Chief Change Officer
#141 Chris Schrader: Turning a Modest Charity into an 8-Figure Marathon for Change – Part One
Thu, 16 Jan 2025
Part One. A simple idea to honor a friend sparked something extraordinary. Today, the 24 Hour Race stands as the largest student-run effort to fight human trafficking. In this episode, Chris Schrader, the founder and executive chairman, reflects on the journey from a single event to a global mission, with students worldwide raising $20 million for this critical cause. Key Highlights of Our Interview: How a Teenage Charity Event Turned into a Global Phenomenon Fighting Human Trafficking “On a typically cold, rainy English day, I suggested to my friends, half-serious, ‘Why don’t we walk across England?’… Sure enough, six months later, we found ourselves walking across England.” “What started as a one-off 24-hour race in 2010 is now the largest student movement fighting slavery in the world, with events in 25 cities and HK$150 million (US$20 million) raised.” Why Young People Shouldn’t Just Write Checks: Teaching the Fiduciary Side of Charity “We want students to view themselves as leaders with the fiduciary responsibility of any charity executive—interviewing project stakeholders to see if the money is really being put to good use.” Charity Is a Marketplace, Not a Moral Obligation “Our audience doesn’t need to care about human trafficking to join the event. If they come just for the music festival or because it’s a big sleepover, that’s fine. Our job is to win them over positively.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Chris Schrader ______________________ --Chief Change Officer-- Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself. Open a World of Deep Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives, Visionary Underdogs, Transformation Gurus & Bold Hearts. 6 Million+ All-Time Downloads. Reaching 80+ Countries Daily. Global Top 3% Podcast. Top 10 US Business. Top 1 US Careers. >>>100,000+ subscribers are outgrowing. Act Today.<<< --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What inspired Chris Schrader to start the 24 Hour Race?
Yeah. Yeah. And for that is a big chunk of money you've raised over the years.
Yeah, I would say so, but I'm careful. I think there are people who, or rather than just people, there are organizations that raise that sort of money overnight. Our main strength, we quickly realized wasn't in raising money was important. And we picked the charity partners that we work with because we ourselves are not an anti-human trafficking grassroots NGO.
We don't have staff working with police and government legal officials. the combat human trafficking. We can selectively fund programs. The main strength was that hundreds of thousands, I believe over a million people have directly participated in 24 hour race events.
The fact that over a million young people at formative stages of their lives who will go on to do all sorts of different things, take on different careers, have this extremely memorable experience that we talk about at the 24 hour race and the board level these days about
Creating life defining moments through the race, something you, we use the phrase, something you're proud to tell your grandkids about one day. When I was your age, I ran a 24 hour race. Mean that with a little bit of irony. That impression and its connection to the race leads to big differences in how these people then address the issue in their later careers.
And I can give you a concrete example of this. I'm no longer operationally involved in the race. I sit on the board. Our CEO, Daniel, is fantastic. He's taken over the helm, actually. Daniel was a first-generation racer, so he joined our race in 2010 and ran it for several years and then eventually came back and joined us 10 years later as the CEO of the organization.
And he was telling me about a particular participant who knew nothing about human trafficking, learned about it through the race, became quite positively engaged, and went on to work for a law firm. And at this law firm, they realized they didn't have any kind of anti-human trafficking provisio with how they work for clients.
And so he proposed this to the partners and the partners immediately adopted it. And they actually let go of several clients because they were not adhering to supply chain conditions that would ensure that those supply chains were human trafficking free. So in lots of small ways, that's how we hope to make a difference. I don't think that's a small way at all. It's actually a big way.
But in many ways, like that's where we think the biggest difference will be. You know, it's not about raising hundreds of millions, even though that has an impact, it saves lives, it's important. It's more the awareness and advocacy that comes with young people becoming particularly engaged with an issue.
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Chapter 2: How did a teenage charity event evolve into a global movement?
Chapter 3: Why is it important for young people to engage in charity beyond just donations?
Up until this point... You had what seemed like an uneventful childhood, but then something happened while you were attending boarding school in Britain that planted the seed for what would later become the 24-hour race. Can you dive into that? Could you share more about what happened in detail?
While there, one of the more defining events in my life happened, and that was the passing away of a childhood friend of mine who had a rare congenital illness. At the age of 14, I didn't have money. I didn't have resources.
I didn't have any talents to contribute to his legacy, but I figured what's something I could do that would encourage people with resources, with money to maybe join that fight. And so on a typically cold, rainy English day, me and a few friends were sitting together talking about of course our summit plans.
And it was a joke and kind of in a serious way, I suggested, why don't we walk across England? And I remember all of my friends laughing lightheartedly, except for one who looked at me dead straight and said, let's do it.
And sure enough, through the support of parents, teachers, and friends, six months later, myself and my friend found ourselves walking across England, albeit the short way, that is the length way rather than up to Scotland. So we started at Land's End in the southwestern most point of the UK and walked back to our school just outside of Reading, post London.
And in the process of that, we raised something like 200,000 Hong Kong dollars, which was more than I could have possibly imagined. Perhaps more importantly, we raised a ton of awareness about the plight of people suffering from illnesses that are so rare, they basically don't get any attention from the pharmaceutical industry. And this began my journey of...
protest, a type of protest that is pushing yourself physically and mentally for causes that you deeply care about. I ended up getting a scholarship to come back to Hong Kong and study at United World College. And me and my friend, we wanted to do something, a kind of 2.0 of our first expedition.
And so where I was on his home turf in the UK for the first round, the idea was he could fly over to Hong Kong and we do our 2.0 there. The problem with doing an expedition in Hong Kong is that a walk across Hong Kong Island is something you just do with your girlfriend on any day of the week as a recreational kind of easy afternoon.
So we needed to come up with something a little bit more challenging. Li Pocheng's school is in Sai Kung, which is this beautiful part of Hong Kong where you have mountains, beaches, hiking trails. It's basically one big national park. And my school was pretty close to that area. So we figured we'd kind of develop an itinerary that took us from my school all the way down to Hong Kong Island.
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Chapter 4: What lessons can be learned from Chris's multicultural background?
So the platform felt accessible to everyone. What was harder was picking a cause. I knew from my two expeditions with Charles that when things were really tough, it was our respective causes that gave us the energy to carry on.
But how did you end up transforming the whole race into a movement against human trafficking?
By nature, me picking rare diseases wasn't something I thought every student could buy into. So there was a teacher at my school who I got along very closely with because he himself was ex-military. He was a huge six foot eight Irish ex-paratrooper. And I think he was a national athlete. And he said, have you heard about human trafficking?
And if I thought of human trafficking at the time, I assumed it was Liam Neeson-style, taken, gorgeous young woman gets kidnapped by Rich Shake on the streets of Paris, rather than what we know of the issue as today.
I was curious, and he introduced me to one cause he was working with, which was the trafficking of children from rural communities in Nepal into circuses in India, where they were subject to all kinds of abuse. And the situation was so horrific, it didn't take me long to say, yeah, this is something that any student could buy in.
But it's important to know I didn't really know anything about human trafficking or modern slavery. I really just cared about sharing the experience of pushing yourself for a good cause, which in my view was life transformational. The 24 hour race, the first event took place in 2010 and was originally supposed to be a one-off event.
I remember actually pitching it to teachers at various schools in Hong Kong, and they were sympathetic, but ultimately dismissive because the idea that their students who they could struggle to recruit for charity walkathons would be giving their free weekends, uh, to run 24 hours and unsolved seemed a little comical.
And so in the end, after fruitless pitches with, I want to say, over a dozen schools, we ended up working directly with students. And we asked students to put together their own teams. We asked students to help us organize the actual event, which was hosted in a public place, so it required all sorts of permits and fundraising efforts.
And that turned out to be the magic ingredient that has propelled the 24 hour race since, which is a movement by students for students. Now I want to emphasize the first event was really intended as a one-off event. We would do this relay race one time and that would be it. But it became so popular in its first year that it was clear we needed a successor.
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Chapter 5: How did Chris's early experiences influence his leadership style?
Steve of mine, but a lot of us relegate our charitable activities to annual contributions to NGOs without really knowing too much about the mechanics of where that money is going. And I believe to some extent that it's much easier to write a check for a good cause than it is to actively engage with a particular issue.
Because of course, time is the most important is the most important commodity that anyone has. So we try and get the students to engage a bit more, to be a little bit more, to have a little bit more scrutiny in terms of thinking about where they put money and why, and understanding that there are trade-offs, and understanding that there is a market. This is something as well, I believe.
We live in a very morally scrupulous age where... Causes compete for primacy, but that combined with social media can be pretty bad in my opinion, right? Where on lots and lots of issues, people are forced to take a stance on a non-profit issue without really understanding anything about those dynamics.
And our view of the, sorry, Ferraris, for example, we're very clear with the student directors is our audience doesn't need to really know anything or care about human trafficking at all. Yeah, they don't need to know anything.
In fact, if we attract people to come to one of our events, to attract students to come to our events, because they think it's a big sleepover and there's a great music festival at night, which is true, we do that. That's fine. We're not trying to convince people to support us by making them feel bad that they're not taking a particular stance.
And quite frankly, if someone was to come to a race and say, I don't really care about human trafficking. I'm just going to buy boats from wherever I do, whatever. I don't think we try and judge them for it. At least that's what we advocate. Our job is to win you over in a positive way.
But we also respect that much like there are hundreds of different, I don't know, clothing brands that are trying to sell you their product. There are many charities, if not law, try to convince you that they're the ones that need support most.
We just operate in this wider marketplace of causes, and I figure that the best way to win over allies and people to our cause is by having the best time, by putting together the best events and by having the greatest community. And if people don't engage with the cause, that's fine too. I feel like we have a much larger impact in any case through just winning attention in the conventional sense.
In the last 30 minutes, Chris shared his journey from a humble teenage charity event to leading a global movement valued at over 20 million US dollar. His experiences, whether trekking through desks and scaling mountains, have shaped his understanding of business leadership and team building.
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