The study of the relationship between the social interaction and fundraising aspects of participating in marathon organizations

Marathon running and marathon organizations have become an entertaining activity that are increasing their popularity globally, attracting attention of the society, and increasing their attractiveness day by day. Marathon organizations, which have turned into a mass participation event over time, provide an opportunity for people to draw attention to social issues such as education, health and the environment, and to run for non-profit organizations to collect donations and to run for charity. The development and change in the social life of individuals, who constantly affect each other in the society, take place with social interaction. Social interaction is a sociological process that plays an important role in shaping, integrating and changing the society. While it is possible to express socio-cultural activities as occasions where social interaction occur, it is also possible to list sports events in these occasions. In recent years,it has been witnessed that individuals, and therefore, integrated individual movements have increasingly shown great interest to fundraising events. Marathon organizations have also begun to be among the places where such activities take place. To emphasize, like other events, marathon activities are used as showground where social awareness is tried to be revealed at high level. People can act on the assumption that they participate in fundraising activities at marathon events to raise fund. Therefore, social interaction among individuals which is perceived as an interesting and motivating force for people occurs intensely in the fundraising activities that take place in marathon activities. The aim of the research, whose basic approach is like this, is developing awareness scales for participation in marathon organizations, social interaction in marathon organizations and fundraising activities of non-profit organizations in marathon organizations and through the developed scales determining the relationship between social interaction dimensions of participation in marathon organizations and fundraising activities. This research is a descriptive study using the relational screening model.The universe of the research consists of those who participate in marathon organizations (marathon, half marathon and ultra marathon organizations) in Turkey and those who organize fundraising activities in these events. By using the purposive sampling method, the sample of the study is made up of a sufficient number of people who have done charity run in these activities. In the research, participation in marathon organizations (MOP), social interaction in marathon organizations (MOSI) and awareness (MONFAA) scales for fundraising activities of non-profit organizations in marathon organizations have been developed and these scales have been proven to be valid and reliable with EFA and DFAs. For the first stage of the research, 250 people and 353 people for the second stage have been included in the sample. In the analyzes, it has been determined that there are significant differences according to the variables of gender, marital status, participation in the event, membership in a non-profit organization, the number of participation in fundraising activities of non-profit organizations in marathon organizations. According to the age variable, there is a negative significant relationship between the sub-dimension of the famous person and the awareness levels of the fundraising activities of the non-profit organizations in the marathon organizations. A positive and significant relationship has been found between participation in marathon organizations and brand value, public figure, social media sub-dimensions and awareness levels of non-profit organizations in marathon organizations for fundraising activities. It has been determined that there is a positive significant relationship between the awareness levels of non-profit organizations in marathon organizations for fundraising activities and the sub-dimensions of brand value, public figure and social media. It is expected that the results obtained from this research will contribute to the literature. Keywords: Fundraisng, Marathon, Social Interaction