Open challenges increase in popularity

Fundraising | 3 Apr 2008

A number of leading charities are struggling to fill spaces on their bespoke challenge trips leading to an increase in sign up rates for open overseas challenges.

Charity Challenge, a specialist charity travel company, has seen double the amount of open challenge bookings in the first two months of 2007 compared to the same period last year. In 2006, 67 per cent of its trips were open challenges, raising £3.35m for the chosen charities, but this year 80 per cent of its current challenges are open with an estimated fundraising total of £6m.

In February, Cancer Research UK announced it had decided to wind up its overseas challenge programme and from 1 April will begin signing up supporters for open challenges.

The NSPCC also stopped running its own bespoke charity events in 2000. Steve George, development director at the NPSCC, said: “Increasingly we were finding ourselves being drawn into a high cost, high liability world and it was much more difficult to be competitive.” The charity now solely advertises open challenges, which George said make a higher net return.

Help the Aged and MS Society are among those organisations which still offer bespoke trips, but have also begun marketing open challenges to complement their portfolio.

Simon Albert, director of Charity Challenge, said: “The bottom line is that open challenges offer the charities less risk, and their supporters more choice.”

Who's Who: Gemma Ware

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