Race Roster helps Sporting Life 10K get to the next level, bringing them closer to their $20M goal for Campfire Circle

The Sporting Life 10K (Toronto & Ottawa) supports Campfire Circle (formerly Camp Ooch and Camp Trillum), a year-round camp that gives children affected by childhood cancer the chance to just be kids through Overnight Camp, Community, and In-Hospital programs.

Transformation Highlights

In 2017, SL10K went from two sites (one for registration and one for fundraising) to Race Roster’s combined platform. This streamlined the runner and fundraiser experience and offered new features such as:

• Ability to offer Sporting Life store coupons
• Easy access to education about Campfire Circle for runners
• Achievements for fundraising pages
• Team leaderboards
• Ability to customize individual and team fundraising pages with default images and copy

Other benefits of switching to Race Roster included:

• Improved analytics
• Custom query reporting system for organizers
• A higher conversion of runners to fundraisers

In 2019:

• System will support more than 22,000 runners
• SL10K’s goal is to raise over $2.1M in order to exceed a cumulative $20M raised since 2000
• All features created for SL10K & Campfire Circle are now available to all other Race Roster clients

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Campfire Circle Overview

Campfire Circle is often referred to as the social cure for cancer. It’s a place where kids play, grow and enjoy new experiences in a safe, welcoming environment. Each year over 1,600 kids and their families experience the Magic of Ooch through Community, In-Hospital and Overnight Camp programs – Ooch Muskoka is the only overnight camp in Canada able to provide IV chemotherapy and blood transfusions. As a registered charity without government funding, Ooch relies exclusively on the generous support of fundraisers, donors and events like the Sporting Life 10k.

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A+ customer service

As a Customer Success Manager, Jawin Laverde ensures both Race Roster and SL10K customers are supported. He has been working with SL10K and Campfire Circle for three years, going on four. This requires consistent communication and managing issues as they arise. Whether it relates to the registrants, donors, charity, or organizers, Jawin is the go-to for solutions.

“We have a great reporting system and as race numbers grow, this requires a lot of computing power. We work closely with the organizers — meeting with them regularly and wrapping up every event with a debrief, as well as ideas for new features to be implemented.”

“We have a custom query reporting system, so Ooch and the race organizers can focus on what they do best, and we can pull the data for them. We’re their on-call, agile responders. And we are definitely part of the team.”

Jawin Laverde, Customer Success Manager, Race Roster

Jawin and the Race Roster team are dedicated year round to helping SL10K and Campfire Circle reach their goals.

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Integrated user experience: Combining runner registration with successful peer-to-peer giving

“If you look at the registration-fundraising event landscape, there are a lot of platforms out there” says Caley Bornbaum, Director, Strategic Partnerships, from the Toronto-based Campfire Circle office. “Where I think Race Roster is a pioneer, is in the  unification of the fundraising platform with really complex registration requirements.”

“We make it seamless for the event organizers and the charity to work together on a single platform that does fundraising very well” says Robbie Wilder, Chief Technology Officer at Racer Roster, who credits the success of SL10K & Campfire Circle to the tight partnership between the race organizers, the charity, and Race Roster.

“As soon as one person registers for the race, they are automatically linked to a fundraising page, which they can customize and share with friends and family. At the same time, the charity can use the campaign tool within the system to send updates, images, animations, and other gamification features to motivate fundraisers to reach milestones, and provide recognition all through the Race Roster platform.”

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Trust that complex race add-ons will be managed well: SL10K coupons

One of the aspects that makes this run complex is the inclusion of electronic store coupons included for registrants. Sporting Life 10K distributes up to 24,000 unique barcodes with different expiry dates, in addition to custom deals for corporate or team challenges. The Race Roster platform has been built to handle this type of challenge gracefully.

“It’s my go-to tool. Race Roster is a leader in capability of their online system and metrics. The functionality for both the user and the race director like me is pretty exhaustive” says Cory Freedman, National Race Director of the Sporting Life 10k Run Series, CEO/Founder of MAX VO2 Event Management Inc. and the Toronto Women’s Run Series.

“For me as a race director, the strength of the system enabled me to flawlessly organize my event. This included a gift card option, additional registration confirmation emails, and the ability to give out bar codes and pin codes. It’s really about the ability to customize the system to the unique attributes or characteristics of the race – it’s really powerful.”

Cory says as a race director she can make her own changes in a timely manner, and if she can’t, she can escalate it to the Race Roster team to make it happen.

“We’ve experienced fantastic customer service on all levels. We never get complaints from the athletes, because of the seamless service and support. The strength of the system is that any user – race director, fundraiser and runner – can access the dashboard and manage their pages independently. It’s very accessible.”

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Celebratory and motivational messages

“The SL10K is not your average 10K” says Britt Shannon, Director of Customer Success at Race Roster. “Here we have the non-profit organization connecting not just with one select group of runners, but with all the race participants. Every participant knows they are supporting a local organization.”

This messaging, Shannon says, is supported by the Race Roster email campaign and donation tools. They trigger specific messages (i.e. coupons, fundraising information, etc.) based on how the person is registered and behaves on the site.

“When Race Roster first came on board, the development team wanted to understand our needs on the fundraising side. They created motivating images (badges) and animations to support individual and team fundraising” adds Bornbaum.

Shannon describes the SL10K approach as a super-charged strategy to maximize the potential of the email campaign tool. Organizers and fundraisers can tailor the messaging depending on the user profile and which donations were made.

When working with event organizers, Shannon takes their ongoing feedback and ensures their ideas are implemented by over 25 developers employed at Race Roster. Race Roster’s main goal is to create a system that optimizes the experience and meets the needs and wants of their customers. Their main goal is to create a system that optimizes the experience and matches the needs and wants of their customers. The result? 2019 marks the most ambitious fundraising goal to date with participant numbers anticipated to go as high as 24,000.

This ambitious goal is attainable only with the right tools. For SL10K, these tools include an elegant participant dashboard that offers easy to access Sporting Life coupons, motivational messages, and a support team that answers emails and phone calls right away. Every campaign has a distinct Race Roster approach to communicating with runners, fundraisers, and donors.

“We are an extension and a reflection of the client” adds Shannon. “We are invested in the success of one another, so we make sure that Race Roster delivers service in the exact way prescribed by the client.”

“At the end of the day it is a partnership” adds Cory. “And Race Roster really recognizes and appreciates that”.