We’ve all seen them do it. They run. They climb mountains. They bake. They organise morning teas, lunches and breakfasts. They rally their peers. They spend hours sharing their passion for their cause by email and social media. They engage, connect and inspire others to get involved. All to create change around the issues and causes they care about.

Yes, it’s their effort and passion that raises the money to make a positive contribution towards your mission. But it results in so much more: countless hours, effort and commitment, going unrecognised and unrewarded.

So, the question is, how do we recognise effort? There are currently few feedback loops in the peer-to-peer and wider fundraising sector that allow easy recognition of the considerable effort put in on your behalf, beyond money.

The word ‘fundraising’ isn’t even the right word to describe the effort being put in. Research commissioned by Everyday Hero in 2012 revealed that the word ‘fundraising’ had a negative effect on this group of people, emotionally disconnecting them from their cause and associating itself with hard work, rather than motivation.

Changing the frame of reference of what these people do for you from fundraising to ‘giving’ begins to help to better acknowledge their effort. We can all get on board with the notion that ‘giving’ is more than money — it’s about the time, effort, voice and energy that’s put in, too. The challenge for nonprofits is how to define, capture and quantify these contributions. The key is building a richer picture of a person’s giving — one that recognises, captures and rewards their total giving effort.

Counting physical effort makes particularly good sense for nonprofits. Online peer-to-peer fundraising is now well established as a part of participating in major community run, walk and ride events. Sydney’s Sun-Herald City2Surf was the trailblazer in the region as the first large fitness event to give participants the opportunity to fundraise for their chosen charity. With Fairfax at the helm, it brings in more than $4 million annually for multiple charity beneficiaries and is now a multi-country event. For the first time, New Zealand charities on the Everyday Hero platform are included as potential beneficiaries.

Consider the journey of participants in these events. After registering and deciding to fundraise, they choose a cause/charity, create an online supporter page and start the hard work of asking their peers to support them and their cause. It’s also when they start lacing up to begin training for the event itself.

Using fitness activity apps such as the MapMyFitness suite, Runkeeper and Strava, more participants than ever are recording and tracking their workout activity. The information is right there on their smartphone telling them how many kilometers they’ve covered and how quickly. They use the data to track their improvements, measure their personal bests, calculate their calories and gain truly instant feedback on their day-to-day fitness efforts.

These apps have an important social sharing aspect too. If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, your friends will have been posting maps of their runs, walks and rides to share their progress, seek encouragement and start friendly competition. It’s engaging, addictive and lets them count their effort.

All of this represents an incredible opportunity for a smart nonprofit. The information is there, right on their supporter’s smartphone. The question is how do you ask your supporters to share it, so it can be added up, recorded and made visible? And then, how do you thank them for this effort?

Everyday Hero recently chose to integrate its platform with the MapMyFitness family of apps. This provides runners, walkers, hikers and riders with an effortless, fun and automatic way to post their training efforts to the wall of their online supporter page. Love begets love and the more people see the dedication, time and effort being put in for a cause, the more willing they are to give generously.

The MapMyFitness integration is just the start of how effort in one aspect of your supporter’s life can be rewarded and acknowledged in another. It provides a more complete picture of them as a person, their passions and the contributions they make.