Archive for the 'Competitions' Category

Win a place in the Zest Challenge

Zest Challenge

The Zest Challenge 2013 with Alpro is a unique, women-only event. Rather than just running your way round a course, they’ll have you scrambling over hay bales, under nets and through tyres, negotiating balance beams and flying down a giant water slide.

The event caters for varying abilities with a 5km and 10km distance. And due to the fantastic success of the 2012 event, the Zest Challenge will have two locations for 2013 so why not join in at Hambledon Estate, near Henley-on-Thames in Berkshire, on 15 June 2013, or at Catton Hall, Derbyshire, on 22 June 2013.

Take part in this event…

Tickets cost £25 for the 5k race, or £30 for the 10k race and will be allocated on a first come first served basis. The ticket price includes access to the event, a goody bag and medal.

You can sign up here but hurry! You’ve only got until the 25 May to be able to register enter.

Win a Place in the Zest Challenge…

Our friends at Zest have two free places up for grabs, at each location. To be in a chance to win just answer the following questions and email your answers vmgmarketing@virginmoney.com, with Zest Challenge in the subject line, by midnight 23 May:

  1. Who is the lead sponsor for the Zest Challenge?
  2. Name the two counties which host the Zest Challenge?

Terms and conditions apply.

Got a place already?

If you’ve already got your own place in Zest Challenge, and haven’t created your Virgin Money Giving fundraising page yet you can get started right here for either Zest Challenge Derbyshire or  Zest Challenge Berkshire and have your page collecting donations in just a few minutes.

Win a free place on Nightrider London a 100km moonlit bike ride – 8/9 June 2013

Night Rider London

If you’ve been inspired to get on your bike following the fantastic summer of cycling last year Nightrider™ London could be the event for you.

The 100km route takes in London’s major landmarks: Tower Bridge, a deserted ‘City of London’, Canary Wharf, Piccadilly Circus, the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and more…. The circular itinerary is clearly sign-posted so you can cycle at your own pace. And there’s full support and back up around the course.

If you’re interested you can sign up on your own, with a friend or in a team. Choose from over 160 charities to support. For full details of the event and to select the charity you’ll ride for visit www.nightrider.org.uk.

But hurry! You’ve only got until the 10 May to be able to register to ride for charity.

Win a Place on Nightrider™ London 2013

Our friends at Classic Tours who organise Nightrider™ have one free place up for grabs. To be in a chance to win just answer the following questions and email your answers to nightrider@classictours.co.uk by midnight 7 May 2013:

  1.  How far is the Nightrider™ route?
  2.  Name one of the start points.
  3. Which French city will host Nightrider™ this year?

By entering the competition you agree that the organisers Classic Tours may contact you by email about their charity challenges. They will not pass your details to any third parties.  The  winner will be notified via email on the 8 May and they will need to register before the 10 May to claim their free entry. The Nightrider registration will close on the 10 May, so if the winner does not register before then they will not be able to take part.

Got a place already?

If you’ve already got your own place in Nightrider London, and haven’t created your Virgin Money Giving fundraising page yet you can get started right here and have your page collecting donations in just a few minutes.

Win £500 for your charity in our Summer of Love

The Summer of Love

This summer we’re spreading the love by giving away £2,000 in donations to help you raise more for the charities close to your heart.

Whether you’re taking part in an organised event or your own personal challenge, you can enter the prize draw every month throughout the summer to win a £500 donation to your fundraising page.

For every donation you receive on your page in May, June, July & August you’ll automatically receive one entry into a prize draw for that month. There’s £500 up for grabs each month throughout the draw, and because every donation gets you one entry, the more donations you receive the more chance you’ll have of winning.

If you’re already got your fundraising page set up, you can still take part, every donation you receive during the competition period will still gain you an entry.

So get yourself in the mood for the Summer of Love and set up your fundraising page. Your charity could soon be £500 better off terms and conditions apply.

And don’y forget, your fundraising is in safe hands with us, Virgin Money Giving is 100% not-for-profit so whether you win a donation or not, more of the money you raise will go to charity. In fact since launch, £5 million more was raised, thanks to fundraisers choosing Virgin Money Giving over JustGiving.*

Good luck!

*Figures based on a comparison of the cost of service and transaction costs of Virgin Money Giving with JustGiving, based on Virgin Money Giving’s fundraising total since launch in October 2009 up to 31 December 2012.

Win £250 for your charity – on stage at the Virgin London Marathon Expo

Ore Oduba on stage

If you’ve already collected your 2013 Virgin London Marathon race number, you might have spent some time at the ‘Pasta Party’ in the Virgin area at Expo.

All through the day a number of speakers take to the stage giving you race details, hydration advice, and pacer information to help you get around (full schedule here) including a number of celeb runners. You might have caught our ‘Higher or Lower’ game too.

Higher Lower participants

Anyone who’s running can take part, you just need to pick up one of the huge red arrows being handed out as the game starts. our host Ore Oduba (from BBC Sport and Newsround) will be on stage guiding you though the game – simply guess whether the next runner number shown on the big screen will be higher or lower than the last one using your arrow.

The last runner left in the game will receive a £250 donation to the charity of their choice.

There’s still time to win, the approx timings for Friday & Saturday’s ‘Higher or Lower’ games are below (listen out for announcements in the Expo).

  • Friday – 13:25
  • Friday – 16:45
  • Friday – 18:35
  • Saturday – 11:40
  • Saturday – 13.00
  • Saturday – 15:10

Terms and Conditions apply (which are printed on the arrows in Expo).

An update on ‘Great Friday’ matched donations

PayPal

Great Friday and our PayPal matched donations promotion before the Bank Holiday weekend was hugely popular. Lots and lots of people donated, which means a fantastic amount more has been raised for charity on Good Friday than we’ve seen in previous years through Virgin Money Giving.

Looking through the donations so many donors stayed up until midnight to support their Virgin London Marathon runner. Not only were they up late, but some were exceptionally generous.

This meant the pot of money available from PayPal was allocated in just 2 minutes!

All eligible matched donations were awarded on a ‘first donation made, first donations matched’ basis. With the largest amount donated by an individual being £1000, the average matched donation amount was also high being £271!

A huge well done to everyone who promoted their fundraising page to their friends and family on Good Friday, whether your donation was matched or not, hopefully you’re all a lot closer to your Marathon charity fundraising targets!

And finally a big thank you to PayPal for matching the donations for us.

Virgin London Marathon – VIP Start Upgrade Winners

Virgin London Marathon Green Start

You may remember back in January we launched a competition to upgrade a number of runners to the Virgin London Marathon Green Start (where all the celebs and VIPs start from).

We’re very excited to announce our confirmed winners are:

Shaun Hulme – Running for Asthma UK

Jonny Went – Running for Asthma UK

Laurie Boult – Running for Age UK & Youthnet in team Run for It

Jon Butcher – Running for Children with Cancer UK

Sarah Vowles – Running for Save the Children

Congratulations everyone!

We look forward to seeing you all on the day and best of luck with both your fundraising and marathon training!

You Picked them – Here’s your ultimate training playlist

Tweet your motivational training track. Help us build the ultimate #VMGPlaylist & win an iPod Nano

Last month we asked you to tell us what your motivational running tracks were to help us put together the Ultimate Training Playlist.

And tweet them in you did. We’ve collected them all together and added them to a playlist where you can listen to each track in full. Not every song was available on Spotify, but we’ve added on the ones that were. And of course every suggestion was eligible for entry into our competition to win an iPod Nano with Incase Armband Pro.

The winner of the iPod Nano, whose song was selected at random from all entries, is Laurence Carver @laurence_carver for his suggestion of The Mad Capsule Markets by Pulse.

And the prize for the worst selected track (and in much need of upgrading their running music collection) is Krystina Smith @kryssmith for picking Something Kinda Ooooh by Girls Aloud. Krystina will receive an iPod shuffle and £15 iTunes voucher to “improve” her music collection with some new tunes.

If you’d like to see all the entered tracks, you can view them on the 2013 Virgin Money Giving Ultimate Training Tracks Playlist. And if you don’t already have one, you can sign up for a free account and download Spotify here.

Help us build the ‘Ultimate Training Playlist’

Tweet your motivational  training track. Help us build the ultimate #VMGPlaylist & win an iPod Nano

Whether you’ve recently completed your event or you’ve got something challenging planned for 2013 we know that music can play a huge part in helping you train, prepare, and motivate yourself – whether you’re running a Marathon, cycling from London to Paris or Hiking up a mountain.

To help other fundraisers we want to create the ultimate training playlist based on the songs that get you going.

And by suggesting a track we’ll enter you into a prize draw to win an iPod Nano and an Incase Sports Armband Pro so your tunes can go with you what ever event you’re doing.

To enter all you need to do is:

  1. Follow @vmgiving on twitter
  2. Post a tweet with the artist and track name of your training track making sure you include our twitter id @vmgiving and the hashtag #VMGPlaylist.

For example you might like to tweet something like:

Tweet

We’ll be collating together all the entries and publishing the ultimate training playlist on Spotify so you can listen to everyone else’s suggestions too (we’ve started with a few of our own top tracks already).

Also as a runner’s up prize we’ve got an iPod Shuffle and £15 iTunes voucher for the worst track as judged by us at Virgin Money Giving (so you can maybe put right your music collection with some suggestions from the playlist).

So what are you waiting for – tweet us your track now.

Terms and conditions

1. Eligibility

Entry to the Virgin Money Giving Ultimate Playlist competition (“Competition”) is open to UK residents aged 18 and over.

2. Entry Periods

The entry period for the Competition will close at midnight on 28 February 2013.

The Promoter reserves the right to modify, terminate, suspend or extend the Competition at any time without prior notice.

3. To Enter

a)      Entrants can enter the Competition by tweeting their chosen track, the #VMGPlaylist hashtag and the @vmgiving twitter ID before midnight on 28 February 2013.

b)      Only one entry per person is permitted. Third party entries will not be accepted.

4. The Prizes

a)      One winner will be drawn at random from all qualifying entrants.   The Competition will be drawn before midnight on 9 March 2013 and winners will be notified via twitter by midnight on 10 March 2013.

b)      The winner will receive a 7th Generation 16GB iPod Nano and an Incase Sports Armband Pro for iPod Nano.

c)       One runner-up will be chosen from all qualifying entrants at the discretion of the Promoter.  No further correspondence will be entered into by the Promoter.

d)      The runner-up will receive 4th Generation 2GB iPod Shuffle and a £15 iTunes voucher.

e)      The winner and the runner-up agree to provide the Promoter with their name, age and county of residence.

f)       Prizes may be subject to further Terms & Conditions.

g)      The prizes are non-transferable and no cash alternative will be offered.

h)      The Promoter reserves the right to replace the prizes with alternatives should circumstances make this necessary.

5. Acceptance by Entrants

a)      By entering the Competition entrants accept these Terms and Conditions and agree to be bound by them and any subsequent decisions by the Promoter under these Terms and Conditions.

b)      The winners agree to allow the Promoter to publish their name, age and county of residence on the Promoter’s website and social media platforms and to use their details for advertising and/or promotional purposes.

6. Force Majeure

Events may occur which render the Competition itself or the awarding of the prizes impossible due to reasons beyond the control of the Promoter and, accordingly, the Promoter may in its absolute discretion vary or amend the Competition and entrants agree that no liability shall attach to the Promoter as a result thereof.

7. Jurisdiction

Entrants agree that the Competition is governed, interpreted and enforced by the laws of England and Wales and by entering, all entrants submit to the jurisdiction of the Courts of England and Wales.

8. Personal Information

Personal information provided by entrants will also be used to administer the Competition.

9. Details of the Promoter

Virgin Money Giving Limited is a company registered in England and Wales under company number 02733492, whose registered office is at Discovery House, Whiting Road, Norwich, NR4 6EJ (“Promoter”).

Make Your Mark – the final winner

MYMv2A huge congratulations to Tricia Bath from Maidstone – our final winner of the Make Your Mark competition held in 2012.

Tricia was fundraising for Homeless Charity Crisis, setting up a Virgin Money Giving page but also volunteering her time during Christmas.

Crisis at Christmas is really popular. I didn’t register my interest quick enough in 2011, so last year I was determined and registered in November.”

Tricia was stationed at The Hub, a Crisis distribution centre in Bermondsey, south east London.

She spent the day distributing items to Crisis Skylight centres all over London as one of 33 volunteer drivers.

“I drove everything from small cars to large refrigeration vehicles.

“We were transporting all sorts – food, donated clothing, even massage tables people had loaned out for the cause so the charity clients could get a treatment if they wanted.

“The scheme is brilliant because over five days it gives the clients a thorough health check and access to a few luxuries, which is the sort of thing we take for granted. All in all it was really satisfying and I would recommend it to anyone. I’m going to register in September this year to make sure I can do it again this Christmas.

“I was absolutely amazed to hear that I’d won the donation from Virgin Money Giving, especially as I hadn’t even realised there was a prize draw happening!

It was Crisis that had suggested I fundraise through Virgin Money Giving, so I’m over the moon, and look forward to volunteering again next Christmas.”

Well done to Tricia – who received a £2,012 donation to her page.

Want to switch your Virgin London Marathon page to Virgin Money Giving?

Virgin Money Giving Kit Bags

To get your hands on an exclusive Virgin London Marathon kit bag and be in with a chance to win some fantastic Virgin Money Giving prizes in the run up to the Virgin London Marathon you’ll need a Virgin Money Giving page.

If you’ve already set yourself up on another fundraising website – its quick and easy to transfer your page over to Virgin Money Giving. And if you’ve already started collecting sponsors on your other fundraising site, you can update your new Virgin Money Giving page to show how much you’ve raised..

To get your hands on our exclusive London Marathon kit bags and be in with a chance of winning some fantastic prizes in the lead up to the race just follow these five simple steps to get your page sorted.

  1. Create a new page on Virgin Money Giving. It’ll only take a couple of minutes, you can get started right here.
  2. Make sure you include a picture of yourself and a few words about why you’re taking on the 26.2miles in April.
  3. If you’ve already got some donations on another site, you can add this total to the ‘Offline donations’ on your new page. You can also acknowledge those who’ve donated by listing them in the ‘About You’ section of your page.
  4. Make sure you close your old fundraising page on the other website so people don’t continue to donate there.
  5. Let your friends, family and colleagues know about your new fundraising page.

Your Virgin London Marathon kit bag will be sent out to you as soon as you get your first online donation on your page.

And while you’re updating your page, by simply setting a fundraising target we’ll add you to a prize draw to win an upgrade to the Green Start where all the celebs and VIPs start from.


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Earlier at the Virgin Money Giving Mini Marathon start kaavmw 90b3nf 1qdxbi ^AS

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