Balloonracing.com

100% ECO FRIENDLY FUNDRAISING

There is no other virtual balloon race remotely like Rentaballoonrace.com – for a start, there are no real balloons just virtual or simulated ones! And it’s not because we can’t be bothered to blow them all up. It’s because when real balloons lose helium, they end up littering the countryside or fall into the sea. Very sadly, creatures like turtles or sea birds can mistake them for food and try to eat them.

AMAZING RACE FEATURES

Rentaballoonrace.com is a virtual balloon race system with impressive and unrivalled functionality and features. You can, for example, change the amount of helium inside the balloon, thickness of rubber and the shape - parameters which affect the speed and vulnerability of your balloon. There’s an amazing decorator function too which allows you to colour-in a balloon shape of your choice, add a few words of text or insert an image. And finally, you can check out progress on Google maps too! Geography teachers will be impressed that you can follow the meanders of the river Severn or the deep gorges of the Oman deserts

FUNDRAISING LOTS OF MONEY!

Over the last 3 years, SHINE Charity, Europe's largest organisation to support individuals who face the challenges arising from Spina Bifida or Hydrocephalus, have used Rentaballoonrace.com to run 10 races per year and raise in excess of £3 million. So if can work for SHINE, it can work well for you too!

When trying to budget feasible sales numbers, consider the many methods of selling that you currently use. For example, how much face to face selling is possible? Evidence indicates that personal selling does grow the Internet numbers, plus personal selling reaches supporters who maybe are not frequent Web users.

Secondly, setting the price of the balloon price is really important - set too high a price in a poor area of the UK and sales will fall short. Obviously, though, more wealthy supporters will be able to afford more than those less fortunate. Similarly, if you think that children will be the predominant purchasers of balloons, then the price should recognise that fact.

Typically, just 10 enthusiastic and motivated supporters, selling to friends and family, should over 6 weeks, be able to sell 25-50 balloons each on average. Eyton Primary School near Wrexham, for example, with just 50+ school children, managed sales of several hundred balloons. Similarly, selling to businesses with large numbers of workers can be equally profitable, so corporates should not be ignored.

The Real Environmental Impact of Real Balloon Races

Companies that manage and organise real latex balloon races completely miss the point when trying to justify why real latex balloons are OK environmentally. They say, for example, “The acceptable way to run a balloon race is to only release items that are biodegradable. All of our balloon race kits contain these items. Our balloons are made from latex which is a natural product which will break down at the same rate as an oak leaf….Our balloon race tickets are made of thick paper and DO NOT involve string or the use of plastic valves when attaching to the balloons.” (Extract from www.balloonraces.com justifying why real races are OK environmentally).

What they say is probably true, latex balloon fragments do biodegrade at the same speed as an oak leaf, but that statement is misleading. The full question is really ‘how long does it take the balloon fragment or oak leaf to fully disintegrate’, the answer being years not six weeks. But the biodegradability of the balloon fragments is not the issue at all. The real issue is that birds, animals and sea creatures such as turtles try to eat the balloon fragments because they are brightly coloured. That's what kills them – being hungry!

Similarly, those balloons that do not burst, i.e. just lose helium but remain intact, also kill when being attempted for eating by birds and animals. When a bird pecks at one of these deflated balloons, the rubber envelops the bird’s beak and asphyxiates it. The companies are also disingenuous when it comes to how many balloons come back to Earth intact. It’s far more than they would have you believe. They don’t all get to five miles high and burst into bits. There is lots of empirical evidence to suggest that most balloons don’t get above 2000 feet altitude (600 metres) because of wind turbulence. So far more come down semi deflated than actually burst into bits as suggested.

For added marketing impact sometimes we produce videos - such as the one below.