Elevating endurance and fundraising communities with the art of technology.
The photo above is a white board drawing of the new Photo 2.0 architecture and flow of information. It is OK if you don’t understand it – the important thing to know is it allows us to add a bunch of cool photo features and continue to expand. We released the beginnings of the Photos […]
As those that attended our Symposium last week found out, we released Photos 2.0. The really exciting part about this is it enables participants to upload their own photos. Perfect for Virtual Races and Challenges. Participants get their own photo album and page where they can see their photos and upload more photos: There is […]
We held our first Virtual Symposium last week! Over 4 days, 500 race directors, timers, and nonprofit leaders attended 23 educational sessions, 2 sets of round-table discussions, Certifications in RaceDay Scoring and RaceJoy, and a Happy Hour. Collectively, the group attended 3,940 hours of education. While our “normal” Symposiums focus on a broad range of […]
Please see RunSignup.com/ChallengePlatform, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual, Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races, and RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus. The transaction volume we saw the past week is 8% lower than the […]
Launched at RunSignup’s Virtual Symposium RunSignup launched RaceJoy Rocks Virtual 5K demo run/walk during this week’s Virtual Symposium. This is race anywhere virtual 5K where race organizers are able to experience the participant perspective or the supporting spectator perspective. An audio tour of RaceJoy’s key features is provided. Those that register and enter their provided […]
RunSignup now supports the ability for participants to submit their virtual results by uploading their GPS activity recorded while using third party types of tracking tools. Participants record their activities for Virtual Events on a multitude of devices and platforms. Two very common formats of data are GPX and FIT, which services like Garmin and […]
We have posted in the past that we will not be supporting widgets. This is due to modern browsers stopping support. Safari stopped supporting session tracking several months ago, and Chrome will stop in July. As we discussed a year and a half ago, widgets are not a good long term strategy for putting functionality on […]
Awarded This Week at RunSignup’s Virtual Symposium RunSignup announces this year’s Alan Jones Timer Award winner, Todd Henderlong, with T&H Timing located in Indiana. RunSignup’s annual timer award recognizes an individual race timer who has shown exceptional efforts and has had a significant impact on the endurance race industry. Todd, who is highly immersed in […]
Please see RunSignup.com/ChallengePlatform, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual, Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races, and RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus. The transaction volume we saw the past week is 10% lower than the same week last year […]
We have released a whole new generation of Team Results capabilities on RunSignup. We have an Open Team Results API that scoring platforms like The Race Director and RaceDay Scoring can use for posting more typical race and complex team scoring like Cross Country. We have also included Challenges to automatically produce Team Results when […]
We are happy to announce a whole new generation of Team Results on RunSignup. While it helps improve the previous team results capabilities tremendously, we are probably most excited by the support for Cross Country Results (probably because there are a bunch of cross country nerds working here at RunSignup). As covered in the Team […]
The foundation of our new Team Results, which is used for general Team Scoring and Cross Country as well as Virtual and Challenge events is our open Team Results API. Virtual Races and Challenges need to set up Groups/Teams for their participants to create and join. Once they do, the team results will appear in […]
Please see RunSignup.com/ChallengePlatform, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual, Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races, and RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus. The transaction volume we saw the past week is 23% lower than the […]
Real races with social distancing continue to happen and Vacation Races is leading the way with the Bryce Canyon Ultras (May 30-31, 651 participants) and Zion at Night (June 5-6, 815 participants). Salem Stanley, Founder & CEO of Vacation Races, says, “What participants want from a race and perceive as being safe has changed. What […]
RunSignup just rolled out more flexibility for virtual events wishing to deliver virtual results. Many events will have various registration options that don’t necessarily line up to the results needed. Or there may be unique situations where results need to be combined. Event organizers and timers can now create custom result set configurations to meet […]
We have added Apple and Spotify Playlist support directly into websites. Simply add your Apple or Spotify Playlist ID to a custom content section and it will appear on your website: As Race Roster helpfully pointed out, it is fun to add a playlist that helps define your race. Especially with virtual races, music is […]
We will be rolling out new pricing on September 1, 2020 for all new and renewed races. Races created or renewed before then will have our current pricing until their event is complete. Our pricing has been the same for the past 10 years – RunSignup.com/Pricing and GiveSignup.org/Pricing, and the time has finally come for changes […]
We are going to introduce a “BYO” Merchant Account capability in the fall of 2020. Right now, we process all transactions as a Payment Facilitator, where we create sub-merchant accounts on your behalf and are responsible for underwriting each of our customers and determining payment flows and reserves (as we have all painfully learned the […]
We are pleased to announce that our standard race reserve requirement is dropping to 5% from 10%, with a payment account requirement of 2.5% of race registration transactions. Donations continue to have no reserve requirements and are paid out directly. Note the reserve requirement can vary depending on our underwriting process and chargeback experience. For […]
We are pleased to announce the permanent removal of the $1.00 refund processing fee we used to charge. RunSignup incurs costs for processing refunds, but we waived those early in the pandemic to encourage races to do refunds to their participants. We have made the decision to permanently remove this cost for all events.
Like so many of you…we’re going virtual. We’re not going to try to replicate the full experience of a Symposium. Instead, we’re focusing on content to help you now, with an emphasis on virtual options and modified events – but also a number of lessons you can carry into “normal” operations. We’re new to this too, […]
Update: Here are their Week 2 Numbers: Some fun stats for Week #2 of the Challenge:Total Number of Registered Participants = 1,044 (23 new participants)Total Number of people who have submitted mileage = 936 (89.65%)Total Number of people on pace to complete their challenge = 528 (50.57%)Total mileage submitted = 42,964.0 Ricky Campbell of AP Timing […]
While our industry is still seeing significant impacts from COVID-19, the big news this week was the movement for racial justice and protests against racism and police violence in our country. We’ve been thinking a lot about diversity and the impact of systemic racism on Black Americans this week, especially as a company that falls […]
Please see RunSignup.com/ChallengePlatform, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual, Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races, and RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus. The transaction volume we saw the past week is 33% lower than the same week last […]
As the industry has undergone rapid, significant change – timers have the opportunity position themselves as industry leaders by helping races to adjust their approach and provide flexible race experiences. RunSignup’s RaceDay Suite of technology empowers timers with the tools to support this changing landscape. From No Touch Pre-Race Services: Virtual & challenge event registration […]
Team pages have a new and sleek interface. They also highlight challenge information, including the total number of miles (or other tally) that the group has completed, as well as the breakdown for each individual (with a hyperlink to their individual results page). The Details and Join & Share boxes have drop downs that expand […]
We have added address information to our bib label tool. This is a quick simple way to create mailing address labels for smaller virtual races that plan on doing the packing and shipping themselves via the post office. It currently is in the RaceDay Tools -> Bibs -> Build Bib Labels, but will be part […]
Please see RunSignup.com/ChallengePlatform, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual, Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races, and RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus. The transaction volume we saw the past week is 29% lower than the same week last year vs. […]
Your nonprofit needs to raise money and engage supporters without spending money. GiveSignup’s free and flexible challenge platform gives your nonprofit all of the tools to create an interactive and social virtual challenge: push-up competition, cycle/run across your state, dance-athons, and more. With live map tracking, progress meters, easy activity logging, and beautiful activity pages that […]
You can now set an overall goal for your challenge that updates in real-time. This is great for challenge events that have a collective goal that all participants are working together to achieve. For example, American Cancer Society’s DetermiNation Runs the Country Challenge has set the goal to run across the country in one week. […]
Have you heard about the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee? They opened registration on RunSignup in April thinking they would get 200 participants, and ended up with more than 19,000 registrations. When we saw the demand for virtual challenges, we built a challenge platform that handles everything from participants logging and tracking their activity to […]
Please see RunSignup.com/ChallengePlatform, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual, Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races, and RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus. The transaction volume we saw the past week is 18% lower than the same week last year. The 18% is a very good improvement from the 25% the previous […]
We recently launched the RaceJoy’s race anywhere feature for virtual events offering location independent events. With such a high interest from race directors and timers across the country, we held a Webinar this week to go over the capabilities and how virtual events can get the most of them. As the industry has shifted to […]
Elevation has been added as a new type of challenge. This is very useful for cycling as well as mountain trail running. It allows challenges to collect both distance and elevation along with time all at once. Note the columns for Time, Distance and Elevation in this example: Individual results will show details: Let’s show […]
Another interesting example of challenges is a race car track (of course you can do a regular 400 meter running track but we thought this was kind of fun to try). Note how the goal is on laps – in the case 200. The map works as well – even though this is a map […]
The free RunSignup – Facebook Fundraiser Integration is now even easier for your nonprofit to enable to raise more and save money with an automated set up and approval process. Previously, a manual whitelisting process meant that nonprofits had to wait several days to weeks to begin using the RunSignup – Facebook Fundraiser integration while […]
After thousands of people logged their miles this weekend for challenges like The Jersey Virtual Challenge and the Buckeye State Challenge, we accelerated the release of a new user interface to make it even easier for people to log their activity. There are 3 major updates: Log a single activity screen Activity Timeline Component Don’t […]
Real races continue to happen as timers lead our industry into the “new normal”. This past weekend, the Social Distance 5K provided a truly competitive racing experience for the participants while adhering to all local and state regulations and CDC social distancing and safety guidelines. Please note that all states and communities have different reopening […]
We sent out a short survey last week to help create a snapshot of revenue expectations of races in 2020 and 2021, and look at how organizations are adjusting to their expectations. The survey closed on Monday, but we expect to do follow-ups throughout the year to track expectations within the industry. Top Takeaways 2020 […]
High school and college cross country teams use the challenge platform to not only track summer training, but also for fundraising. We have created two examples that Bob is in the process of getting approval to use at the high school he used to coach at (Moorestown) and where he ran in college (Bucknell). You […]
The next release of our Challenge software is now available – live map tracking. You can see it live on some challenges already – for example the Buckeye Challenge (yes, the challenge is to run around the perimeter of Ohio). This results page will be improved by the end of the week, but the map feature is […]
As more and more events go virtual, we’re seeing an increase in conversation around the role of sponsors with virtual or modified events. We have collected some of the best ideas we’ve seen, and will break down our insight on sponsors during COVID-19 in this blog. Note: while most of these ideas are universal, many […]
Every morning, we wake up to a Google Alert with all the news that includes “RunSignup”. Occasionally it’s news about us; more often, it’s local news about races that use our platform and link to their registration. Lately we’ve seen a shift: all the races popping up are virtual, and the local news is learning […]
There were 4 updates to virtual race bibs and finisher certificates this week, improving the virtual swag that you can offer to your race and challenge participants for free. Virtual Race Bib Email Marketing Replacement Tag There is now a replacement tag in RunSignup’s free email marketing platform to send participants the link to their […]
This year we made the decision to convert the 36th annual Scott Coffee Rotary Run to a virtual race. As the biggest fundraiser for the local Rotary Club, it was important to make money this year. We also wanted to engage our participants with a fun event while ensuring that they come back next year […]
Please see RunSignup.com/Coronavirus, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual and Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus. The transaction volume we saw the past week is 25% lower than the same week last year. The 25% is a very good improvement from the 37% the previous week […]
The next release of our Challenge software is now available – multiple activities. This blog will use a Triathlon as an example, but think creative. Gyms will be able to use this to track multiple challenge activities – maybe pushups, sit-ups and pull-ups. Yoga studios might want to have challenges based on the amount of […]
Official Mobile Race Experience From Any Location We are incredibly excited to announce RaceJoy is now available for location independence events. Virtual event organizers can now offer RaceJoy for both location independent and defined course route race experiences for participants of running, walking, cycling, and water events. RaceJoy delivers an official interactive race experience that […]
You can now add a description that shows next to your Giveaway items. This is very useful for adding details about when your shirts are expected to ship, or any information about an in-person packet pick up. You can add a description in Step 4 of the Race Wizard or by going to Race >> […]
Many people dismiss the idea of a virtual race – “It is not a real race”, “People might cheat”, “We would not want to taint the brand of our race with virtual”, “oh, the market is saturated and there aren’t enough who want to run virtual”, etc. This attitude is holding back many customers from […]
