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Virgin aims to boost Marathon donations to £250m

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 6 Jun 2008

Virgin Money aims to increase the amount raised for good causes by runners in the London Marathon to £250m over the five years of its sponsorship.

The financial services arm of Sir Richard Branson’s empire was announced last week as the new sponsor of the marathon from 2010 to 2015, in a deal worth £17m.

Runners have raised more than £400m for charities since the race was launched in 1981, but now Virgin Money is planning a range of initiatives using its own infrastructure and online capability, and the expertise of its eponymous foundation Virgin Unite, to boost this to more than £50m a year.

CLIC Sargent official charity for 2010 marathon

CLIC Sargent, which is already a partner of Virgin Unite, has been named as the official charity partner for the 2010 marathon and has said it wants to raise £1.5m from the partnership and treble the number of people running on its behalf.

The first public outing of the partnership will be on 26 April next year, the day of the last Flora London marathon.

On that day, a new website will be launched that aims to “bring the marathon community together in one place – not just runners, but their supporters and spectators too”, according to race director David Bedford.

Visitors to the site will be able to enter the race, find someone to train with, watch celebrities training and download music playlists for different training plans, he said.

Flora ends 13-year partnership

Flora has sponsored the marathon since 1996, making the 13-year deal one of the longest commercial partnerships in sport. The first-ever sponsor, Gillette, stumped up £50,000 for the first race and doubled it to £100,000 the following year.

A spokesman for Flora said that after 2009, Flora would explore new ways to improve the nation’s heart health and ensure people are clear about the dangers of foods high in saturated fat such as butter.

“The reason our sponsorship will end post-2009 is because the number one issue facing consumers is saturated fat which is being consumed at very high levels in the UK – the average adult eats 33 per cent more than their guideline daily amount. Flora needs to focus on re-educating consumers about the dangers of saturated fat and benefits of the good fats in Flora.”   

He would not disclose how much Flora had spent over the 13 years of the marathon partnership. 

London Marathon sponsors:

• 1981 – 1983 Gillette
• 1984 – 1988 Mars
• 1989 – 1992 ADT
• 1993 – 1995 Nutrasweet
• 1996 – 2009 Flora
• 2010 – 2015 Virgin

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