How Team Red, White & Blue Grew Its Endurance Fundraising Program From 3 to 23 Events with haku

The Opportunity

In 2022, Team Red, White & Blue’s Soaring Eagles program included just three races. As the organization expanded the program to include more domestic and international events, demand quickly followed.

Opportunities such as the Berlin Marathon generated especially strong interest. The first entries sold out in one hour, and today’s larger allotment typically sells out within 48 hours.

The program is now preparing to manage fundraising participation across 17 races and six outdoor adventure hikes through haku. That includes supporting more than 500 active participants, handling approximately 100 cancellations each year, and managing hundreds of prospective athletes on waitlists.

As the program grew from three events to 23, Team RWB had more entries to track, fundraising commitments to oversee, and athletes to support. Processes that worked at a smaller scale became increasingly difficult to maintain.

When we spoke with John Faunce, Team RWB’s Soaring Eagles Program Manager, he described the tradeoffs that come with managing a growing program,

"If we wanted to grow at the same rate, without haku I would have had to commit many more hours to routine maintenance and not to athlete experience. If I put one more admin item on my to-do list, I have to take something else off." John said.

Team RWB needed a way to continue expanding its Soaring Eagles program without allowing routine administrative work to take time away from supporting its athletes.

Where haku Made the Difference

haku gives Team RWB greater control over the work that becomes more challenging as an endurance fundraising program grows.

They can manage event capacity, participant statuses, fundraising progress, communications, and recurring event setup within the same workflow. Instead of relying on separate spreadsheets and manual checks to understand what is happening across the program, he has clearer visibility into where attention is needed.

“I’ve still been able to grow to this many events and bring in that many runners and that much revenue all by myself, because the system permits me to multitask in a safe, deliberate, and predictable way,” John said.‍

John also pointed to haku’s dashboards as an important part of managing the growing program, giving him an immediate view of event capacity, fundraising results, and overall progress.

“My dashboard gives me a clear view of the entire program. I can quickly see which events are sold out, how much we’ve raised, and where things stand without clicking through multiple pages. It’s all right there in front of me,” John said.

Managing Growth with Greater Confidence

Limited charity entries require careful oversight, particularly for high-demand events with multiple races and distances. Previously, canceled registrations did not automatically return to Team RWB's available inventory. Several records had to be updated by hand, increasing the risk of offering an entry the organization did not actually have.

With haku, canceled registrations return to the correct event inventory. Across roughly 100 cancellations a year, Team RWB can see which entries are genuinely available and move athletes off the waitlist without a manual reconciliation step each time.

This visibility extends beyond race capacity. Dashboards and daily summaries surface registrations, cancellations, donations, and fundraising progress across the program, making it easier to catch an issue that needs attention or recognize an athlete who reached an important milestone.

“The daily wrap-ups can help flag not just alerts that something might be going wrong, but alerts that something might be going right,” John said.

Reducing Routine Administrative Work

As the number of events grew, Team RWB's manual processes became increasingly time-consuming.

Before processing fundraising commitments, John previously had to compare event and participant data against spreadsheets. He estimated that reviewing a single event took approximately 30 minutes. Across three fundraising milestones and 23 events, those checks would require roughly 35 hours — close to two full weeks of his part-time schedule.

Communications created another challenge. With each event following its own schedule, Team RWB sends approximately 230 standard athlete communications each year. John previously had to clean and filter exported lists before every email to ensure canceled participants did not receive messages that no longer applied to them.

With haku, registration status, fundraising activity, and communication audiences are easier to manage. John can spend less time preparing data and more time helping athletes train, fundraise, and connect with Team RWB's mission.

“Without haku, growing at this pace would have meant spending a lot more time on admin work and a lot less time supporting the athlete experience.” John said.

Protecting Fundraising Revenue

Team RWB also needed more dependable processes for managing the fundraising commitments associated with its charity entries.

During a previous event cycle, limitations in its former system made it difficult to collect some outstanding commitments. The manual workaround was too time-consuming to complete for every participant, and the organization finished below the amount it expected to raise.

Team RWB is now completing its first full event cycle with haku, and they expect to manage outstanding commitments with fewer individual steps.

The Results

Greater capacity

• More than 500 active participants managed by one part-time program manager
• Approximately 35 hours of spreadsheet checks expected to be avoided across three fundraising milestones and 23 events
• Roughly 230 annual athlete communications sent without manual list cleaning

More control

• Program expanded from three races to 23 planned endurance events
• Canceled entries return to inventory automatically, across approximately 100 cancellations a year
• Waitlisted athletes moved into open entries without manual reconciliation

More time for athletes

• Communications tailored to each athlete's current status
• More time for training guidance, fundraising support, and mission storytelling

Building a Foundation for Future Events

Team RWB's Soaring Eagles program has grown from three races to a planned portfolio of 23 endurance events, including 17 races and six outdoor adventure hikes, still managed by a single part-time program manager.

With the administrative side of that growth handled in one system, Team RWB can keep adding events without adding proportional overhead, and can preserve the personal support and connection to the mission that makes the experience meaningful.