Mind: Running to improve mental health

Mind is a mental health charity providing information and support to millions across England and Wales.

Why Strava

The Mind team wanted to explore alternative channels that empowered them to build awareness around their work and enable them to fundraise in an exciting way.

The team had never considered Strava as a fundraising channel before, but they loved the idea of working on an activation that helped them reach a new audience and simultaneously raise crucial funds to help their work in improving mental health. 

To encourage participants to donate generously, Mind offered Strivers the chance to win a branded vest or Merrell running shoes, depending on their donation amount.

Impact

Through their February Strava challenge, Mind raised over £70,000 from almost 137,000 participants. Mind created a Strava club a few weeks prior to the challenge’s start date, and over the course of February it grew by almost 5,000 members.

The Mind team were really pleased to engage directly with the Strava community and were impressed with how the challenge seemed to resonate directly with their audience – this was reflected through high engagement on club posts.

They also noticed that typical donations per person were larger than expected and that Strivers were more likely to engage with other Mind assets compared to their audience from other channels.

In short, Mind was not only able to raise important funds in the fight for mental health, but they gained a highly engaged and interested community that they can tap into for the long run.

Learnings and next steps

Buoyed by the success of their first Strava challenge, Mind is keen on taking the learnings from this challenge to further understand the role Strava plays in its overall marketing mix.

As a charitable organization, they have to have an eye on both short term fundraising, as well as long-tail brand building that builds goodwill and drives donations further down the line.