Choosing the Right Virtual Challenge
Your choice of challenge concept shapes everything that follows. A well-chosen activity can attract hundreds of engaged participants; a poorly chosen one can leave you with low registrations regardless of your marketing budget.
Three things tend to separate challenges that work from those that don’t: simplicity, achievability, and broad appeal.
Simplicity first
If someone can’t understand your challenge concept while scrolling past your ad, it won’t convert. That’s not a marketing problem — it’s a concept problem. “Run 100 miles in November” lands immediately. “Join our mindful movement journey for a month of wellbeing” doesn’t.
Your challenge name should do most of the work. If you need a sentence to explain it, simplify it.
Achievability and the sponsorship question
A challenge needs to feel hard enough to be worth sponsoring, but not so difficult that it puts people off signing up. Too easy and fundraising suffers because participants don’t feel they’ve earned sponsorship; too difficult and registration numbers take the hit.
Daily targets tend to get this balance right. “Run 3km every day for a month” feels more achievable than “Run 90km this month,” even though they’re the same distance — and the daily commitment tends to generate higher average donations, as participants feel a stronger sense of accountability.
Does it have broad appeal?
A challenge doesn’t need to appeal to everyone, but it does need to appeal to enough people to justify the advertising spend. The question isn’t just whether the activity connects to your cause — it’s whether it fits naturally into your target audience’s existing life.
What the data shows on challenge types
Distance-based challenges are the most consistent performers. Walking challenges, particularly formats like “10,000 steps a day for a month” or “Walk 100 miles in October,” have the widest demographic reach. They resonate across age groups and fitness levels, with particular strength among middle-aged women, older men, and parents. Running challenges attract a broader mix of ages and genders, with formats like “100 miles in a month” continuing to perform well. Cycling works particularly effectively with older male audiences, where the perceived difficulty of the activity makes it feel sponsorship-worthy.
Strength-based challenges like press-ups and squats tend to attract younger, more fitness-focused participants with highly engaged social networks. As our 2025 data showed, press-up challenges generated the highest average funds raised per campaign despite lower overall participation — a different kind of return to walking challenges, but a valuable one.
Swimming challenges can perform exceptionally well in regions where the activity is seen as particularly demanding. Winter sea swims in Ireland are a good example: the perceived difficulty supports fundraising even with smaller participant numbers.
When cause-specific challenges work
Activity-cause alignment can be powerful when the connection feels natural — a knitting challenge for an arthritis charity, a reading challenge for a literacy organisation, a gardening challenge for an environmental cause. These work best when your existing supporter base already has an affinity for the activity. The risk is forcing a connection that feels contrived. If you’re choosing between a strong, broadly appealing concept and a cause-aligned one that’s harder to explain, the simpler concept usually wins.
Testing before you commit
Before building a full campaign around a new challenge type, it’s worth testing the concept at smaller scale. Survey existing supporters about their interest in different activities. Look at what similar organisations have run. Ask yourself whether this challenge fits naturally into your target audience’s routine, whether you can explain it in one sentence, and whether it’s something a participant would willingly tell their friends about.
A challenge that clears all three of those questions is worth investing in; one that struggles on any of them is worth reconsidering first.
Want to talk through challenge concepts for your next campaign? Book a demo at givepanel.com/demo and we can walk you through what’s worked for similar organisations.