A fully branded virtual challenge with Enthuse microsites

The story

About Cystic Fibrosis Trust

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-limiting condition that makes it difficult to breathe and causes vulnerability to infection. A particularly pertinent cause given the battle with Covid-19. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust is a medium-sized, cause and cure charity, and the only UK charity dedicated to fighting for a life unlimited by cystic fibrosis for everyone affected by the condition. The charity’s aim is to create a world where being born with CF no longer means being a lifelong burden of care and an early death. When everyone living with the condition will be able to look forward to a long, healthy life.

Cystic Fibrosis Trust is a leader in branding in the charity sector, with its eye-catching and vibrant yellow colour with a bespoke font and human tone.

Cystic Fibrosis Trust has such a distinctive and memorable brand, it deserves to be spread as wide as possible and to be put at the forefront of everything they do. It’s been a pleasure to help bring the brand to life through the Great Strides, My Way microsite.
Mark Scobie – Head of Sales at Enthuse

The challenge

Taking events virtual through Covid

Cystic Fibrosis Trust was looking to create an end-to-end, fully branded donor experience. Like many charities, Covid-19 impacted CFT’s plans for physical fundraising in 2020, with multiple events being cancelled – including its flagship event, Great Strides, My Way – which has a total annual fundraising goal of £150,000.

Cystic Fibrosis Trust did not want to let down its fundraisers who had already trained and fundraised for its physical events. And when a long-term supporter, Mandy, who had signed up to every Great Strides, My Way event to date, went away and did it virtually on their own, it inspired Cystic Fibrosis Trust to do the whole event virtually.

Great Strides, My Way, is a walking challenge of 40km or 65km which can be completed by individuals or as a team. Previously, the event has taken place in person, across some of the UK’s most breath-taking countryside. The challenge for CFT this time was to make the virtual event fun and engaging and open it up to people globally, so that supporters wanted to complete the distance down their local park or on a treadmill, rather than at the Brecon Beacons or Surrey Hills.

The more approach by Enthuse

Creating a bespoke microsite for Great Strides, My Way

The charity wanted a personalised and branded microsite for Great Strides, My Way, for a truly impactful and seamless online donor experience that maximised supporter engagement.

Cystic Fibrosis Trust had used other digital services for its fundraising in the past and had found that the microsite developed was not as personalised to its brand as they wanted.

For the Enthuse Microsite+, the team at Cystic Fibrosis Trust was involved in the design from the get-go, outlining their thoughts on what they wanted in meetings with the Product Team before creation.

The looping video header instantly grabs people’s attention when they enter the site

Having the opportunity to sit in meetings with the Enthuse team helped us feel really engaged in the entire process of building the bespoke microsite. We were able to articulate what was important to us, what was missing with previous vendors and how we wanted the challenge event site to look and feel for supporters.
Priya Modhvadia – Events Manager at Cystic Fibrosis Trust

As a result, the new microsite incorporated important details that hadn’t been possible with other vendors, such as looping videos in the header to capture people’s attention and build emotional engagement. Enthuse also created a bespoke totaliser in the charity’s branding showing the amount raised for the challenge to date and the number of fundraisers and donations. In addition, CFT utilised Enthuse’s integration with Strava to track fundraisers’ progress, as well as a pre-loaded participation ticketing cost of £35 and a minimum fundraising target of £250. Not to mention a merchandise form for ordering event t-shirts to inspire and motivate participants.

It was important to the charity that people couldn’t tell it was an external site, so it linked smoothly with its fundraising and events pages and didn’t interrupt the user experience. This has been achieved by utilising the charity’s customised font and brand colours and matching its exact website footer, as well as embedding Instagram to encourage social sharing. The result is a branded, white labeled microsite built specifically for its most important fundraising event, that fits seamlessly with the rest of its online presence.

The branded totaliser promotes healthy competition and tracks progress across both challenges

What’s more, data capture was a key consideration for Cystic Fibrosis Trust when they decided to go with Enthuse. With previously used platforms, the Fundraising Team had found they were unable to fully access critical contact details provided by supporters, as some of that information was held by external platforms directly. This meant CFT was unable to send hand-written thank you cards to donors, which was particularly frustrating during the pandemic, as the charity wasn’t able to provide that all-important personal touch in other ways, such as at physical fundraising events. It also meant the Fundraising Team wasn’t in a position to hit its KPIs, as they didn’t have access to supporters’ full contact details in order to encourage them to participate in future events.

An ethical data stance is of the utmost importance to the charity and now, through Enthuse, Cystic Fibrosis Trust is able to customise the opt-in data it receives for each event, enabling the charity to communicate with supporters in a way that best suits them.

The results

Making strides with virtual events

This is the first time the Cystic Fibrosis Trust has taken the Great Strides, My Way event virtual and the early signs are encouraging. With over 100 sign-ups to date (all of which have created an Enthuse fundraising page) and 51 of those using personalised profile pictures, it’s safe to say supporters are engaging with the customisation on offer. CFT has raised over £7,000 through Great Strides, My Way at the time of writing and expects to see strong results following the completion of the event.

The wider aim for CFT going forward is to centralise its fundraising efforts so all customer data runs through the Enthuse platform and every supporter gets the same user journey.

We’re really pleased to be running all of the key components of digital fundraising through Enthuse. We now have a joined-up donor experience that offers fluidity from our website, through to event registration and fundraising. These seamless journeys are more than what other platforms can offer and their event reg platform really is world class.Scarlett Sharpe – Events Manager at Cystic Fibrosis Trust