The Terry Fox Run represents a prime example of a successful community-based fundraising event in North America. Over the last 43 years, they have managed to raise more than $850 million for cancer research. This monumental achievement has its roots in 1980 when 18-year-old Terry Fox, who had lost his right leg to osteogenic sarcoma, initiated a cross-country run to raise funds for cancer research. This marked the birth of the Marathon Of Hope. Although Terry passed away in 1981 at the young age of 22, his enduring spirit continues to inspire Canadians to contribute to cancer research.

About The Terry Fox Foundation

The Terry Fox Foundation has been instrumental in harnessing this wave of community support. The foundation organizes events at over 10,000 school run locations and more than 800 community run locations. The impact of these events is considerable, with a 14% year-on-year increase in participants and a 22% year-on-year increase in direct online donations. The community-run segment has also seen a 29% increase in teams created.

The Challenge

The success of these events, however, comes with its own set of challenges. The Foundation needed to secure a robust and intuitive fundraising platform that could efficiently manage its events across the country. This platform needed to offer best-in-class support to the Foundation's national teams and supporters, all while integrating seamlessly with Salesforce in real-time.

After a rigorous evaluation process, the Foundation chose CrowdChange as its online fundraising partner. The deciding factor was CrowdChange's Master Template feature, which enables the scaling of any fundraising event to many locations through a simple blueprinting process. The platform proved its mettle by accommodating the scale of the Foundation's events and the demands of more than 25,000 dedicated fundraisers.

Setting up the Event for Success

The Terry Fox School run collaborates with over 10,000 schools across Canada to create classroom teams and individual student fundraising pages. A Master Template was created, which housed the standard set of fundraising and donation settings for all school locations. This allowed the Foundation to launch all school locations in a matter of minutes.

Our simplified peer-to-peer workflow offered teachers and students a seamless process to create and share their fundraising pages. Any changes to fundraising and donation settings could be applied to all run locations from a single dashboard, ensuring a consistent and unified experience.

Similarly, for the Terry Fox Community Run, a single Master Template was created for all community-run locations. Proprietary search widgets enabled participants to search for a run team or participant quickly and easily. A Multi-Registration workflow allowed participants to register multiple participants, join teams, and create their personal fundraising pages, all in a single transaction.

Through our partnership with CrowdChange and Salesforce, we have been able to expand our reach, increase our efficiency, and raise more funds for cancer research. As we continue to evolve and grow, we remain committed to our mission of keeping Terry Fox’s dream alive.

For more information, visit 

www.CrowdChange.co