London Marathon raised £100m for charity in last year’s edition

The amount raised through donations from runners in London makes me wonder why we don’t have similar initiatives in Brazil

A London Marathon Eventsthe entity that organizes the London marathon, announced that it raised 58.3 million pounds (equivalent to BRL 360 million) in the edition held in 2022. This is an even greater amount than the amount raised in the 2019 edition, before the pandemic, the record until then.

If last year the race had 40,643 finishers on the streets of London and another 8,518 in its virtual edition, we can expect that the total raised for the 2023 edition will be even greater, since the number of athletes who finished the marathon this year year reached 48 thousand.

The act of donating values ​​to needy entities is something cultural in first world countries and was naturally inserted in the races. However, the strength of donations in London and also in the great American events is impressive, which makes me wonder why this is not common in countries like Brazil.

It’s not that Brazilians aren’t supportive, they are. Is very. But most of the time, only in tragedy, as when landslides, floods or other natural accidents happen. On the north coast of São Paulo, for example, when an extreme event hit the cities of São Sebastião, Caraguatatuba, Ubatuba Ilhabela and Bertioga earlier this year (read here), the cities even had logistical problems to deal with the amount of food, donated clothes that arrived in the region.

In tests, we have some examples of those who ask for a kilo of non-perishable food to be donated when delivering the kits, but there is no “umbilical” connection with the organization and and we rarely know to which entity the food was donated and the impact of this action.

Will we ever have something like what happens abroad, with some entities for which you could collect amounts to be donated to them in exchange for registering for the test? Would people also make this donation?

Would it be up to the event organizers to take this initiative, or would it have to be a demand from us, from the runners, or even from the entities themselves?

There are many questions that I don’t have the answer to. You have?