How To Pick A Charity & Charitable Team Building Event

A few of the many donations our clients assembled this year!

I often get asked what is our most popular team building event and my answer is, it’s not just one event, but an entire genre of events – charitable team building activities. In fact, in the past year, Wildly Different has created programs that:

Assembled 200 red wagons
Decorated 220 pairs of TOMS shoes
Stuffed 3500 care packages
Built 185 bicycles
Crafted sculptures using 40,000 cans of food

Why Are Charitable Team Building Events Popular?

The reasons charitable team building events are so popular are obvious:

It feels good! What team building event fills your heart with that warm fuzzy? Fire walking or getting fired up about working together to help those in need?
Your employees want to participate in charitable team building events. This isn’t just my opinion. According to a Successful Meetings poll, 31.5% of respondents say they expect more of their events to include CSR.
Charitable team building events are good for your company. It colors the way people on the inside and outside view your company (your company donated how many books to ?). And hey, there’s no denying that the tax break is a bonus!

Okay, so how do you decide what type of charitable team building event you should offer and what charity it should help when there are so many causes out there? Here are some tips:

Connect it to your meeting theme. Is your theme “One Team?” Consider a team building activity like our Show Your SupPORT program in which games are played with sports equipment that is then donated to a charity that organizes sports teams for kids in need.
What makes sense for your brand? Are you a pharmaceutical company? Maybe you should do something like our Children’s Cheer Packages activity in which you participate in activities to earn items that then get packaged and dropped off to children in a local hospital? Or, consider our Hospital Art program where attendees paint beautiful murals that are donated to hospitals, clinics, and rehab centers.
What’s near and dear to your group? Poll your attendees. Or, don’t pick a charity at all – let the teams that win your team building event pick their favorite charity and donate a check to that cause.

Speaking about charitable team building activities, here’s some of the experiences our team had this week while implementing them!

Gaby’s Truckin’ Along

Gaby Maldonado, Event Superstar, got her first experience driving a 16’ truck this week, which was needed to transport the 41 red wagons and 350 toys a client donated to Community Food & Outreach Center through one of our Red Wagon Brigade team building events. She was very intimidated when she first faced driving it, but then she managed to live up to her title and drove it like a superstar. Next challenge? Driving a 27’ truck!

Thumbs up from Gaby – she’s got this truck under control!

All of the wagons are packed and ready to go to the event.

Jane Keeps On Truckin’

Jane took over from Gaby, driving the truck and the donations to the charity. They were thrilled and plan on getting their volunteers to ready them for their Christmas program held annually. Their founder, Scott George, was thrilled with the donation.

Scott George thanking the group for their generous donation.

Mac’s Building Bridges

During a client’s ArCANtecture event, where teams built sculptures out of canned food items that are donated to charity, Mac experienced a heartwarming moment outside of the donation. The event was for two companies that had just merged together and management was anxious that the two different groups of people get along. The client was overjoyed when two teams – one from each of the different groups – decided to join forces and build a bridge with their cans, literally connecting their two companies together between their two team tables.