What Does My Registration Fee Cover

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This is a great question and one that we get often.

Some people see the registration price and think, “OMG! That’s so expensive!”.

While many people look at it and say, “That’s too good to be true, what’s the catch?”

Regardless of which one you are, it is only natural to want to know what you get for your money.

So here’s a barebones list of what it covers:

Here’s what’s not included:

And here are the other 4 FAQs we get about this subject:

Sorry, registrations aren’t tax deductible. It’s an IRS ruling and out of our control. While we give all proceeds from the event to the cause—registrations count as “payments,” not contributions.

Because your registration buys your participation in the event, it’s classified as a purchase, not a gift.

However, individual donations (made independently from your registration) are 100% tax deductible. See our Fundraising Page for more information.

You need to be very careful with this so let me explain in two parts. First, if someone gives you cash or writes a check made out to you and says you can use it to help offset your expenses, that is fine. That is not a tax deduction for them, however, because YOU are not a nonprofit. But if they want to help subsidize your costs so that you can join us and help us raise a lot of money, then it is fine to ask for their help. We would suggest that you register for the event first and then pay yourself back with the money your friends and family give you to cover those costs. Second thing to point out here is that if you are fundraising for us, we ask that you use our FlockStar Fundraising system (coming in March) and you create a page so that all your supporters can make donations easily online. This way you can track all your fundraising dollars and we can issue tax receipts to all your donors. You’ll also qualify for our fundraising prizes! Just note that any money that is given to your page goes directly into our nonprofit bank account to be distributed to our beneficiaries. Under no circumstance can we give money back to you to reimburse you for your registration or other expenses. So if you want to ask others to help pay your registration and/or housing and/or transportation expenses, you just need to be very clear with them and make sure they know that they cannot claim it on their taxes nor are we able to give them a receipt.

We’ve grown, and so have our goals. And so have the economic hurdles of herding 1500ish people around 3 islands, over the course of 3 days.

We do offer early-bird discounts and incentives to sign up early, but when you consider the logistics, permits, and perks that go into a three-day, three-island, race… our full price is a steal.

We do it by constantly cutting overhead, soliciting sponsors anywhere we can get ‘em, and relying on a kickass force of dedicated volunteers. Could we do it cheaper? Maybe. But not if we want to give you the one-of-a-kind race experience, that you’ve come to know and love.

And not if we want to meet our fundraising goals. We’ve got tons of money to raise. And every penny of our proceeds goes to meeting that goal and fighting breast cancer.

First, there’s a big difference between “registration proceeds” and “fundraising proceeds’.

Virtually every penny of the registration fees goes to cover the costs of the event. If we have a lot of sponsors one year and/or have more registrants than normal, we typically reinvest that money back into the event so that we can make the snack stations better, or give you more swag, or pay for better food, or hire live entertainment, etc. However, any proceeds that are left over are typically donated to one or two of our beneficiaries (see below).

On the other hand, every penny of the fundraising proceeds are distributed to breast cancer clinics, hospitals, and research organizations across the country. Historically we’ve always given these dollars to agencies in South Carolina but in 2019 we are beginning a new program called Choose Your Charity  and that has us excited to begin distributing dollars around the entire world.

Our fundraising goal for 2019 is $350,000 (that’s up from our $150,000 goal in 2018)! With your help, we can crush 2018 and reach our huge milestone in 2019.

Some of our more recent funding recipients include: Hollings Cancer Center at MUSC, Mayo Clinic, American Cancer Society, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Beaufort Jasper Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, Volunteers in Medicine Bluffton, Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head, Beaufort Memorial Hospital,

We can’t wait to see you choose this year!

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