You may have noticed that in several parkrun territories we have a number of official partners, some included within the parkrun logo.
Why does parkrun have partners?
Although parkrun is free to take part in, it’s not free to organise. We have a responsibility to events and parkrunners to ensure events are delivered safely, to deliver the technology and health and wellbeing campaigns to support existing events and to help parkrun grow. All of these things cost money and our official partners are a vital part of our funding model, allowing us to ensure that parkrun always remains free, for everyone, forever.
Who are our partners?
Our partners cover a broad range of interests, from health insurance to grocery stores, through to footwear and charities, a list of our current partners can be found on the parkrun website homepage.
As well as supporting us financially, they all go through a thorough process to make sure that their values align with ours. We work together, supporting each other on campaigns, key messaging and ultimately, working together to create a healthier and happier planet.
What can I expect from parkrun partners?
Our partners support parkrun in a range of ways, one of which is visiting parkrun events to activate their campaigns. These events are really popular within the parkrun community. As well as wanting to get to know parkrunners, they may also run competitions, giveaways and add an additional level of excitement on parkrunday.
We’ve seen everything from food samples, trying new shoes, free cookbooks, and unique giveaways you can only get at these events!
We work very closely with partners to check what it is they want to do at an event. In some cases a partner may carry out some activity which is not usually allowed at parkrun events, for example videoing with drones or carrying out a warm up at a 5k event. We are in a position to allow these additional activities at parkrun, because we are able to ensure that the correct checks, landowner permissions, paperwork and insurance are in place. Something that can’t be done at scale across all or a large number of events, but can be accommodated at individual events where the partner can be responsible for much of the logistics and insurance.
All visits are coordinated by parkrun Head Office, the partner and event teams.
You will also see and hear from our partners in our regular newsletters, through emails and on our social media channels. The more engagement we can drive for partners the more successful their support of parkrun will be and ultimately help keep parkrun sustainable and growing.
Due to these contracted relationships, it's important that events do not support any commercial organisation that parkrun aren’t officially partnered with.
Our partners support parkrun financially to access the community in this way and the support of parkrunners for our partners is vital in allowing us to build long term relationships with the brands we partner with so event teams should only accept requests for visits that come directly from parkrun.
Note: Any further questions about this guidance should be forwarded to eventsupport@parkrun.com