13 Years Experience
OVER £20 MILLION Raised For Charity
12,000 Challenge Participants
24/7 Customer Support
Carbon Neutral By 2021
pARTNERING WITH CHOOSE A CHALLENGE
We love to work with our charities to create meaningful, lasting relationships. By giving our charity challenge participants the experience of a lifetime, we encourage them to become lifelong supporters of their charity, as well as avid adventure-seekers.
There are three partnership types we offer: Open, Bespoke and Peak. Each partnership type is designed to suit your charity’s specific needs.
Watch the video to get an insight into the three types of partnership we offer, and read more below.
In each section below you can also apply to take the next steps towards a lasting and productive partnership with Choose a Challenge!
Your supporters want to take on a challenge event in aid of your cause.
You want to work together in the university student fundraising sphere.
You want to set up a bespoke challenge event exclusively for your supporters.
OPEN PARTNERSHIPS
We have a range of unforgettable open challenges which are designed, run and marketed by us. By registering your charity as a partner with us you will be able to promote any of these open challenge events to your supporters. We will promote your cause on our website (and you will have your very own landing page too) and those looking to sign up to a challenge who are unsure of who to support will have the option to sign up for you.
If a fundraiser enquires about joining an event on your behalf, we’ll be there to support them on their journey and plan their trip from start to finish, all you’ll need to do is get in touch and offer your fundraising support, then we can take care of everything else.
When promoting our challenges on your own website, we will provide you with free marketing materials to get you started, including images, videos and challenge information packs.
For hassle-free fundraising with an operations partner who looks after all trip planning, logistics and customer care, look no further! We want to help you raise thousands of pounds for your cause and send your supporters on the challenge of a lifetime.
FIND OUT MORE BY FILLING IN THE FORM BELOW
BESPOKE PARTNERSHIPS
If you have a unique challenge that you would love to offer your supporters, then we can make your dream adventure a reality! At Choose a Challenge, we understand that one size doesn’t fit all, and you may want to find the perfect trip for your group.
Our team of experts can help plan your event from start to finish, choose from one of our tried and tested itineraries or try something new! We offer competitive prices, excellent value and fantastic customer satisfaction and can make your journey as smooth as possible, plus:
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Full account management, including marketing, admin, ops and customer care support
Information evenings and drop in days, where we can come and present the challenge to your supporters and help you get people on board
Free rep place
ABTA and ATOL protection
Carbon offsetting
Promotional materials including challenge info packs, videos and images
So if you want to take your team trekking through the Alps, hiking through Iceland or cycling through Vietnam - let’s bring your idea to life!
PEAK PARTNERSHIPS
Join us as a peak partner to onboard a number of university campuses to support your cause with the potential to raise £20,000, increasing year on year depending on the length of partnership. In 2019 we worked with 55 accounts on over 100 events taking over 1,000 students on life changing challenges and raising over £1,500,000 for our charity partners and from 2018/19 our highest earning charity raised over £630,000 through student fundraising challenges - this could be you!
In 2020 we are aiming to become B-Corp certified, make significant progress to become Net Zero and grow our participant number, increasing our campus accounts through new partnerships - and we would love for you to be a part of this exciting journey.
“Choose a Challenge have shown incredible passion and knowledge for supporting students through recruitment and fundraising. Through regular communication and feedback, they’ve helped us to effectively reach out to the student audience in our first year of partnership”
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As a peak partner, we will support you by:
Providing a dedicated account manager for each University partner account.
Organising, promoting and running information meetings on campuses in the UK and Ireland.
Attending Freshers Fairs on campuses in the UK and Ireland.
Engaging in support, advice, and guidance via Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.
Providing support, advice, and guidance via our bespoke RAG and Challenge Leader Forums, as well as Challenges Newsletters.
Assisting with recruitment activities via our Challenge Leader Hub, Challenge Leader Resources and Challenge Leader Blog website pages.
A training day or webinar for challenge leaders.
Organising follow-up activities, including email campaigns, SMS campaigns and phone calls to leads.
In return, you would attend information meetings and Freshers Fairs alongside us on campuses in the UK and Ireland, offer support, advice and guidance to challenge leaders and offer a training day or webinar for challenge leaders to learn about the charity and how you can support with fundraising.
As a peak partner you will benefit from:
Access to our student audience
Open student bookings
Open public bookings
Requesting student bespoke bookings
Marketing and promotions
Choose a Challenge team support
Choose a Challenge mailing list
A three year partnership
“Over the last year Choose a Challenge have provided a fantastic service for The Children’s Society and for our participants. For us, they are not just a logistics company, they are a company that provides support, advice, and they genuinely care for their students and the causes they help. It is clear they put students and charities at the heart of their business.
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WHAT SORT OF COMMITMENT IS INVOLVED?
Working with charities, we understand that often fundraisers are pushed to meet expanding targets, and staff time is often the most valuable commodity. So we take a lot of the hard work out of managing a challenge team.
Our team holds expertise in marketing and participant care and naturally takes on full liability for the challenge events themselves.
DO WE ALREADY NEED TO HAVE OUR OWN PEER-TO-PEER EVENTS?
If you already have an established peer-to-peer support network within your charity, you will have all the skills and experience to fit our participants seamlessly into your current supporter care offering.
If not, don't worry! As long as you are passionate about providing quality care to our participants we'll work with you to develop your P2P offering over the partnership.
AS A PARTNER, DO WE NEED TO WORK IN THE STUDENT SECTOR?
No - we offer both student and open challenges, so you can promote to the general public too. Plus, the Choose a Challenge team are constantly working away at securing new university relationships across the country and further afield, so while having pre-established student links is a bonus, it’s certainly not a requirement and you can promote our challenges to your fundraisers from all walks of life.
HOW ETHICAL ARE YOUR CHALLENGES?
In an ideal world, every penny raised for charity would go towards the cause, however, this is never going to be a realistic aim. We very clearly market our challenges as 50:50 fundraising and costs. We have no hidden fees or charges and pride ourselves on holding an ethical and transparent travel and sales policy when it comes to working with our suppliers and clients. Find out more here.
GENERAL FAQ’S
How do we become listed on the Choose a Challenge website?
All you need to do to join us as an open partner, and get your own landing page on the Choose a Challenge website, is register your charity here. Once you’re registered we will send you everything you need to get started and to begin to promote our challenges on your website, including trip images, videos, information packs and itineraries and we'll create your landing page!
What does this cost?
By registering your charity as a partner with us you will be able to promote any of our challenge events to your supporters with no financial commitment or upfront costs. It is completely free to join us as an open partner.
Will you tell me if someone signs up to a challenge on our behalf?
As soon as someone signs up for a challenge for your cause you will be notified by email. You will then be able to get in touch with your new participant directly! We will keep your adventurer up to date with challenge news and communications relating to their trip, but we would always encourage the charity to offer them any fundraising support and advice.
How will participants sign up to challenges for us?
Participants can either find you by visiting our website and choosing you as a charity from our causes page or via your website and challenge promotions. We will send you information packs, images, videos and booking links to ensure you are prepared to market the events. Plus, when you sign up as an open, bespoke or peak partner with us we will make the announcement on our social media channels so our participants know they have the option to fundraise on your behalf too!
How does trip payment work?
Participants will need to pay their registration fee upon signing up and pick their fundraising plan. They can choose to pay an additional installment towards their trip costs in exchange for a reduction in their fundraising target - we call this a ‘flexi payment’.
They can choose to:
SELF-FUND: pay their registration fee and make a full trip balance payment (cost depends on trip).
FLEXI PAYMENT: they pick how much from three payment options - paid 10 weeks before departure. Their flexi payment will automatically customise their fundraising target and amounts vary depending on trip. You can find all of our trips and payments here.
When taking on a challenge with us, participants can rest assured that all of the money they fundraise throughout the year will go directly to you, the charity. Once they hit that all important fundraising target and their place on the challenge is confirmed, the charity will use this money to cover the remaining costs of their challenge as well as to further the vital services that you provide. All of our challenges operate on a minimum 50:50 cost to donation ratio and 100% of any Gift Aid or funds that they raise above their target will stay with you, their charity.
What happens if our participants don't hit their target?
Unfortunately, if your participants do not hit their minimum sponsorship requirement then they will not be able to take part in the challenge. We encourage participants who are concerned about hitting their targets to get in touch with you, the charity, directly for any tips, ideas, fundraising advice and support.
We make all participants aware of this when they sign up, and do let them know that they can utilise our flexible payment arrangements. If, for example, is it not looking likely that they will reach their full fundraising amount then they can consider reducing their overall target with one of our flexi-payment options which would be payable to Choose a Challenge at 10 weeks before departure (this means they pay some of the total amount themselves to lower their fundraising target.) Details will be included in the participants Challenge Info Pack on how they can do this.
If, despite support from Choose a Challenge and their charity, they are still unable to meet their target then they will be able to defer to next year and will be required to pay a deferral fee to do so.
Our challenges are designed to be achievable and with good time management, and active engagement with you, the charity, these trips are accessible to all.
What's included in each challenge?
Inclusions on each challenge do vary. On our overseas events you can expect to find:
- International flights
- Transfers
- Accommodation
- Most meals
- All entrance fees
- Taxes, permits and vehicles
- Services of professional English-speaking guides at all times
- Drinking water
- 24/7 support and emergency line available throughout itinerary Equipment hire facilities
- All camping equipment excluding sleeping bag and roll mat
- Porter service
And included on our UK Three Peaks challenge:
- Coach transport throughout the challenge
- Accommodation before your challenge
- Meals as stated in the itinerary
- Drinking water
- Fully qualified mountain guides
- 24/7 support and emergency line available throughout the trip
- Full support from Choose a Challenge staff throughout the trip
Do we need to buy spaces or packages for open events?
For our open challenges you simply need to commit to promoting our adventures to your supporters on your website and through your marketing, but there are no upfront costs or package commitments, it's completely free to promote our events! We can offer plenty of support and promotional materials to encourage your fundraisers to sign up to the challenge of a lifetime for you!
Do Choose a Challenge assist fundraisers who are struggling to reach their targets?
Although many of our staff have experience of fundraising for challenges, and we do have a library of blog posts filled with tips, fundraising ideas and advice that we do share with our adventurers, if participants have any questions or difficulties with their fundraising, we do encourage them to contact you, the charity, directly. We know you are the experts when it comes to helping participants reach their fundraising target, and will be able to help by answering any questions they may have, putting together a fundraising plan or offering advice from previous experience.
How do Choose a Challenge keep in touch with the charity?
We will let you know as soon as someone has signed up for a challenge on your behalf and you will get regular emails from the team with trip updates and news.
If you choose to become a peak partner or take on a bespoke challenge with us, then you will have a dedicated account manager who will arrange regular meetings with a key charity contact to ensure the success of your challenge!
You will also receive a quarterly newsletter and group email updates (e.g. if we update a policy or procedure relevant to all charities, or recruitment/trip-related updates). We also provide post-trip ops reports shortly after each event.
How does bespoke event costing work?
Our bespoke events are costed individually based on several factors. These will take into account the demographics of your group and their needs, and may include for example: the quality of accommodation, specific itinerary and inclusions, costs for charity representative spaces on the trip, additional safety briefings delivered at your office, flight routings and any other trip elements which constitute your bespoke trip.
Will my bespoke event have a leader and a doctor?
As standard, all of our bespoke trips are accompanied by a trained medical doctor, acting as an expedition leader. Depending on your requirements, we can also include a charity representative space on the trip, and occasionally we send our own staff members in addition.
Will you offer marketing and fundraising support for bespoke events?
We believe that it's important for the charity to engage with your supporter network and market your fantastic bespoke challenge to your loyal supporters whilst our team take care of designing, planning, running and managing the admin of your bespoke adventures. However, we will be able to send you plenty of images, videos, your challenge info pack, booking link and blog posts to use in your marketing and promotions.
We will also announce the partnership on our social media challenges, will share any updates with our followers and will create a landing page for your cause on our website. You will also feature in our monthly newsletter and we can arrange meetings with our ops and marketing teams if you need any extra support.
As with our open events, we do offer participants advice and lots of encouragement when it comes to fundraising, but we do think it's very important for the charity to offer fundraising support and work closely with their participants on their fundraising journey.
For bespoke events, who handles the administration?
We like to think of bespoke events as very much being your very own, unique challenge that we are simply planning for you. It's your trip and you are free to brand and market the adventure however you wish! Therefore, we encourage you to manage all of the communications with your supporters so that you can not only build the relationship with them, but so that you can take ownership of the event and promote the challenge with your own branding and charity tone of voice.
We can offer any additional support that you require and are able to get in touch with participants about any logistical elements of the trip and answer any questions your participants may have too. You can decide the level of support and involvement we have in your event.
