Guide

Which tool should I use to run a sponsored event for my school or community group?

A sponsored event can mean a lot of things. A company putting its logo on a conference. A charity gala. A corporate team day. Or a PTA fun run where 150 participants collect sponsorship from their families and raise several thousand pounds for the school.

The tools that work well for the first few don't tend to work well for the last one. This page is for the last one.

If you're a PTA committee member, a scout leader, a sports club volunteer, or someone on a community group committee planning a fun run, sponsored walk, colour run, or similar event where participants collect individual sponsorship from friends and family, here's a look at your options.

What does "running a sponsored event" actually involve?

Before picking a tool, it helps to separate the two things most sponsored events involve.

Entry. Participants sign up and, in many cases, pay a small entry fee: typically between £3 and £8 per participant. This covers costs and commits participants to the event. Collecting entry fees online in advance is easier for everyone. It avoids cash handling on the day, gives you an accurate headcount before the event, and removes the last-minute scramble at the gate.

Sponsorship. Participants ask friends and family to sponsor them. This is where most of the money comes from. A well-run sponsored event with 100 participants can raise several thousand pounds in sponsorship, where entry fees alone might bring in a few hundred.

These two things can be managed separately, or together. How you handle each, and whether you connect them, matters more than which specific tool you pick.

What are your main options for collecting sponsorship?

Paper sponsorship forms

The traditional method. Participants take home a printed form, fill in sponsors' names and amounts, collect cash or cheques, and bring it back after the event.

It requires minimal setup. You design, print and distribute the form, and plenty of groups still do it this way. But it has real costs once the event is done: cash is harder to collect, organisers spend hours reconciling what came in, some families never return the form, and sponsors who intended to give but didn't have cash to hand often don't give at all. Gift Aid is harder to claim. Reminders are manual. The post-event admin often takes longer than the event itself.

A single group donation page

Some groups set up a single online donation page for the whole event, share the link on the school newsletter and in the parent WhatsApp group, and ask people to give.

This is more convenient than paper forms, but it loses something important. Supporters are asked to donate to the event or the school in general. There's no personal connection. Research into UK peer-to-peer fundraising consistently shows that people give more when they're sponsoring a specific person they know, not a general cause. A message saying "please donate to our fun run" raises a fraction of what "please sponsor Jack for his fun run" raises.

A single group page also limits your reach. The organiser shares it, some parents share it, a small circle of people see it. With individual sponsorship pages, every participant shares their own, and every family brings a different network. Instead of one campaign, you have 100 or 200 small ones running at the same time, reaching people you'd never reach through a single link.

Individual sponsorship pages, one per participant

Each participant gets their own page. They share it with the people who know them. Sponsors give directly to that page. The total rolls up for the organiser to see.

This is the approach that consistently raises the most, because it turns every participant into a fundraiser. Instead of one shared link that the organiser promotes, you have 80 or 100 or 200 participants each doing their own asking. The reach multiplies. The personal connection does the work.

The practical question is how to set this up without it becoming a spreadsheet and admin nightmare. That's where the right tool matters.

Online fundraising platforms designed for charities

General online fundraising platforms are built for registered charities running individual campaigns. They handle donations well. But they're not designed for the specific flow of a volunteer-led sponsored event: entry sign-up, participant lists, entry fee collection, individual sponsorship pages per participant, and live totals for the organiser. You can make them work, but you'll be combining them with a separate entry or ticketing tool, which creates friction for participants and extra work for you.

Do you need to sell entry tickets as well?

Not always. Some events are free to enter and rely entirely on sponsorship. Others charge a small entry fee to cover costs or to give the event a sense of commitment.

If you do want to collect entry fees online, you need a way to handle that separately from sponsorship, unless you're using a tool that does both. The common workaround is a ticketing tool for entry and a donation tool for sponsorship. This works, but it means participants sign up in one place and fundraise in another, and organisers reconcile two sets of data.

General ticketing tools were built for selling tickets to audiences. Sponsored events aren't quite that. The entry fee is a byproduct. The sponsorship is the point.

Which approach raises the most?

Individual sponsorship pages, combined with entry fees if your event uses them, set up in one place so participants only need to do one thing.

The single biggest missed opportunity we see is groups putting up one donation page for the whole event instead of giving each participant their own. The difference between the two approaches is significant. Supporters respond to a personal ask from someone they know. Generic group donation pages work less well for exactly the same reason that a letter addressed to "Dear Householder" works less well than a letter addressed to you.

The second most common missed opportunity is groups running a ticketed event and skipping sponsorship altogether. Entry fees alone will raise a few hundred pounds. Entry fees plus sponsorship can raise several thousand. Groups that skip sponsorship are leaving the larger opportunity untouched.

You don't need a complicated setup to avoid both mistakes. You need one place where participants sign up, pay any entry fee, and get their own sponsorship page in the same flow.

What does a combined entry and sponsorship setup look like?

Fun Run UK is built specifically for this. It's designed for PTAs, scout groups, sports clubs and community groups running events where participants collect individual sponsorship.

Here's how it works. You create an event page, set an entry fee or make the event free to enter, and set the event live. Participants sign up and pay their entry fee if there is one. Each participant gets their own sponsorship page automatically. They share it. Supporters give directly to their page. The organiser sees a running total and a participant list without chasing anyone or managing a spreadsheet.

There are no setup fees and no monthly costs. A small percentage applies to entry fees. Sponsorship goes to your group in full, with an optional tip from supporters that covers the cost on that side.

Fun Run UK is free to set up. It's designed for the specific flow of a volunteer-led sponsored event, not a general-purpose tool adapted to fit.

If you'd like to see what it looks like for your event, try the calculator to see what your group could raise with different combinations of entry fees and sponsorship.

For a guide to planning the event itself, see how to organise a sponsored event.

Common questions

Can I use a general fundraising platform for a school fun run?

You can, but most general fundraising platforms are designed for individual campaigns or registered charities, not for the specific flow of a group-led sponsored event with entry fees and individual participant pages. You'd likely need a separate system for sign-ups and entry, and you'd lose the individual-sponsorship-per-participant structure that raises the most.

What if some families prefer to pay cash or use paper forms?

Some will, and that's manageable. But online sponsorship is easier for the vast majority of supporters, and it removes the post-event admin of reconciling cash and forms. Setting up online sponsorship doesn't mean banning everything else. It means giving people the easiest path by default.

Does it work for events that aren't fun runs?

Yes. The same setup works for sponsored walks, colour runs, swimathons, readathons, skipathons and most other formats where participants collect individual sponsorship. The activity changes. The sponsorship structure doesn't.

What about Gift Aid?

Online sponsorship through Fun Run UK captures Gift Aid declarations automatically at the point of giving, for eligible donations. This is worth more than it sounds: a £10 donation from a UK taxpayer is worth £12.50 with Gift Aid. Paper forms require you to collect declarations separately and claim manually. Online collection handles it in the flow.

Is it only for schools?

Not at all. Fun Run UK works for any volunteer-led group running a sponsored event: PTAs, scout groups, sports clubs, community organisations, small charities and others. The language and setup are designed to feel familiar to UK groups of all kinds, not just school-based ones.