Support them as much as you can, especially when it comes to the actual fundraising bit. Be realistic in terms of what it is you are asking them to raise. Cherish them on the day of the event – the GRIM challenge day was a very, very cold day. MHF provided shelter, hot tea, hot dogs and loadsa of muscle love and muscle hugs!
Finally, be sure to inform all participants as to how the monies that they have raised will be used – in our case, 100% of funds raised will be used to fund more Muscle Dreams and we will share what specific Muscle Dreams are being delivered as a direct result of their fundraising efforts.
What has been good about using Justgiving?
The online fundraising pages were fantastic as they showed actual progress on a day-to-day basis. Using the online environment is fast in communicating specific links to specific target groups.
I know that we had a huge competitive vein running throughout the group of nearly 50 Muscle Warriors and the teams would often look at each others progress online which was in itself a motivating factor!
Creating a fundraising page is very easy. The team pages worked fantastically and it was a real bonus to see for example how rapidly the Gift Aid totals grew!
What could Justgiving do better to help the event?
As The Muscular Help Foundation is a small charity with limited resources, this was our first ever team event. In planning the GRIM challenge, one of our key objectives was to leverage the Justgiving facility with the sole purpose to make the fundraising activity as easy as possible for our entrants – this was achieved.
If it were possible to be able to connect an event such as GRIM to a photo-gallery specific to either a group or individual fundraising page or even to an online news piece about a chosen event, that would be terrific!
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Thanks Michael for taking the time to talk to us, there’s some great advice in there. We’ll certainly look to work on helping group fundraising, hopefully the 2009 event will be an even bigger success!
Contact the Muscular Help Foundation if you’re interested in joining Michael’s Muscle Warriors at the 2009 GRIM challenge in December and raising funds for the charity’s Muscle Dreams programme.
