Elevating endurance and fundraising communities with the art of technology.
RunSignup customers Brian Pessalano (Fredericksburg Area Running Club) and Kristen Loescher (Arsenal Events) appeared on a local radio show where they discussed a topic at the front of everyone’s mind: organizing running events in a pandemic. Check out their interview to discuss a myriad of topics, including: Managing a running club safely (different paces help!) […]
The First Purpose-Built Event and Donation Platform for Nonprofits Launches Into $50B+ U.S. Market for Online Giving as Virtual Events Heat Up and Live Events Return CloudBees founder and former Eventbrite CFO invest 100+ new nonprofits onboarding weekly to base of 9,000+ nonprofits Highly vertical technology stack delivers 2,000+ annual updates with zero downtime MOORESTOWN, […]
Below is a recorded session that provides an overview on how to set up streams and timing locations using MYLAPS timing hardware and RunSignup’s RaceDay Scoring. Special guests, Amanda Marek and Dave Hebgen, from RaceDay Events walkthrough how to use RaceDay Scoring and share important tips. Watch the video below for a quick overview! RaceDay […]
There is now a full reconciliation summary report for each funds transfer at the payment account level. Transactions, sales tax remitted by GiveSignup | RunSignup, refunds, holdbacks, and adjustments are broken down by line item in a summary table. You are able to easily download each line item for a report across all of your […]
Why Renew? If you made a number of edits to your (cancelled) 2020 race, it may be tempting to just start over. Don’t! Going through the steps to correctly renew your race has a number of benefits, including: Keeps the same URL year-to-year, making it easy for participants to find the event Maintains many settings […]
We would like to welcome Charnele Williams as our VP of Marketing! Charnele will lead our RunSignup | GiveSignup Marketing team (Johanna and Shelly – don’t worry, no one is going anywhere!). Charnele Williams is a University of Virginia (Wahoowa!) alumni and a former congressional intern for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She is a passionate marketer […]
Anecdotal evidence has long suggested to us that virtual runners are not the same people who show up on race day, but the sudden flood of virtual events in 2020 gave us enough volume (and enough motivation) to pull some new reports focused on virtual for our recently released 2020 RaceTrends Report. Why does it […]
Timers can get a debrief on the recently completed Timer marketing research survey by watching the recorded session below. More than 160 timers participated in this year’s survey. Topics covered include general timer business attributes, impacts of Covid-19, timer strategies, and timers’ use of race day technology. One of the most important takeaways is that […]
We saw a steady increase in in-person events throughout the fall and winter, and expect to see significantly more in Q2 and Q3 of 2021. With more race organizers looking to secure permits for safe, modified events, we are increasingly seeing questions about the type of plan required keep participants safe and to to obtain […]
We are releasing a new Voucher system that allows races to create vouchers that participants can use as a credit when they sign up for an event. For example, you might give Allison a voucher for $30 that she can use on any of your events. In the example on the right, she signs up […]
Godzilla vs Kong is expected to hit theaters in March 2021. In the meantime, we have our own fight escalating between two tech giants that is sure to be just as entertaining as the big screen blockbuster. Just like the two titans on screen, Apple and Facebook have been feuding for years. Apple promises to […]
Facebook has added a new Domain Verification step to their Ads platform. This is a way they hope to minimize the impact of Apple’s iOS 14 changes. The good news is that you can accomplish this with your RunSignup | GiveSignup Domain Hosting. This means that you can bring your own domain like ScottCoffeeRun.com or […]
We wrapped up our 2021 Virtual Winter Symposium on Thursday. Like all of our customers who had to go virtual this year, we missed seeing everyone in-person, but we were grateful for the chance to move forward in some capacity. The bonus? While our in-person capacity usually maxes out at around 300 attendees, we were […]
During our virtual symposium last week, we received many questions about raffles. While this may seem like an easy way to fundraise when everything is virtual, there are two reasons why GiveSignup | RunSignup is currently unable to allow raffles on our platform: Payment processors do not allow gambling activities. Raffles – even those for […]
In November 2019 we wrote about the abrupt brand and platform shut-down of Crowdrise following their acquisition by GoFundMe. While Crowdrise was designed for nonprofits, GoFundMe has been designed from the start as a platform for individual fundraising for many purposes. The change caused some concerns for nonprofits; however, GoFundMe mitigated some of these concerns by […]
We have released our annual RaceTrends report, mining our internal data to evaluate the state of the endurance industry. It goes without saying that this report is unlike any other and every piece of data reflected the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, showing significant participation declines. But the news wasn’t all bleak – the impressive virtual numbers […]
Bryan was having a discussion yesterday with a customer and explaining some of the behind the scenes work we do, and they were surprised by all the stuff they never see. Also yesterday, we released new buttons. It really was a consolidation project. When you develop software for 10+ years, you have different approaches over […]
MYLAPS Americas Now Offering RunSignUp Registration and RaceDay Scoring as Its Certified and Preferred Scoring Software MYLAPS Americas Sports Timing and RunSignup l GiveSignup today announced MYLAPS Americas is now offering RunSignup’s RaceDay Scoring as its certified and preferred scoring software for timers. In addition, MYLAPS Americas will collaborate on promotion of the RunSignup | […]
We are happy to welcome Jenn Levas to the GiveSignup development team! Jenn has enjoyed a long and successful career as a software engineer (she won’t let me tell you exactly how long). For the past 12 years of her career she has been leading technical teams and building fleet management software for ARI. Prior […]
We have a new integration partner, RegForward, who provides an open integration platform between the RunSignup | GiveSignup API and other systems like Email, CRM and Donor Management systems. They have opened a Beta Program and are looking for RunSignup | GiveSignup customers who want to transfer information from our Supporter Engagement Platform to another […]
Many years ago, we introduced the Signup App for iPhone and Android. We retired the Signup app in November. However, the web version of that app was still available – https://signupapp.runsignup.com/. We will be taking that offline as well next week. As stated in the retirement blog post, there was very little use of the […]
You can now add custom Account Codes for each entity (run/walk/ride, donation website, ticket event, membership, etc.) to your payment account reports. These fields will show as new columns in the transactions download per funds transfer so that your internal code is associated with each transaction. This release is particularly useful for fiscal sponsors and […]
We are close to completing our huge project to upgrade our free Photo platform. Here are some of the highlights: New, more scalable and robust infrastructure to handle hundreds of millions of photos Completely redesigned user experience for race and ticket websites, as well as dashboard setup Available for Races and for our GiveSignup nonprofit […]
We have finished a long upgrade of the Notification Email system. We have over 60 types of notification emails the system generates automatically when certain events happen – like a user registered, or a donation was made, or a virtual race milestone was achieved, or a financial payment was made. These can all be custom […]
Industry Timers are invited to take this year’s timer survey. This research is focused on the timer industry and is designed to help us gain a deeper understanding of the unique needs of timers. The information you provide will enable us to share valuable industry insights and help us focus on ways we can broaden our […]
We began monthly updates in July after doing weekly updates that ended in Week 18, and are shifting to monthly (August and October, November) and Quarterly (Q3) updates. The monthly update is meant to give stats that are useful to the endurance and nonprofit communities we serve. Quick December Numbers: Transaction volume was down 47% to $9.9MM Overall Registrations down […]
TLDR; January – February – Customers are happy, our business is up 29% and life is good! March – OMG-OMG-OMG! We have paid over $75 Million to races that have not happened! Will we survive? Employees take a 50% cut in pay. Everyone stays and works twice as hard. April – PPP! Virtual Races! Employees […]
We usually do our Year in Review in a single blog post. This year has been much too big to put it all in one place, so we are breaking it up a bit. We already published our 2020 Development Recap. This one will cover our product roadmap for 2021. First, we will continue our investment in […]
It’s been a few years since we’ve posted a Festivus blog…but we have to admit, we have a lot of grievances this year. So, in celebration of 2020 Festivus… Runners…We have a problem with constant desire for a race to be fun. Because of you, and the limitations on things like parties this year, we had to […]
All Your Tools for a Dynamic 2021 Race Schedule Join us (it’s free!) The 2021 Virtual Winter Symposium is an all online version of our biannual educational symposiums for race directors, timers, and nonprofits. This virtual edition is tailor-made for an unprecedented year, with an emphasis on the event options for 2021 and the tools […]
We usually do our Year in Review in a single blog post. This year has been much too big to put it all in one place, so we are breaking it up a bit into this one, with a recap of this year, and then a blog about our 2021 roadmap. The development team had […]
RaceJoy made the news alongside big names like Uber, Fit Bit, and Nest in this CNN Business News article. How cool is that?! Sadly, it is in reference to products the CNN staff barely used in 2020. Clearly, the author isn’t taking advantage of all the great virtual and even on-site events taking place across […]
In the dark of COVID, Rich Sbarro has snuck onto the RunSignup | GiveSignup development team this year. Bob has worked with Rich for nearly 20 years while Rich has been the CTO at Metaverse (see FramedArt.com for an example of his work). He has built a complete ERP type system at Metaverse, where it […]
We have made some significant updates to the statistics on our individual results page. The improvements include updates to the look and feel. We achieved this by utilizing a clean modern design through the use of icons and rounded edges. Statistics are very important to participants. With that in mind we introduced a new overview […]
You can now download a detailed report of all transactions per funds transfer from your payment account. Each individual transaction includes payee information, amount paid, fees, funds transfer amount, entity (i.e. donation website, race, ticket, etc.), and type of transaction (i.e. registration, donation, purchase). This is the first release of a larger update to give […]
This is Bob. We will be releasing several year end blogs over the coming weeks. A couple of them will be an overview of the features we released and another for our 2021 product roadmap. But I thought yesterday was worth mentioning. Each morning, I get an email that sends me to a page to […]
Negative Split, a timing and race management company based in Washington State, has been hosting hybrid events with in-person participants since July. In that time, they have produced 5 events and timed 7 in two states, and they offered to share their process and key lessons to help other race organizers learn from their experience. […]
Thanks to the 670 race directors, timers, and nonprofits who registered to join us for our 2021 Kickoff Session on the key to a successful 2021 – hybrid events. You can refer to all the videos and resources below as you start preparting for a new year! Resources for building Hybrid events can be found […]
Funraise announced Funraise Free this month, giving nonprofits access to their “core platform” for free. But what does free nonprofit software really mean? Funraise Free is yet another freemium model – a common business strategy that seeks to grow the customer base while protecting subscription revenue. And a closer look at Funraise Free shows that […]
Utilizes RunSignup’s Hybrid Race Day Technology We were very impressed with how Richmond Marathon successfully delivered a hybrid race experience and wanted to share their approach with event organizers and timers. Hybrid events are those that offer multiple event options and include variations of virtual, on-site, and challenge event types. Richmond Marathon’s 2020 event, held […]
As the industry continues to adapt to the challenges of Covid-19, timers have the opportunity to take a leadership role and help their events continue by offering a hybrid race experience. This includes a combination of race experience options, which may include scored on-site races with defined course paths, extended race dates, and virtual race […]
We have been incrementally rolling out a simplified dashboard menu for race directors. We showed the simplified menu to new users a couple of months ago. We will be rolling out the simplified menu to everyone on Monday (don’t worry if you are a power user – those instructions are toward the bottom of this […]
We began monthly updates in July after doing weekly updates that ended in Week 18, and are shifting to monthly (August and October) and Quarterly (Q3) updates. The monthly update is meant to give stats that are useful to the endurance and nonprofit communities we serve. Quick November Numbers: Transaction volume was down 38% to $17.3M Overall Registrations […]
This is a guest post from Dr. Alex Gometz of Prehab, which provides a set of services for runner injury prevention and recovery. There’s so much noisy content out there, but we have created a survey that you can share with your runners that is fun, meaningful and different. Topic: Injury Prevention to Run for […]
Like much of the web, RunSignup and GiveSignup host our infrastructure on Amazon AWS. Unfortunately, they had a pretty major outage on Wednesday before Thanksgiving in one of their data centers. It took down major websites like 1Password, Acorns, Adobe Spark, Anchor, Autodesk, Capital Gazette, Coinbase, DataCamp, Getaround, Glassdoor, Flickr, iRobot, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pocket, RadioLab, Roku, RSS Podcasting, Tampa Bay Times, Vonage, The Washington Post, and WNYC. Apparently this was caused by their rush […]
In spite of the significant drop in participation, the tradition of running on Thanksgiving Day continued – as seen on social media across the country. A few highlights: The Wheeler Mission Drumstick Dash made a fun and inspiring video, highlighting runners across their community and reminding everyone of the cause they were running for. And […]
Like many things in 2020, Thanksgiving Day (historically the busiest running day of the year) looked different in 2020. Nonetheless, we’re thankful for all the race directors, timers, and nonprofits who used our technology this Thanksgiving to keep the holiday running tradition alive. So how did it turn out? The Holiday Tradition Continued While Turkey […]
Individual and team fundraising pages now show a link to the individual or team’s results. This adds to last month’s release that gives events the option to display fundraising progress bars on results pages. Many nonprofit events have a broad range of participants. Some people are competitive and will share their results pages. Others are […]
As a part of our survey to gauge experiences and expectations throughout 2020 and 2021, one thing stood out: event organizers were inspired and motivated by the enthusiasm that participants have had for supporting their cause – even if the events weren’t what they were used to. We’ve noticed this dedication to nonprofits in a […]
We are retiring the Signup App. Since we released the app, the popularity of people signing up from their own phone has become much more popular. With the limitation of shared surfaces in the COVID era has severely limited the popularity of this app. And truth be told it was always less than 1% of […]
