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  • 1.  Looking for Insight: We are hoping to bring back an annual 5k. What worked for you?

    Posted 05-03-2024 08:53 AM

    Hey Everyone!

    At Pope County Humane Society in Minnesota, we are looking to bring back our annual 5k walk/run to help us raise money and plan to offer it each year. We have the park reserved and the area mapped out, but I am looking for recommendations on what made an event like this successful for you? I'd also love to know how you handled registrations.  Did you do just the registration fee or did you also have registrants raise money via pledges/sponsors?

    I'm looking forward to hearing any insight! 

    Thanks!


    #FundraisingandDevelopment

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    Shauney Gloege
    President, Board of Directors
    Pope County Humane Society
    MN
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  • 2.  RE: Looking for Insight: We are hoping to bring back an annual 5k. What worked for you?

    Posted 05-05-2024 06:56 PM

    Hi! I put the 5k walk/run for The Louisa Humane Society in Virginia and highly recommend paying for registration with donations/fundraising options. RunSignUp is a great platform and has good tutorials to help you figure it out. It's free for you as well. Hope this helps!



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    Janelle Goldean
    Vice President
    The Louisa Humane Society
    VA
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Looking for Insight: We are hoping to bring back an annual 5k. What worked for you?

    Posted 06-20-2025 07:17 AM

    Hi @Shauney Gloege, we are looking at planning a 5K fun run/walk and I stumbled on your post.  Did you wind up having the event?  Any tips?  We were planning to look for sponsorships from local businesses and then do a small registration fee, but I'm a little nervous that there won't be enough involvement.  I'd love to hear any advice you might have.



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    Melissa Fitzgerald
    Volunteer
    Pawfect Life Rescue
    MA
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Looking for Insight: We are hoping to bring back an annual 5k. What worked for you?

    Posted 06-20-2025 08:20 AM

    We always secured media sponsors first to ensure that there would be pre-event promotion in print, TV, and radio. Request on air appearance to promote the event on radio and TV. Find a sponsor for lawn signs as another promo. 

    Then secure corporate sponsors. Ideally, you sponsors should more than offset your overhead so that all registrations and donations are fundraising revenue. You may want to create sponsorship levels for Presenting, Shelter Friend, Big Dog, Cool Cat, etc.

    Encourage pre-registrants to fundraise. Create a challenge or offer awards for top individual and/or team fund raisers.

    Good luck!



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    Chris Fitzgerald
    Director of Animal Services
    Greece, NY
    cfitzgerald@greeceny.gov
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Looking for Insight: We are hoping to bring back an annual 5k. What worked for you?

    Posted 06-21-2025 10:51 AM

    Hey! 

     We use RaceRoster for sign ups. We're doing our 3rd annual 5k9 fun run. We do not go huge in that there are awards/medals as our event is on the smaller side but it works for us and we still make several hundred - a thousand+ in profit from the registrations which include a tshirt. We also do race packets and have been told it's one of the better packages our racers have ever recevied for this who regularly run 5ks. We get a lot of free passes from local places (indoor water park, ripleys, free food from chickfila, nothing bundt cakes, etc, swag items from vet offices). 

    It's super easy on our end and the most time consuming thing for me is setting up the registration on race roster and then ordering the shirts but otherwise very simple and easy to do year to year for us. 

    I do think we can be doing marketing of the event better to get a higher turn out but we grew in registrations from year 1 to 2 so interested to see where we land for this years in Nov! 

    Good luck!



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    Angellee Vincent
    Volunteer & Events Coordinator
    Grand Prairie Animal Services
    Grand Prairie, TX
    www.gptx.org/paws
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Looking for Insight: We are hoping to bring back an annual 5k. What worked for you?

    Posted 06-23-2025 07:32 AM

    Hi Melissa!

    Yes, we did end up having our event. We went with after googling other animal shelters events and kind of pieced together what we thought would work best for us:

    • Registrations for $35 per person and then that included a paper or online fundraiser platform for each participant to fundraise, a registration packet with donated good from sponsors, and a t-shirt
    • Sponsorship packets where businesses could purhcase different sponsorship packages and offer door prizes for registrations
    • We partnered with a few food trucks to set-up during our event
    • We held it at our local park who donated the permit fee
    • We did cash prizes for top fundraisers, the top three fundraisers ended up donating the prize money back. 
    • We brought two of our adoptable dogs and offered low cost microchipping before and after the walk
    • We borrowed a timer and had unofficial times for those who wanted them. No one was really interested in a time and we all walked as a group. 

    We ended up raising about $5,000. We used GiveButter to run this event and that worked well. Here is our link for this year's if you want to check it out. 

    https://givebutter.com/walkfortheanimals2025



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    Shauney Gloege
    President, Board of Directors
    Pope County Humane Society
    MN
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Looking for Insight: We are hoping to bring back an annual 5k. What worked for you?

    Posted 06-23-2025 07:01 AM

    We (Wellington Humane Society) just put on our 6th annual Run For The Paws 5k and 1 mile. This was actually our best year yet!  We use Runsignup for online registrations, its easy to use and free. We also used Canva to create a paper application for those wanting to sign up in person. We open the registration about 3 months before the race, online registrations end the night before the race and we have in person registration open up to start of race for those last minute people. We hit up area businesses for sponsorships, which help cover the cost of race shirts, bibs, etc. We use the local high school timing device so we don't offer chip timing but if you go through a timing company they can offer that but it'll cost you more. Also, promoting the event at your local/area running stores or online running groups helps to get the word out. Hit up your local TV and radio stations to help promote the event as well. Our registration fees were $30 5k, $15 1 mile or $35 for both races. Race day registration we increase each by $5. 

    If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me at director@wellingtonhumanesociety.org   I'd be happy to share our sponsorship packet and paper registration form.



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    Jodie Hearlson
    Wellington Humane Society
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    Original Message


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