Festive fundraising is a great way to boost your total for the TCS London Marathon and smash your fundraising target. Here’s some inspiration and advice for seasonal fundraisers.
Make the most of your online fundraising page
If you haven’t already set up your online fundraising page, we’d recommend doing that as soon as possible as research shows that TCS London Marathon fundraising pages that are set up before Christmas raise an average of 24% more than those set up in January.
When creating – or updating – your page, here are five top tips making the most of your fundraising page:
- Personalising your page’s story section helps raise up to 65% more.
- On average people who kickstart their fundraising with a small donation to their own page raise 58% more.
- Fundraising pages that are shared on social media raise an average of 440% more
- You can raise 14% more by sharing updates, photos, and videos to your JustGiving page.
- Connecting a fitness app to your JustGiving page helps raise up to 40% more.
Set up a gift-wrapping station
In a 2022 survey, more than a third of British people said that wrapping presents was the worst part of Christmas. Why not turn this to your advantage by asking for donations in return for providing a gift-wrapping service?
You can set up a stall at work, school or in the community and wrap people’s Christmas presents for them to take and put under the tree. You could even ask local shops if they’d be happy with you setting up a stall in-store.
Bonus points if you get your gift-wrapping supplies from our online store!
Make it a Merry Quiz-mas
Get together and find out who really is the brainiest of the bunch by holding your very own festive quiz – whether that’s at home, online, in the office or down your local.
You can ask local businesses to donate prizes for the winners and charge an entry fee to take part. Don’t forget to offer up a prize for the worst Christmas jumper and schedule a round of questions about Christmas songs!
Need to order fundraising materials?
From banners and bunting to collections tins and buckets, you can make sure your festive fundraising looks the part by emailing us to order fundraising materials.
Ask Santa for a donation
Instead of asking for gifts, why not ask Santa (and your loved ones) to donate to your fundraising efforts instead? It’s the perfect way to help us move further faster towards cures for all brain tumours, all while avoiding getting more socks or Lynx gift sets.
Organise a Santa Run
Organise a Santa Run. Set up a local running route and ask your community to make a donation to take part. Santa suits are welcome. Santa hats obviously aren’t optional though!
It was such a great event, we had a great response from the public. Having the charity t-shirts for runners to wear was a big yes, it gave a great sense of purpose for runners & raised awareness for The Charity. I asked runners to wear festive hats and I put out a post asking for volunteers to help marshal the course. Locals came out to cheer on the runners & take pictures and make coffees. We notified our District, County & Parish council of our event. I supplied every runner with water and a medal, in memory of Harley.
Barbara, 2025 TCS London Marathon Runner
Join our Facebook Group
We’ve got a dedicated Facebook Group for our TCS London Marathon runners. It’s a great place to get fundraising inspiration or share what’s worked for you to help inspire others.
Christmas crafts
Everybody loves browsing a Christmas craft fayre, so if you’re the crafty type, why not turn your hobby into way to raise funds?
Whether you’re crocheting Christmas puddings or crafting your own Christmas crackers, selling them at a local craft fayre is a great way to boost your fundraising total.
Don’t forget to include details of your fundraising page handy at your stall as lots of people will make a donation just because they’re filled with festive cheer.
Secret Santa
A 2024 study found that just under half of respondents said they took part in a workplace Secret Santa – with many more doing something similar with their loved ones.
However, the same study also found that 2.5 million unwanted Secret Santa gifts go straight in the bin – which equates to staggering £32,400,000 of items.
If you’re taking part in a Secret Santa this year, why not ask the organiser if you can ask people to reduce the spending limit on gifts by a couple of pounds and have that money donated to your fundraising page?
Book in a fundraising call
We’re here to support you at every step with your festive fundraising for the TCS London Marathon. Book in a call with one of our Events team if you’d like expert fundraising tips and advice.