Breaking with its tradition of having one lead charity will allow the race to spread the fundraising opportunity wider as well as broaden the appeal to different groups of runners.

“We want to help as many charities as possible raise as much as they possibly can.” explained Kayley Waller, Charity Director at Running High Events “We know from experience our main lead charity typically enjoys a significant increase in reserved places and a huge uplift in funding and we believe we can replicate this across all four charities.  Each of the lead charities are allocated 300 places for fundraising which is more than the other charities and with the event being a sell-out, as well as capped at 15,000 entries it will help these four charities attract runners and create more funds.”

The Bath Half is the largest charity fundraising event in the South West, with more than 500 charities involved in fundraising from runners’ places.  Since 2000, over £25 million has been raised for charities from the event.  The average amount raised by individual fundraisers through JustGiving was £520 in 2017, which ranks the Bath Half Marathon in the top three running events in the UK and the top race outside London for average per head fundraising.

Andrew Taylor, Race Director of the Bath Half said “We spoke to a lot of charities before making this decision and the feedback was this would be a welcome move.   Ultimately, we are trying to ensure that as many charities benefit from the race as possible and it really feels like best practice to share the lead charity spot with more than one good cause.  We still intend to have one official local charity partner which we will announce shortly.”

More information about all four of the official lead charities can be found on the following websites www.alzheimer.org.uk www.cancerresearchuk.org  www.nspcc.org.uk, and www.prostatecanceruk.org