For runners without a qualifying time, the Boston Marathon's official charity program is the most well-established way into the race — and also demanding, in a different sense than the BQ is. Rather than a fast finish time, it asks for a serious fundraising commitment to a cause the BAA has vetted and approved. This guide covers how the program actually works, distinct from the broader registration overview elsewhere on RaceRove.

How the program is structured

The BAA's official charity program allocates a limited number of race entries to a group of nonprofit organizations it selects each year, rather than to individual runners directly. Each approved charity then recruits its own team of runners, who commit to raising a minimum amount for that organization in exchange for a guaranteed entry. Because the BAA manages the list of approved charities but each individual nonprofit manages its own runner selection, fundraising minimum, and application process, there's real variation between charities in exactly how the process feels from a runner's side.

Who gets into the program

Organizations apply to join the program well before the runners they'll eventually recruit do. The BAA's criteria center on registered nonprofit status, a mission tied to building healthy communities, and a preference for organizations that serve the cities and towns along the marathon course itself, alongside groups with broader national or global reach. The result is a genuinely wide list each year — major teaching hospitals and medical research centers sit alongside the charitable arms of Boston's professional sports teams and smaller neighborhood organizations, all raising money through the same basic mechanism.

What it actually costs

Boston's charity fundraising minimums run meaningfully higher than equivalent programs at some other major marathons, commonly reaching into the thousands of dollars per runner and varying significantly by organization — a large flagship hospital team's minimum can look very different from a smaller local nonprofit's. Because those minimums are set independently by each charity and do change over time, always confirm the current number directly with the specific organization you're considering rather than assuming a figure from a past year still applies.

How to actually apply

• Start with the BAA's own list of that year's approved charities rather than a secondhand roundup, since the roster changes annually.
• Reach out to organizations directly — applications go to the charity, not to the BAA, and each one runs its own process and timeline.
• Look for a cause you'd genuinely want to fundraise for. The commitment is real and sustained, not a one-time payment, and runners who care about the mission tend to have an easier time hitting their fundraising targets.
• Apply early relative to a charity's own deadline. Popular teams, especially ones connected to well-known institutions, can fill their allotted spots well before the application window technically closes.

How it compares to qualifying

The charity path and the qualifying-time path solve the same problem — getting a runner without another obvious entry route to the starting line in Hopkinton — in very different ways. One asks for speed proven months in advance; the other asks for a fundraising commitment sustained over months of training. Both are demanding in their own right, and for a meaningful share of each year's field, the charity program is genuinely the only realistic way to run Boston. The program has raised substantial money for its partner nonprofits since it began in the late 1980s, and that fundraising mission is very much the point of the entry, not a side effect of it.