There are plenty of charities asking people to walk, run, swim or do something every day for a month. There’s clearly income potential, but when you’re developing a campaign, I think you need to spend some time asking why someone would choose yours.
That means looking at what’s already out there, understanding the people you want to reach and thinking about what your charity can bring to the experience that would make it worth their time.
The Harness Method is how I help charities work through this, bringing together an understanding of supporters, practical fundraising experience and testing to develop a campaign the team can take forward.
The Harness Method takes a campaign through four distinct phases, with a clear outcome from each:
1. Audience insight and opportunity
We look at your existing results, speak to supporters and review the market, alongside the expertise, relationships and resources your charity could bring to an event. This gives us a clearer picture of who to design for and where there’s an opportunity to stand out.
2. Campaign development
We work with your team to turn those opportunities into campaign concepts, defining the challenge, the appeal to participants, the proposition and the experience you’ll offer. We also check the likely costs and delivery requirements before taking ideas further.
3. Prototyping, testing and refinement
With AI we make the strongest concepts tangible through sample adverts, landing pages or registration journeys, then test the important assumptions with the intended audience. What we learn helps us improve the campaign and decide which version is worth piloting.
4. Pilot and launch planning
Working closely with your team, we bring the campaign, supporter journey, budget and delivery responsibilities together into a practical pilot plan, with agreed measures to help your team decide what to improve, repeat or grow.
The amount of work depends on what you already know and the decision you need to make. An existing event might benefit from a focused review and a few targeted improvements, while a new campaign may need more development.
1. Find the opportunity
I’d start by building on my knowledge of the market alongside what you already know about your supporters. What are other charities offering, who are they appealing to, and where might there be an opportunity to offer something more relevant to a particular audience?
BHF has some interesting examples. Its Strong Woman Challenge brings together daily strength exercises, a training plan and a supportive community, giving women a way to build strength and confidence while supporting the charity. That gives the invitation more substance than simply asking people to complete an activity each day and raise money.
Its Heart MOT Challenge takes a different approach, designed with men aged 45 and over in mind and combining an assessment of habits and fitness with a manageable programme of daily activities, backed by BHF expertise. What interests me is how it uses the charity’s knowledge or assrets to offer something relevant to a particular audience, with a clear connection between the cause and what participants receive.
For another charity, the opportunity might come from specialist advice, trusted relationships, a strong local presence, a community or partnerships that could make the experience more valuable. I’d want to understand which of those assets supporters actually value and how we could build on them.
Winning new supporters can be an important part of the ambition, but I wouldn’t overlook the people who already know and care about your charity. There may be existing donors, previous event participants, volunteers or families with a connection to the cause who would welcome a different way to get involved.
If you’ve run an event before, I’d review the results and speak to participants, including, ideally, people who registered but didn’t fundraise. Were they attracted by the activity, the cause, the community or something else, and did the experience match what they thought they were joining?
Those conversations can help explain the behaviour behind the numbers, and a focused piece of research doesn’t need to take a long time or be expensive.
By the end of this stage, we should have a clearer view of who we’re designing for, what might motivate them and where the strongest opportunity lies.
2. Build the idea
We can then work with your team to develop a number of campaign ideas around that opportunity, drawing on what we’ve learned about the audience, the market and what your charity can offer.
A familiar format might be exactly right, but I’d still want to know why someone would choose this challenge, why they would do it for your charity and what would make them feel comfortable asking other people to sponsor them.
That could lead us towards a personal fitness goal, an experience people share with friends, a way to remember someone or a challenge connected to something they’ve been through. The important thing is to explore those possibilities with the intended audience rather than assume that a different name or distance will make the event stand out.
We’d develop the strongest ideas into something people can respond to, including who the event is for, what they’ll do, what they’ll get from taking part and how the fundraising fits into the experience.
Alongside that, we need to work through recruitment costs, fundraising expectations, technology, incentives and the time your team can give it. We should also consider whether the event will generate additional support or mainly move existing activity into a different campaign.
This gives us developed concepts and an initial view of the costs and delivery requirements, so we can decide which are worth testing.
3. Test and refine
I’d use testing to answer the questions that would most affect the investment decision. That might mean exploring early concepts with supporters, testing different invitations through advertising and landing pages, or watching people try the registration journey to understand where it becomes confusing.
We should be careful about what each test tells us. Someone liking an idea doesn’t mean they’ll register, and someone registering doesn’t mean they’ll fundraise. GivePanel’s Q3 2026 benchmark puts the proportion of registrations becoming active fundraisers at 41.6% across its UK campaigns, defining active as receiving at least one donation. That’s a useful reminder to look beyond sign-ups when judging performance.
We’d use what we learn to improve the campaign, whether that means changing the invitation, adjusting the challenge, making fundraising expectations clearer or simplifying the journey.
By this point, we should understand which idea has the strongest evidence behind it, what still needs to be learned and whether it’s ready for a live pilot. Testing can help us make a better investment decision, while a pilot lets us see whether people actually take part and fundraise.
4. Make it happen
A promising concept needs a practical plan, so we’d work through how the campaign will run, who will own each part and what support participants will receive.
The experience needs to carry through from the first advert to the final thank you. I’d want to understand what would help someone make their first ask, how we could keep them connected to the cause and whether there’s a role for community, expert guidance or more personal encouragement.
The channel, timing and tone should follow from that, with testing to establish what people find helpful. We also need to be realistic about the level of support your team can sustain.
For a pilot, we’d agree the budget, responsibilities and measures, including recruitment, active fundraising, income, costs, supporter experience and staff time. We’d also agree what results would justify growing the event and what would lead us to change the approach.
That leaves your team with a campaign to pilot, a delivery plan and a clear way to decide what happens next.
Through the Harness Method, I help charities bring those pieces together, with support across the whole process or at the stage where it’s most useful. For an existing virtual event, that might begin with a focused review of performance and supporter experience; for a new one, it might mean finding and testing a stronger opportunity.
The aim is to develop a campaign with a clear reason for people to choose it, a supporter experience that helps them fundraise and a delivery model that works for the charity.