How Mountbatten Isle of Wight doubled activation rates for its flagship event

The story

About Mountbatten Isle of Wight

Founded in 1982, Mountbatten is the Isle of Wight’s only hospice and has more than 400 staff and 600 volunteers. The charity’s mission is to provide excellent care and support for local people living with or affected by death, dying and bereavement across the Isle of Wight.

As well as operating a 16-bed inpatient unit, Mountbatten nurses also support more than 2,200 people every day in their own homes. The charity provides day services and activities too, including art therapy, a lymphoedema service, dementia groups, physiotherapy, spiritual care, as well as psychological and bereavement support.

The charity’s Walk the Wight event has grown into a fundraising staple

The need

Growing fundraising for the Walk the Wight event

Originally established in 1991 as a small team-building exercise for staff at a local builders’ merchants, Walk the Wight has grown to become the charity’s flagship fundraising event as well as the largest walking event of its kind in Europe.

The Walk the Wight event is an epic walk across the beautiful Isle of Wight countryside and offers multiple route options for all ages and abilities. At 26.5 miles there is the Full Walk. For something more manageable, there are two Half Walks (12.5 or 14 miles), or the wheelchair-accessible, pushchair-friendly Flat Walk. There is also a four-mile Schools’ Walk available.

For the 2024 event, Mountbatten Isle of Wight (IW) was keen to ensure the event continued to grow and wanted to make sure that those who signed up to fundraise were as engaged as possible.

The range of routes makes the event accessible for all

The Enthuse approach

A seamless sign up and fundraising experience

Mountbatten IW and Enthuse started working together for the annual Walk the Wight event in 2023, looking to grow it and maximise the amount raised. A key way to achieve this was to make the sign-up process integrated with fundraising, which is why the charity turned to the Enthuse Fundraising and Events solution.

Through Enthuse, Mountbatten IW was able to create a branded event registration form for the event that led straight into fundraising. The registration form enabled the charity to capture the key participant information it needed to put on a strong event: from name and contact details; to merchandise options and chosen distance. This meant the charity could have all the information it needed in one place, making it easier to track and manage the event – and provide a strong stewardship programme.

Mountbatten IW was also able to collect an entry fee at sign up; a £10 flat fee for a ticket, helping it to recoup some of it’s running costs before fundraising had even started. What’s more, the charity decided to include a ‘donation’ button during the event registration process to capture one-off donations from those who were taking part but not fundraising.

Looking ahead, the hospice was keen to continue momentum and added pre-registration for next year’s event into the process. This meant the charity could keep communication channels open with its supporters and was able to offer a discounted entry for early sign-ups when the formal registration process re-opened next time out: a great way to engage with supporters when they’re at their most inspired.

Within the event registration process, Mountbatten IW gave fundraisers the opportunity to cover the platform fees associated with the event and found that a fantastic 73% decided to do so.

Fundraiser engagement was a priority for the charity

With fundraiser engagement being so important to Mountbatten IW, activation rates for Walk the Wight were an area of focus when the charity first started working with Enthuse. That’s why the automatic fundraising page creation after registering for the event has proved so useful. Participants that signed up were immediately provided with a charity-branded fundraising page, ready for them to customise, share and collect donations for the cause straight away. This meant fundraisers had one less step to think about and charity staff wouldn’t need to chase them to get their page set up further down the line.

Lastly, the Enthuse Fundraising solution created a collective, charity-branded event profile page, which all individual fundraising pages linked into. This was equipped with an overall totaliser as well as individual and team leaderboards to inspire friendly competition among fundraisers.

This all contributed to making the event easy for participants to take part in and ultimately led to fundraisers being more engaged.

The automatic fundraising page creation upon sign up is really helpful for encouraging participants to start fundraising from the get-go. It makes it feel like a cohesive experience.
Ashleigh Gibbs – Major Events Fundraising Assistant, Mountbatten

Results

Activation rates doubled!

Before working with Enthuse in 2023, Mountbatten recorded £236,000 worth of income for the 2022 Walk the Wight event. Since then, the flagship event has gone from strength to strength, growing 137% to a fantastic £560,000 in 2024. A real testament to the hospice’s commitment to building Walk the Wight.

In that time, not only has fundraising increased but the number of fundraisers has too; growing 78% from 2022 to 2024. The activation rate for fundraising pages has also doubled in that time, growing from 11% to 22%. A sure sign that the integrated fundraising page creation is making an impact.

Inviting participants to cover platform fees at the point of registration worked really well, saving Mountbatten IW nearly £9,000 in 2024. The charity also saw a further £22,000 raised by inviting participants to donate when they signed up. A great alternative for those who wanted to take part but didn’t want to fundraise.

Overall, the Walk the Wight event has shown terrific year on year growth, with the 2024 event being the biggest and best yet. Not only is the event growing in popularity but increasingly participants are choosing to fundraise – a recipe for success for the hospice.

Pre-registration for next year’s Walk the Wight (the 35th birthday edition) is now open. Register your interest for Walk the Wight 2025 here. The event takes place on Sunday 11th May 2025.

It’s brilliant to see how popular the event has become but also to see the percentage of fundraising pages with donations double in that time.
Ashleigh Gibbs – Major Events Fundraising Assistant, Mountbatten