After the Challenge: Building the Supporter Relationship
Participants who complete a virtual challenge have already done something significant — they committed to a cause, raised money, and stayed engaged for weeks. The relationship you build in the weeks following the challenge is often more valuable than the initial acquisition.
Here’s how to handle that transition well.
Celebrate with specifics, not generalities
Generic thank-yous don’t land the way specific ones do. Tell participants exactly what their collective effort will fund: “Your £50,000 will provide 1,000 children with essential school supplies” connects individual effort to a tangible outcome in a way that “thank you for your amazing support” doesn’t. Share the grand total, but always follow it immediately with what that money does.
Connect individual results to the collective picture too. Participants who see how their personal fundraising contributed to the overall impact are more likely to feel genuine ownership of the success — which matters for everything that comes next.
Keep fundraising open for a short period after the official challenge end, and communicate clearly when it will close. Set expectations: when the final total will be announced, when the Facebook Group will archive, what happens next.
Managing the group at this stage
Archive the group rather than deleting it. Participants may want to revisit photos and memories, and archiving preserves all of that while stopping new activity. Revisiting the group months later — to share an impact report or an invitation to a new challenge — is a low-effort way to reconnect with a warm audience.
Participant spotlights at this stage work better than organisational content. Individual stories, fundraising achievements, and memorable community moments are more compelling than a post from the charity account saying thank you.
Gather feedback while it’s fresh
The best moment to ask for feedback is right after the challenge ends, while the experience is recent and participants are still in a positive frame of mind. A simple SurveyMonkey survey works well — keep it short. The questions worth asking:
What first inspired you to join the challenge? Would you consider supporting us with a monthly donation? Could your workplace be interested in supporting the cause? What other events or challenges would you like to see from us?
Use the responses to personalise follow-up rather than treating everyone identically. Someone who expresses interest in monthly giving should go into a dedicated email sequence about that programme — not onto the general newsletter.
Offer a genuine range of next steps
Different participants will want to stay involved in different ways, and presenting only one option loses people who would have said yes to something else. A menu of options — joining a future challenge, becoming a monthly donor, signing up for a larger event, donating to a specific project, learning about legacy giving, or exploring a workplace partnership — gives people a path that fits their situation.
Stories work particularly well here. A real example of a challenge participant who went on to set up a workplace fundraising partnership makes the idea feel achievable to someone who might otherwise not have considered it.
Opt-in communications
Aim for at least 75% of participants opting in to future communications. If you’re below that, the most likely causes are: asking only once, not explaining what participants will receive by staying in touch, or not offering choices around frequency and content type.
Include opt-in prompts across several of your final communications rather than treating it as a single moment. Explain specifically what they’ll get — impact updates, early access to new events, stories from future participants. Make opting out straightforward; this builds trust rather than eroding it.
Rather than adding everyone directly to your main mailing list, create a short “bridge” email series. This series focuses on challenge impact first and introduces other ways to get involved gradually — it’s a better transition than landing directly in a general newsletter that has no connection to what participants just did.
Handover to your fundraising team
The participants in your challenge are warm leads. Your Individual Giving or fundraising colleagues need to know who they are.
Pass along data on top fundraisers, highly engaged community members, and anyone who expressed interest in monthly giving or other programmes through your survey. These supporters are significantly more likely to convert to long-term donors than cold leads — the relationship work has already been done.
Get the full wrap-up guide
Download the Virtual Challenge Playbook for detailed templates and supporter development strategies, or request a demo to see how GivePanel’s participant tracking supports long-term engagement planning.