How Jamia Al-Karam raised 7x more through a virtual Ramadan fundraiser

The story

About Jamia Al-Karam

Jamia Al-Karam is a leading Muslim institution based in the UK. Established in 1985, the charitable organisation caters for the educational and social needs of British Muslims. It aims to produce scholars of Islam who are aware of, and equipped for, the challenges of the modern era and can contribute positively to society.

Charitable donations go towards funding the education of over 100 fully-boarded students who live on-site at the college in Retford, Nottinghamshire. Many of these students go on to provide great service to society, with roles in healthcare, education, social care and law typical for alumni.

The challenge

Using virtual as an alternative to large scale events

In 2020, Jamia Al-Karam had been looking to enter a Tough Mudder event as a fun, in-person way to raise money for its Ramadan fundraising campaign. Unfortunately, due to Covid, the event was cancelled.

With all the social restrictions in place to try and curtail the pandemic, the charity knew it would have to look to run a fundraising event virtually if it was to safely engage its supporters in a charitable activity.

Jamia Al-Karam decided to launch a ‘30 Miles in 30 Days’ virtual event through the Enthuse platform, encouraging people to run or walk the distance in a bid to get active and raise crucial funds.

The consistent, branded user experience offered by Enthuse appealed to the charity, who had previously been using Eventbrite and JustGiving for its fundraising efforts, which it found to be a very manual and disjointed process.

The more approach by Enthuse

Creating a seamless donor experience

Jamia Al-Karam was conscious that if it was to run an event that was entirely virtual, the platform needed to be easy for the charity and its supporters to use and it needed to provide an engaging experience. The Enthuse Fundraising and Events package was ideal for this purpose as it meant supporters could sign up and fundraise through one, branded platform for an uninterrupted user journey.

The charity was able to use the event registration function to provide a clear call to action for its supporters, with all the key event details housed in one place in the event registration form. Branded in the charity’s colours, the event registration page included the bespoke event poster as the main image as well as the necessary fundraising information for the 30 Miles in 30 Days challenge in the bio.

Jamia Al-Karam was able to incorporate its event artwork into the fundraising pages and the event registration form.

Once a supporter had completed the event registration process they were automatically taken to a branded event fundraising page so they could tell their fundraising story with text, imagery and video, share with their network and start fundraising. This 100% fundraising page activation was very important to Jamia Al-Karam as the charity was keen to prevent fundraiser drop-off and wanted a consistent user journey without disruption.

The fundraising pages themselves were equipped with a Strava integration so fundraisers could track and share all their activity on their page. This will have almost certainly encouraged further donations on the page, as people could see the work that was going into the fundraising campaign via the Strava maps.

The Enthuse fundraising pages also came equipped with a leaderboards function. This gave fundraisers the opportunity to see how they ranked against others and encouraged a sense of healthy competition. In fact, when the founder himself was the first to hit the 30 mile target, this spurred on everyone else to amass as much distance as they could, as quickly as possible; replicating that race day spirit.

By taking fundraising virtual, Jamia Al-Karam was able to increase its number of participants.

This set the tone for a highly engaging and successful virtual Ramadan fundraiser that provided vital funds in place of an in-person event.

The Strava integration in the fundraising pages worked really well and we really value the 100% fundraising page activation rate. What’s more, the leaderboards were perfect for adding an element of healthy competition.
Junaid Pirzada – Fundraiser at Jamia Al-Karam

The results

Raising 36k in donations against a £30k target

Jamia Al-Karam’s ‘30 Miles in 30 Days’ Ramadan virtual run proved to be a huge success. Initially, the charity had set an overall fundraising target of £5k but such were the levels of engagement in the virtual event, this was continually increased, eventually culminating in a much larger target of £30k.

In the end, even the £30k target was surpassed, with the charity raising £36k in donations through the virtual event in total. It wasn’t just the financial target that was beaten, either. The target distance of 1,000 miles collectively was more than doubled, reaching 2,472 miles after the 30 days.

The fact the event was virtual and people’s participation wasn’t limited by geography also had a positive impact on campaign performance. Usually, in-person fundraising events for Jamia Al-Karam draw about 10-15 fundraisers, while this virtual event saw 56 people fundraise for the cause. The charity also saw donations from all over the UK and other countries in Europe, too.
Such was the success of the event, the charity added Enthuse Donations to its fundraising package, to create that holistic user experience it sought after, allowing supporters to go through the entire fundraising journey as though they never left the charity’s website.

Enthuse makes it easy to set-up and manage the entire virtual event process. We were able to reduce admin and create a strong, consistent user experience using the platform.
Junaid Pirzada – Fundraiser at Jamia Al-Karam