How to organise a step challenge for charity?
Organising a step challenge in the workplace is a simple yet effective way to boost workforce wellbeing and foster team spirit whilst raising money for a good cause. As companies continue to navigate hybrid working and employee engagement, the step challenge can provide a solution that benefits everyone.
In this article, we’ll go through the process of organising a step challenge, ensuring it is engaging, easy to manage and successful for both the team and the company.
Why organise a step challenge in your workplace?
It is more important than ever to find innovative ways to maintain and improve the health and morale of your team. One effective method is through encouraging health, as well as raising money for charity. This helps to foster a sense of collaboration among your team.
Below, we outline the benefits that organising a step challenge can offer, not only for your team but for the employers who plan it:
Benefits for employees
As you organise your step challenge, there are many benefits for your teammates. One of the most beneficial is the ability to boost employees’ overall health and well-being. By encouraging physical activity for your team, you can help them tackle daily tasks more efficiently.
In addition, although this isn’t the primary goal, you could also attract like-minded customers or partners who share the commitment.
This can also be an effective method for stress reduction, as physical activity is known for decreasing stress. An initiative like this can contribute to a more health-conscious work environment, which might spark an interest in other healthy activities.
Benefits for employers
For employers, similarly to the advantages for employees, the benefits can be equally compelling. One of the primary benefits is an increase in productivity through less stress and more healthy habits.
In addition, the wellness program can help reduce absenteeism, as your staff will be healthy and less sick more often, which means fewer days off work.
Arguably, the most important point for not only the employer, but the team as well, is a result in less turnover. This ensures that the workforce is healthy and is more likely to be loyal to the company, which results in lower costs for recruiting and training new staff.
8 steps to organise a charity step challenge
1. Choose a charity to donate to
When organising a step challenge for charity, one of the first and most significant steps is choosing the charity you want to donate to. It is essential to select a cause that resonates with you and your team significantly, as this will help to drive motivation.
Alongside choosing the charity, consider offering step challenge prizes to employees as an extra incentive. This can enhance motivation and encourage greater participation throughout the event.
When considering a charity, it is also significant to consider charities that directly impact the community of your work environment and are close to the heart of a team member or your team. Ensure that when you research the organisations, you need to ensure that they are reputable and that the donations go straight to the cause.
2. Get an app, make it easy
Now that you know which charity you’re going to donate to, it is essential to communicate this decision effectively. While trying to keep morale high, clear communication will help everyone understand their mission and impact.
This is where the Teamupp app comes into play by being able to help your team foster a sense of community whilst contributing to a charitable cause with your step challenge.
However, you don’t want your app to be like everyone else—you want to ensure that your step challenge is unique to your team. Through Teamupp, you can set up challenges with a specific number of steps and integrate unique challenges through the customisable format in the app.
As you’re looking and thinking about downloading the Teamupp app, here are some more features that will help when organising your Charity Step challenge:
- Health App Integration — Let your team members sync through the health app to monitor their progress and build healthy competition and motivation.
- Flexible Charity Partnerships—Teamupp puts the power in the hands of your team and allows them to choose the charity they want to support. This helps to ensure that the charity is in line with your company values.
- Follow Engagement & Results — Being invaluable to your challenge, you can measure the impact of your team-building and charitable efforts in real time.
3. Gather a team and assign roles (event coordinator, communications lead, social media manager, fundraising coordinator, logistics manager, etc.)
As the manager or employer organising a step challenge, it can sometimes be challenging to manage each aspect of the event. This is why you should get together a team to help when organising a successful step challenge.
Here are some of the critical roles to ensure that the step challenge runs smoothly and achieves the fundraising goals:
Event Coordinator: Your event coordinator will oversee the entire challenge to ensure it aligns with the charity’s goals and runs smoothly.
Communications Lead: As the name mentions, the communications lead will manage all communication, ensuring that your team and other external people are well-informed and engaged.
Social Media Manager: If you decide that you’re also going to have external support to raise money, your social media manager will promote the event online, engage with the team and improve the visibility of the campaign.
Fundraising Coordinator: The fundraising coordinator develops fundraising strategies, manages platforms, and tracks donations to maximise the charity’s benefits.
Logistics Manager: The logistics will handle equipment and ensure that everything adheres to health and safety guidelines.
4. Set clear rules and goals for participation
Now that you can organise and promote the event, before you get started, you need to ensure that you set clear rules and goals for your team who participate.
When starting, you need to define eligibility and registration details, including whether the challenge is done in teams or individually, the team sizes, and options for walking team names, etc.
Also, in our app, you can decide the time frame and set up the challenges to ensure that there are achievable goals to motivate your teams. This ensures that the rules are outlined, everything is fair, and everyone understands the step challenge.
5. Promote the challenge effectively
When organising a step challenge for charity, ensuring effective internal communication for your team is crucial to the event’s success. It’s recommended to prepare a communication kit to make this process easier.
In such a kit, you can include custom designs to visually promote your event, making it more appealing to your team members.
Additionally, since many people prefer receiving updates through work email, it’s helpful to launch an email campaign with all the starting details of the challenge.
Step challenge apps like ours provide ready-to-use communication kits.
6. Provide exciting rewards for participants
Now that everyone knows about your step challenge for charity through your effective internal communications, you must ensure everyone is motivated. Everyone in your team has personal reasons for participating in the step challenge, one of which might be to get rewards.
Despite the motivation of the team member being individualistic, as an employer, you help your team achieve these goals by giving tangible, exciting rewards for participants. For example, you could offer movie tickets, tickets to a game, or even sports equipment.
7. Maintain motivation through updates and communication
As previously mentioned in the roles, it is essential for the communications lead and employer to keep the team motivated throughout the charity step challenge; you can do this via regular updates and communication. This is especially critical as everyone is busy, so knowing everyone knows the progress is essential!
You can use email to ensure everyone sees the update, while tailoring the message to inspire your team to continue to participate. Sharing stories of those benefiting from the charity can also help reconnect with your team and boost motivation.
8. Celebrate achievements and share impact stories
Similar to the previous point, motivating your team to share impact stories throughout the step challenge is essential when giving updates and communicating with the team. When you see your team achieving milestones in emails or messages, it is necessary to celebrate this. As an additional benefit, you could also reward this.
When sharing the impact stories with the team, this helps to act as a morale booster and understand that everyone is involved in the team. This could also range from verbal recognition in team meetings to rewards that align with the goals of the challenge.
How to choose a charity to donate to?
As mentioned earlier in the article, when you’re organising a step challenge, one of the vital steps of the challenge is choosing a charity to donate to. However, it can be a difficult task, especially with the large amount of charities out there with positive effects.
Below are a few ways to help you choose a charity that resonates with your company goals and to ensure that your charitable contributions and events are aligned with your company’s objectives:
1. Choose a charity that resonates with your company
When choosing a charity to donate to, regardless of whom you choose, the charity must align with your company’s values, corporate identity, and goals. For example, if you’re in the marketing sector, you could support Women in Marketing or The Marketing Society Foundation.
Being able to align the charities to your industry would help resonate with the company and your team members. This could also strengthen your company’s brand values and corporate social responsibility.
In addition, although this isn’t the primary goal, you could also attract like-minded customers or partners who share the commitment.
2. A Popular choice?
As an additional option when picking the charity to donate to, you might choose the charity that is consistently popular among your team. This preference is decided because of the charity’s work and alignment with the team, which is why it becomes a popular choice for the team members.
Optimising for the charity not only enhances the team’s motivation to participate in the step challenge but also deepens the overall purpose of the challenge and each step. The support for the charity becomes a personal one, which motivates your team even further.
3. Align with your mission
Similarly to the first point, when choosing a charity to donate to, it should resonate with your company’s overall mission as well as your individual and company mission. When your personal values and objectives of the company align with the charity you support, it helps to amplify the impact of the contributions.
In addition, when the team’s activities are aligned with your mission, it allows for more authentic storytelling and communication with your audience. This enables you to share stories of how your company is making a difference in areas connected to its values.
4. Ask your colleague's opinion
It is essential to involve your team when choosing the charity for the step challenge. Asking for their opinions will foster a community and resonate with the team, enabling them to feel listened to.
This approach enhances overall participation in the event and the overall effort for the step challenge. In addition, if the team has a say in the charity that receives the donations, it might motivate more people to get involved in the challenge.
A well-organised step challenge can bring your team together, promoting health, well-being, and purpose. By following the steps outlined, you can ensure that the challenge is fun and rewarding for your employees and the charity for which you’re raising donations.
With the right tools, clear goals and consistent communication, your step challenge can become a highlight and create lasting positive impacts for the team and the charity.
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