The Virgin Money London Marathon has announced Anthony Nolan as its official charity partner for the 2014 event.
It is the first time for three years that the Marathon has selected a single charity as its official partner; this year Age UK and Youth Net were joint partners, and in 2012 'Team PB' consisted of Prostate Cancer UK and Breast Cancer Care.
In 2013 the blood cancer charity is hoping to raise £1m to support the 1,700 people in the UK who are currently waiting for a bone marrow transplant. The charity is aiming to recruit around 800 runners to the cause.
Anthony Nolan wishes to grow its register of donors and hopes that this partnership will fund the recruitment of a further 10,000; specifically men aged 16 to 30.
Director of fundraising at the charity, Catherine Miles, told civilsociety.co.uk: "We’re aiming to grow our base of financial supporters over the next three years, and the awareness and profile generated by the Virgin Money London Marathon partnership will be a key element of this."
Miles said the charity has planned many ways in which to engage runners over the course of the next year. "The first of these is our launch video which shows the fantastic support we give our runners and communicates the excitement of the Marathon. Each of the 2013 Virgin London Marathon runners had an Anthony Nolan finish time flyer in their goody bag to give them an engaging way of sharing their finish time with their friends and colleagues and their fantastic achievement on completing the race. We have a dedicated microsite www.milebymile.org with training and fundraising information and blogs and a dedicated Twitter channel @A_N_Events and Facebook page Anthony Nolan Running Team for social media engagement. And there’s lots more to come!"
Henny Braund, Anthony Nolan’s chief executive, explained that it costs £100 to add each person to the register, so the £1m fundraising target equates to the goal of 10,000 new bone marrow donors.
The partnership in 2014 will coincide with Anthony Nolan’s 40th anniversary, and is focusing on the theme of pride: Anthony Nolan says that giving their bone marrow (or blood stem cells) to potentially cure someone’s cancer is its donors’ proudest moment – comparable to a marathon runner passing the finish line.
Speaking to Fundraising magazine for its April issue, Anthony Nolan's fundraising director Catherine Miles said that it often took a charity to win one or two large corporate partnerships to gain momentum that enables it to win many more in future.
Fundraising spoke to Anthony Nolan's director of fundraising Catherine Miles about the charity's impressive growth, as part of the magazine's recent article The secret lives of growing charities. Read more by clicking on the link.
