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Charity Fundraising Remote Management Team Work

How fundraising brought our remote team closer together

Novos

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December 16, 2020 | 3 min read

Since the pandemic began and disrupted the workplace by forcing teams to work remotely overnight, the internet has been seeing a flood of articles around remote team engagement

Well, keeping your remote team, who is probably struggling with work-life balance, as motivated and engaged as the pre-pandemic days, is challenging.

Company events, outings and retreats, which would normally work wonders in cementing the bond of friendship between staff, are now impossible and a multitude of online events is leading to what experts call as 'Zoom fatigue'.

We have been trying to come up with creative ways to keep our team engaged as we didn't want our company culture to wither due to being remote. It's been a hit & miss with virtual quizzes but other activities such as virtual Yoga and fitness sessions have been quite successful. As we continue to test innovative ways, one thing that has surpassed all levels of engagement has been our team initiative to fundraise.

Our Story of Fundraising for Movember

Movember is undoubtedly one of the most popular non-profit organization that has helped make charity fun. Every November, individuals and companies join the movement and mo for a great cause. This year, Movember announced its focus on mental wellbeing among other causes that it will support. So, it just made the perfect sense for team NOVOS to join it as mental wellbeing form the core of our company values. Our digital PR manager, Seb, signed us up and it all began.

We collectively decide to set an ambitious target of raising £500 in one month. All bros (aka male team members) dedicatedly started to mo while others took up walking and running. The task was to with 'mo-it', walk 60 km for the month or both!

Friendly competition

As the team set out to show off their contribution, it sparked a fun competition. Our company's 'random-chatter' slack channel was buzzing with posts boasting of miles walked and places seen along the way.

Tying in our 'Autumn Awards'

We decided to give this a further boost by announcing a unique kind of awards- The Autumn Awards. To encourage the team to go outdoors, we declare a list of prizes for pictures that showed autumn at its best. The team regularly posted pictures of nature and commented on each others' clicks.

Improved mood due to exercise

As people increased time spent outdoors to fulfil their commitment to Movember and to win prizes by posting pictures, we noticed that it uplifted their moods. Our bi-weekly anonymous surveys, The Happiness Index, reported high happiness scores!

Victory celebration

Finally, we achieved, in fact, smashed our fundraising target giving our team the feeling of accomplishment increasing the positive vibes in the company.

Above all, it was about coming together for a common goal and cause greater than the company targets that brought our team together. We were successful in driving team engagement organically. Thanks to its success, we are now planning to get involved in more charity work as a team next year and make it consistent.

So, my advice to all companies trying to keep their remote team motivated would be to go ahead and try this!

Charity Fundraising Remote Management Team Work

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