When March began, St. Baldrick’s Foundation was gearing up to celebrate its 20th anniversary and host a slew of events projected to bring in 40 percent of its annual revenue. In total, these yearly events attract at least 55,000 volunteers who sign up to shave their own or others’ heads to raise money for children with cancer. At the events, volunteers can meet kids going through chemotherapy and hear from researchers about how donations further their work to find a cure.
But the events this year were curtailed by the spread of another disease: Covid-19. A week into March, the foundation suspended all events until May. Revenue from volunteer fundraisers who began appealing for donations months in advance still came in — but it was paltry.
By March 20, the foundation was $2.5 million short of the total it had raised by the same day last year. St. Baldrick’s awards its research grants in June, and fundraisers are scrambling to bring in at least $6.5 million more by the end of March to meet its grant-making goals.
“It will be a significant blow to childhood-cancer research if we can’t fund many grants,” says Kathleen Ruddy, chief executive of the foundation.
Mass fundraising activities like St. Baldrick’s head-shaving events have been a bulwark of nonprofit fundraising for decades, although big charities have seen revenue from these events decline since the Great Recession. The format is simple: Volunteers ask friends, relatives, and colleagues for money, and in exchange they join a walkathon, run a marathon, or participate in another activity to raise funds and awareness for a cause. The events are especially popular among health nonprofits, which use money from these events to fund research on various diseases.
Last year, the nation’s 30 largest mass-fundraising events brought in close to $1.4 billion in donations, according to the Peer-to-Peer Professional Forum. The largest of these events was the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, which brought in almost $162 million in unrestricted funds in 2019. This month, the American Cancer Society postponed nearly 760 in-person fundraising events, including all of its Relay for Life walks.
“We have a lot of unknowns this year about what the ultimate impact will be,” says Maria Clark, senior vice president for volunteer events at the charity. While Relay for Life has been in the red since 2008, Clark says this year’s suspension of events doesn’t spell the end.
In 2018, the American Cancer Society reduced the number of relays, consolidating events to promote only the most successful. The charity also doubled down on its efforts to recruit big gifts from individuals and corporations and created more crowdfunding opportunities for small-dollar donors, including fundraising drives on Facebook.
Charities need a mix of revenue sources to stay healthy, and some fundraisers insist that peer-to-peer events must be a part of this mix going forward. “We won’t stop holding events because they’re such an effective introduction to our mission,” Ruddy wrote in an email.
Creating Community
For now, many charities are experimenting with virtual mass-fundraising events to rally their supporters.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity to create communities,” says Robyn Mendez, principal product-marketing manager for peer-to-peer fundraising solutions at Blackbaud, a technology company. In this period of social isolation, people are looking for ways to entertain themselves and feel a part of something greater, Mendez says.
St. Baldrick’s Foundation is encouraging volunteers to keep their pledge to shave their heads at home — an option it’s formally offered since 2011 — and to post videos of it to social media. “Think of it like your own private head-shaving party,” the foundation’s webpage for virtual head-shaving says. The foundation tapped its event staff to make thank-you calls to donors and help volunteers raise funds online.
As they promote the virtual shaving events, the foundation is encouraging its supporters to reflect on how their concerns about their own health risks right now mirror those of children with cancer. “Having to question everywhere you go, having to question everybody you come in contact with and speak to. All of those things, kids with cancer live with every day,” Ruddy says. “We all have this opportunity to be mindful that, while we have to live with this for a period of time, kids with cancer have no option, and this is forced upon them for sometimes years at a time.”
Mendez encourages nonprofits to bring supporters together on social media. She says these online efforts help charities and their supporters preserve the valuable celebratory energy that is palpable at in-person fundraising events.
Covenant House International, a charity that serves homeless youth, is experimenting with replacing its spring Sleep Out events with Facebook live events. These events, held across the United States and Canada each spring and fall, typically raise more than $1 million in unrestricted revenue. Teams of colleagues, students, and members of religious congregations pledge to spend the night outside in exchange for donations from friends and family. Just as the spring events were kicking off, the charity had to cancel them all.
Last week, the charity used Facebook to livestream its first “virtual sleepout.” The online event featured a conversation with the charity’s president, actors Rachel Brosnahan and Jason Ralph, Covenant House staff, and an estimated 100 volunteers who were sleeping outside individually. Staff talked about items they needed — from toiletries to televisions to cellphone chargers — to keep kids safe, healthy, and entertained while they ride out the pandemic in Covenant House shelters. Participants joined the conversation remotely.
New Targets
As charities take their fundraising events online, they’re also having to alter their fundraising targets.
“The big change now is we’re talking about needing to monitor these things on a weekly basis,” says Daniel Karp, senior vice president for integrated direct marketing at Covenant House International. Before the coronavirus crisis flooded their shelters with unanticipated needs, the charity had been tracking fundraising from its various revenue streams with annual goals.
Ruddy at St. Baldrick’s is also eyeing how the focus on contagious disease could affect government grants for medical research. After the government, St. Baldrick’s is the biggest funder for childhood cancer research. If the government reprioritizes its research grants, Ruddy worries that the foundation could be called on to fill an even- bigger funding gap at the research hospitals it supports.
“Those hospitals are going to see funds getting diverted to contagious diseases, understandably,” Ruddy says. “But then what do we do about these chronic diseases that are taking more lives and that are expensive to cure? How are we going to keep our work going there?”
For now, charities are taking these fundraising challenges week by week. But as they settle into the new normal, some fundraisers are beginning to strategize about how best to face an uncertain future.
“A best defense is a good offense in this time,” Karp says. “The question is: How do you balance the cash-flow needs of the organization?”
