The Philadelphia Distance Run became the first major road race to offer a Non-Binary division which included equal prize money for elite Non-Binary athletes.

PHILADELPHIA, PA, USA, February 24, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Philadelphia running community has shown up in a big way for Non-Binary runners. In 2021, the Philadelphia Distance Run became the first major road race in the country to offer a Non-Binary division which included equal prize money for elite Non-Binary athletes. Following the release of full Non-Binary support on RunSignup this year, hundreds of races including two major races in Philadelphia, the Blue Cross Broad Street Run and the Philadelphia Marathon, have enabled the Non-Binary registration for the first time in their histories. RunSignup is a race registration and fundraising platform with a tremendous reach of more than 26,000 events, supporting over 10,000 nonprofits. In January 2022, RunSignup announced full Non-Binary support on their platform to offer a more inclusive registration experience.

Students Run Philly Style, a youth running and mentorship non-profit, uses RunSignup for charity runner registration and fundraising, and advocated for this inclusion through its OUTPace program. The organization learned that over 19% of students it serves identify as LGBTQ+. To better serve the needs of all students SRPS introduced OUTPace, a program that provides LGBTQ+ students and student allies with resources, activities and welcoming spaces from which they can build their self confidence, expand their communities by meeting others like themselves and learn life skills to overcome challenges.

In 2020 SRPS saw an opportunity to collaborate with RunSignup to expand inclusivity and honor OUTPace’s commitment to creating welcoming spaces for its students. When SRPS reached out, the RunSignup staff was welcoming to the request to integrate Non-Binary registration and over the next 2 years listened to SRPS’ concerns while working to roll out updates that made their race registration software truly inclusive, leading to full Non-Binary support in January 2022.

In a sport where Female and Male divisions were exclusively the only options for participation, the introduction of OUTPace helped broaden the views of what participation at SRPS events should look like for students and mentors who identify as Non-Binary. With inclusion at the forefront, SRPS took the lead in creating equal access for Non-Binary participants through their own event, The Philadelphia Distance Run. The celebration of the inclusion was felt across the country. It was during this process that SRPS noted that to replicate these efforts beyond their own event, updates to technology, by event providers, were needed to allow this inclusion to be implemented by others.

“This is a change that we, and many of our customers, have wanted to make for a long time,” said RunSignup Founder and CEO Bob Bickel. “Providing more inclusive gender options required effort from both events, who have to rethink things like timing and awards, and our technology team, who had to update more than 1,000 instances where gender was used in our code to ensure the update would not break historical data. We are grateful that customers like Students Run Philly Style have continued to push us to come up with solutions, and in return, we hope this can help the endurance community embrace more diversity.”

Adding a non-binary registration option affirms the respect for our students authentic identities. “What it means for me to be a non-binary runner is that I get to be myself, and not wear a facade when it comes to doing everyday things like running,” says SRPS student Zen. “It means that I get to be recognized for who I really am, and that is Zen. When it comes to inclusion, it’s important to me because other non-binaries and I are represented in such a large community. We no longer have to check those boxes that label us as male or female, we now can proudly identify who we truly are. And we are non-binary."

About Students Run Philly Style
Students Run Philly Style is the only program in Philadelphia that marries mentoring and long distance running to help young people succeed in life. The program achieves this by connecting students with adult mentors who help them imagine and accomplish goals beyond their dreams, including the completion of a marathon. The program delivers powerful results for youth, including increasing high school graduation rates, improving health, providing safe choices after school and developing positive relationships with caring adults. For more information please visit www.studentsrunphilly.org.

About RunSignup
RunSignup is the leading event solution delivering the art of technology to endurance events, small businesses, and nonprofits. More than 26,000 events use our free and open platform to register 7 million annual participants, raise more than $1.4 billion, and grow their events. Our expertly crafted, open and all-in-one solution powers event revenue generation and event engagement through flexible registration, free event websites, free email marketing, integrated fundraising, and a suite of RaceDay tools. No subscriptions, no plans, no monthly fees.

To find out why customers like the Philadelphia Marathon, American Cancer Society, AACR, and RaceDay Events use RunSignup, visit: https://www.runsignup.com.

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Danny Burke
Students Run Philly Style
+1 7082541505
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