Fun with Challenges
Virtual Challenges got another round of updates this month, with more digital rewards in the form of milestones, badges, and milestone notifications. With all the rapid releases to Challenges over the previous months, we decided it was a good time take stock of some of the creative and innovative ways that customers have implemented all that Challenge technology.
- Map Courses that allow races to participants to run (virtually) across a specific geographic area. We’ve all seen races across a state, but the ideas don’t end there – CompuScore is offering a multi-wave challenge to run the Amtrak Northeast Corridor. Train aficionados all aboard!
- Overall Goal Tracking lets the goal (and goal-tracker) of the event be a cumulative one between all participants – like a giant team. DetermiNation brought together their supporters to cross the country on foot more than 3 times with their DNation Runs the Country Challenge.
- Elevation Tracking to allow challenges to produce results based on elevation gain rather than distance travelled. The best events don’t keep this as an abstract concept – the Conquer Everest Elevation Challenge encourages participants to bike, hike, or run the uphill equivalent of the world’s most famous mountain.
- Milestones and Badges give organizers the opportunity to setup intermediate goals on the way to the final achievement – complete with digital rewards in the form of custom badges that appear with progress. Most races use a percent of the total distance or regular intervals of miles, but Fleet Feet Poughkeepsie took a totally different tactic with a truly fun Fall in Love With Running Challenge with 50 custom tasks (milestones) like “pet a cat on your run” – complete with delightful badges for each task.
Want to get creative yourself? Get started by learning about milestones and badges, learn how to make your own badges or download some of ours, and setup notifications to keep your participants engaged. Need a full tutorial? Check out the webinar.
Upcoming (Virtual) Education
RunSignup | GiveSignup Fall Cram Session
Get ready for the fall race season with a one-day, online educational session for race directors, timers, and nonprofits. The goal is simple; review as much information as possible to help you plan for a successful fall race season amidst unconventional circumstances.
Webinar Series: Creating a Virtual Challenge from Scratch
Pivoting your business and creating something from scratch is hard. To help us help our customers do so, Bryan Jenkins is testing the process of a new virtual concept, from domain purchase and logo design to marketing and swag fulfillment. To learn what we learn, join us on our webinar series. First catch up on last week’s Step 1: Concept and Brand, then SignUp to join us for the first of two Marketing webinars on Tuesday.
Price Changes Coming September 1
A reminder that we will be rolling out new pricing on September 1, 2020 for all new and renewed races (races that are currently live will not be affected). The new pricing allows us to provide a lower price to low-cost events, makes us more flexible when we roll out BYO Merchant Accounts, eliminates the “sudden steps” we currently have in pricing, and keeps us below the price of all major competitors in the endurance and nonprofit markets.
Industry Round-Up
Our first full quarterly report during COVID-19 shows the impact of the pandemic, with transaction and registration volume down roughly 35% after a pre-pandemic increase of roughly 29% year-over-year. It’s not all bad news, though – we saw just a 1% decrease in donations.
As eager as we are to return to a normal race schedule, our expectation is that that won’t happen in full until 2022. But we do see hope – while we wait for the medical solutions, race organizers and nonprofits are adapting to the current restrictions.
Wanda Sports Group announced the sale of Ironman to Advance, a NY-based investment company. The original sale price of $730 Million was announced in March however, reading the actual SEC filing, it is less clear what the actual value of the sale was.
Guest Blog: Should I Insure My Virtual Race
Scott Sutter of Strategic Risk Transfers answers one of our most-asked questions about virtual races, and shares the news about a new Virtual Race insurance product leveraging RaceJoy technology as part of the offering.
We get asked a lot how RunSignup and GiveSignup work together…so we decided to make it visual and combine the logos. The platforms are built on the same technology framework and are complimentary products with GiveSignup features built specifically for nonprofits.
Timer Talk
Virtual Results How-To Webinar Recap
Need to catch up on the setup for user-submitted scored results? We have a webinar for you.
Corral Management System Updates
With the increasing need social distancing, corral management has become very important. Check out the updates to our Corral Management System.
RunScore Integration Videos
RunScore has released a series of videos to help timers with their RunSignup Integration.
GiveSignup
Speaking of GiveSignup, we are welcoming Amanda, Chris, and Jake to the GiveSignup sales team. We have been thinking about the origins of the platform in relation to the early days of RunSignup. And similarly, we believe that GiveSignup is a “diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal” – and we have a shot to serve the broader needs of the nonprofit community.
Corporate Matching Gifts Integration with 360MatchPro by Double the Donation
Nonprofits that use Double the Donation as their corporate matching gift platform can now enable the integration on any GiveSignup | RunSignup fundraising event or campaign.
Donation Goal Cover Page Component
You can now add a dynamic donation goal to all event, ticket, and donation websites, letting you feature your donation goal progress prominently on your website with a clear “Donate” call to action.
Facebook Pixel Integration Extended to Standalone Donations
The RunSignup | GiveSignup Facebook Pixel integration has been expanded to trigger when a standalone donation is made, helping nonprofits track the effectiveness of ads for donations.
