You may have heard of the Music Run, the Colour Run and the Milo Run, but have you heard of the Virtual Run?
The Virtual Run – as the name suggests, is not an event that is held in a physical stadium; rather, the distance is completed at the runner’s own pace. Another interesting aspect that sets the Virtual Run apart from other runs is that there is no winner – you either complete the distance or you do not.
The SC Empowers: 2020 Virtual Run was a fundraising campaign organised by Small Changes from 1st to 21st January 2020 (or 31st January for late signups). The event was launched in conjunction with MYGiving week to bring Malaysians together through a celebration of generosity.
There were a total of three categories:10km, 20km and 30km. To keep track of the runners’ progress, all runners were required to download the Runkeeper app and join their respective SC groups based on the running distance they signed up for. Runners were given a lot of flexibility to complete the distance; they could run, jog or walk. Even better, runners could split the distance over the course of three weeks, meaning that people of all athletic abilities were able to participate with ease! All runners who completed the distance were given a medal, an e-certificate and a T-shirt (for 30km runners only).
To spice things up, weekly challenges were set up! In the first week, runners were challenged to invite three friends to run with them; in the second week, runners’ stamina were challenged to run 3km in one shot; in the third and final week, SC decided to facilitate runners to complete their distance by challenging them to run continuously for three hours.
Within the span of 5 weeks, a total of 160 participants signed up for the Virtual Run!
10km – 82 signups
20km – 21 signups
30km – 57 signups
As a result, Small Changes successfully raised RM 5,788! These funds are momentous in assisting us to execute our upcoming projects, which are Project Beanstalk, Seeds of Deeds and Aspire to Inspire.
At the end of the running period, Small Changes sent out feedback forms to runners. The main criticism of the event was the difficulty experienced when using the Runkeeper app as it uses the phone’s GPS to track the distance ran, which means that it does not work indoors or for runners on treadmills. Regardless, runners reported an overall mean satisfaction score of 4.5 (on a scale of 1 to 5) for the event; 94% of runners indicated that they would participate in any future Virtual Run.
Small Changes could not be happier with everyone’s enthusiastic support with the event! The great success of the event kickstarted 2020 with a powerful momentum and we cannot wait to see the support we hope to get for our upcoming projects!
