About the event
The Lincoln Santa Fun Run is a popular community and fundraising event firmly established in the festive calendar of Lincoln City. 2025 will be the our 20th consecutive year making it one of the longest running Santa Fun Runs in the country. On Sunday 14th December up to 2020 “santas’ of all ages and abilities form a sea of red to run (or walk) through historic uphill Lincoln starting in Castle Square and ending by the imposing Lincoln Cathedral. This is a great festive family event just before Christmas. In the 2024 event over £ 26,000 was raised for charity.
This is a great charity fundraising opportunity.
The event is well publicised and attracts excellent media coverage on the day, usually press, radio and TV.
It is organised by The Rotary Club of Lincoln Colonia (a registered charity) who will donate any funds remaining after event costs to local, national and international charities during the following year.
We welcome and encourage charities to take part with teams and individuals raising funds for their cause.

Our Charity Partner Package
- Apply to register your charity for this year’s event (see below) at no cost by 14th March28th 2025. We have only 12 places available for partner charities in 2025.
- Once accepted we will include your charity on our event website – you will need to supply us with (i) your charity logo (ii) your charity name and registration number (iii) contact details (for public) (iv) contact details, name and email (for our use) (v) up to 100 words about your charity
- We allow participants to select a charity to support and optionally make a donation when placing their ticket orders. (note they must purchase entry tickets). This also leads to a donation to the charity. See below for more details.
- Participants will also at any time be able to view a list of our Charity Partners and their contact details on our website. Participants can then contact the charity directly to discuss fundraising and any team arrangements.
- We will list your charity in our event newsletters (there are 4 running up to the event day) and social media postings
- We will give you a shout-out (through our commentator) on the day
- We will provide you, through our partner resource portal, with our event logo and selected images (from previous events) to use for the purpose of promoting the event.
- We will include your charity logo on our charity partner banner to be displayed at the event (alongside our sponsor partner banner)
- If you have a suitable outdoor banner we can display this on one of our barriers at the start or finish areas
- We provide a team support page including sign up posters, risk assessment information, request form for a team social media posting and shout out
- If you are a local good cause organisation but are not a registered charity you may still be eligible to take part – please contact us to discuss.
How participants choose a charity to support:
- Of course you will directly recruit supporters to raise funds for your charity.
- But we can also help:
- When participants purchase their tickets online (open from 1st July 2025) they can select a charity of choice. We will pass their contact details to the selected charity allowing the charity to directly discuss fundraising and any team arrangements with the participant. At this point they can also make a donation of their choosing in which case we will process the payment, make any eligible gift aid claims and then pass the funds on to the partner charity after the event has taken place (you can opt out of this if preferred).
- When participants select a charity to support we will, after the event has closed, make a minimum donation to the charity of £ 10 per adult entry made in the order placed. (Note this is subject to available funds and limited to 40 adult entries per charity).
What you need to do:
- Provide your own sponsorship forms (paper or digital online formats) for individuals and teams eg as part of your fundraising package. We can supply the event logo for you to use. If you are a very small charity we can provide you with a template and help you with design. You need to provide the means for fundraisers to send funds and sponsorship forms to you (we cannot do this for you). You also need to make any arrangements to process gift aid claims for your charity.
- Provide a contact for the participants to reach you. This will be shown as a link on our website and we will use this to send you details of participants selecting to fundraise for your charity.
- Promote the Lincoln Santa Fun Run through your promotional and social media channels
- Share our Newsletters (“Elf & Fitness”) with your runners – we issue around 4 newsletters running up to the event.
- Let us know by 31 January 2026 how much you have raised – we will only use this as part of an aggregated total for funds raised by the event. We will not list individual charities and funds raised (we leave that to you)
You may also wish to:
- Print your own “I am running for …..” runner bibs – to be pinned on the back of your runners (the runner number is displayed on the front). We can supply you with our event logo to include.
- The event takes place in a public place. Street collections on the day require by law a licence from City of Lincoln Council. If you wish to do this you need to contact and make the arrangements with the City of Lincoln Council. We will not do this on your charity’s behalf.
Other information about the event:
- Runners buy their own tickets, which includes a santa suit (a no-suit eco-option is available), event entry, a finishers medal, a personalised digital certificate of participation, and a fantastic experience. Participants can run or walk either 1 lap (2km) or 2 laps (4km) – the entry fee is the same. To keep prices manageable for families we have discounted entry fees for youths and children.
- Once they receive their runner number each individual will simply register their name and place online (at no additional cost) using the QR code printed on the runner number.
- Uniquely we allow dog entries – in fancy dress of course and with well behaved owners.
We always welcome ideas to make this event even better and raise more funds – please contact us here.
Thanks to all those charities who supported us in 2024

If you are interested in partnering with the Lincoln Santa Fun Run to raise funds for your charity or good cause this year please complete the form below