Information for Charities


As the largest single day fundraising event in the South West region, the Bath Half Marathon represents both a valuable revenue stream and a publicity opportunity for hundreds of charities and voluntary groups. If your charity is interested in working with us you can find out more about our charity scheme here
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Charity Applications are now closed for 2024

Charity Applications are now closed for 2024.

Applications for the 2025 Bath Half Marathon will open shortly. 

23-year proven history of delivery for charity fundraising

More than 30 million pounds has been raised by charities at the Bath Half Marathon in the 24 years since we set up our Official Race Charity Scheme in 2000.

As the largest single day fundraising event in the South West region, the BATHALF represents a valuable revenue stream for hundreds of charities and voluntary groups.

Participation in the event also helps raise the public profile of charities, particularly local smaller charities and voluntary groups supporting less popular causes.

  • 24 year proven history of delivery for charity fundraising
  • General public entries sold out every year since 2000
  • Capacity for the event has been capped at 15,000 entries since 2007
  • Lower entry costs and advertising packages for charities across all sectors
  • Consistently high sell on rate – 80% of allocated charity places successfully filled by charities in 2020 (89% in 2019, 92% in 2018)
  • One of the highest fundraising returns in UK – average £484 page value on JustGiving per place in 2020 (£500 in 2019)
  • Average 3 months exclusive period for charity sales
  • Discounted entries for local charities – 25% below general public entry price
  • No upper limit to the number of charity places, above minimum number of 5
  • No charge for ‘Local Lead Charity’ status
  • Dedicated in-house charity staff – a personal support & enquiries team, on hand from application to race day
  • Long-term relationships with charity partners – 126 race charities in 2022 (142 in 2020)

Our simple proposition:

Through low prices and a low fundraising pledge limit, we incentivise charities to take as many places in the race as possible. This helps us ensure the race sells out each year, therefore maximising the perceived ‘added value’ of charity places, and thereby the amount runners are willing to fundraise for their chosen charity.  A winning formula for the last 22 years!

Higher entry costs for national and international charities, plus website advertising charges, are used to subsidise discounted entries for local charities and the operating costs of providing dedicated in-house staff to manage the charity scheme.

Entries to the Bath Half Marathon are heavily oversubscribed every year. One of our main priorities is to ensure maximum benefit from the places reserved for the Official Race Charities, selection of which is determined in accordance with our Charity Selection Criteria, with a particular emphasis on benefit to local charities within the Bath & North East Somerset area (which suffers the inconvenience of the event).

30% of the 15,000 places at the 2023 Bath Half Marathon (35% in 2020, 32% in 2019) were reserved for our Official Race Charities. These places were allocated by each charity to race entrants in return for an undertaking to fundraise for their respective charity.

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