The story
About Cancer Research Wales
Founded in 1966, Cancer Research Wales (CRW) has a clear mission: to ensure the people of Wales do not have to accept cancer as a life-limiting disease.
The charity has been a driving force behind world class cancer research in the region since its inception. And as Wales’s only independent cancer research charity, CRW has funded more than £30 million of research in the country’s universities and hospitals.
The team is made up of approximately 50 staff and people’s donations help to fund four main areas; discovery and translational research, early diagnosis and screening, better treatments and health systems, and outcomes research.
The need
Maximising fundraising for the Cardiff Half
Cancer Research Wales regularly has participants fundraising for the charity at the Cardiff Half, with 850 doing so at the 2025 event – making it an important part of its annual fundraising and awareness efforts.
As a result, maximising the amount raised at the 2025 Cardiff Half was a priority for CRW. The charity wanted to ensure that the journey from event sign-up to fundraising was easy for its runners and they wanted to offer a consistent participant experience while raising as much as possible.
CRW opted to make use of the official fundraising platform, Enthuse to meet those needs.
The Enthuse approach
From event registration to fundraising
One of the main considerations a charity has when taking part in a mass participation event is the logistics of managing all the different fundraisers. Especially for a charity like Cancer Research Wales, that has a small Events Fundraising Team and had 850 people taking part. Thankfully for CRW, when participants applied to run for their cause they were immediately registered through the Cardiff Half and automatically pushed through to Enthuse to create their branded fundraising page. Guaranteeing a 100% page creation rate.
The charity’s staff found this process really helpful as it meant they could manage their runners’ in a central location and provide a consistent participant experience. It was also a great time saver, too. Keeping tabs on fundraisers across multiple fundraising platforms can be a manual and time-consuming process. More than that, it also makes it harder to ensure every participant gets the same messaging, at the same time.
The charity wanted to ensure fundraising was nice and simple for participants
Thanks to the integration between Enthuse and Cardiff Half, CRW was able to prevent fundraising page duplication. This is because participants automatically had an official, branded fundraising page created for them when their entry to the Cardiff Half was confirmed. As a result, CRW could send out runners’ pages as part of their welcome emails, setting them up to log donations on their page nice and early.
Another benefit of using Enthuse for the 2025 Cardiff Half was the co-branded fundraising pages. As mentioned, every CRW participant had a fundraising page created for them upon sign-up for the event. This removed a barrier to fundraising but also, ensured the page looked the part. Co-branded with the event organiser and the charity, participants’ had official fundraising pages with the charity’s logo and colours front and centre. This is great for a charity like CRW where growing brand awareness and building long-term supporter relationships are part of their wider objectives.
The charity was also keen to encourage fundraising page best practice and included this advice as part of their regular emails with participants. Fundraisers were able to add a profile picture, write about why they were taking part, as well as post updates and thank supporters under their donations. CRW encouraged participants to make use of the Strava integration too, so that supporters could see their progress in real-time. Many also joined the TeamCRW Strava group which added to the sense of community and team spirit.
CRW worked hard to create a sense of community among its fundraisers
When it came to stewardship, CRW ran a brilliant programme – keeping their fundraisers informed and motivated throughout their training schedule and beyond. The charity was in regular contact with participants over email, from welcome emails to monthly check-ins. The charity also sent individual emails to celebrate fundraisers that were performing really well and to ask how training was going.
Phone calls, SMS and letters were sent throughout the fundraising journey to check in on participants’ training progress but also as a touchpoint if fundraising was tracking behind expectations, ensuring digital and offline stewardship were in lock step. This was a great way to give people extra encouragement but also to build that relationship between them and the charity.
The comprehensive stewardship combined with automatic fundraising page creation helped ensure collecting donations was synonymous with the event and galvanised participants to collect donations from the off.
The automatic fundraising page creation meant that we could include a link to runners’ pages as part of our welcome emails. This ensured fundraising was front of mind from the start.
Nic Clarke – Events Manager, Cancer Research Wales
Results
Cancer Research Wales had a really successful 2025 Cardiff Half, raising a fantastic £237,000 through the official platform. A brilliant result for a charity looking to maximise its fundraising for one of its most popular events.
With integrated event registration, CRW was able to set its participants up for success with 100% page creation. This meant the charity could manage the event in one central location with a clear view of fundraising performance. The results speak for themself with an average active page value of £453 and the top fundraiser achieving 961% of their target, raising £2,884 in the process.
The 2025 Cardiff Half went smoothly for CRW, raising vital funds to support their research goals while also being a brilliant tool for raising awareness of the work the charity does across Wales.
It’s great to have fundraising pages that are branded to our cause. It helps to ensure we’re more memorable which is important for a charity like ours that relies on donations to fund life-changing research.
Nic Clarke – Events Manager, Cancer Research Wales
