Ways To Give Back While Team Building: 7 Impactful Events To Try
Many company founders start their businesses with the best of intentions in mind. They want to build a successful company, certainly, but they often also want to become pillars of their local communities.
Sometimes, however, the real world gets in the way. At some point during the process of building and running a business, mindsets tend to shift inward toward growth and expansion (or the struggle to keep the lights on, in some cases).
Thankfully, there are always opportunities to set a positive example and make a difference in your local community — if you choose to look for them. One of our favorite ways of directing our focus outward, away from ourselves and back toward others, is to host charity team-building events. Our clients find that participating in a “give back” event allows them to truly exemplify the spirit of their mission statements while helping employees find their own sense of community with each other.
In fact, organizing team-building activities that allow employees to band together to help others is an excellent way to accomplish two goals at once. When employees take active roles in the company’s efforts to benefit nonprofits, they not only feel closer to each other and to the community, they also feel a deeper connection to you as their employer. Simply knowing that they can be a part of something good on behalf of working for your company raises engagement for employees who have a deep desire to give back.
This makes sense, considering that many of the millennial and Gen Z employees in the workforce today feel the urge to fulfill a deeper mission than simply collecting a paycheck. Companies that allow them to do both at once can significantly boost job satisfaction.
However, even for folks with the biggest hearts, thinking up ways to give back to the community isn’t always easy. When the well of team charity ideas runneth dry, you can turn to this list of our favorites. We think you’ll find they’re favorites for a reason!
Have love (or tangible items) to spare? Let Firefly Team Events help you find the person, animal, or group who needs it most.
7 Charity Team-Building Events To Benefit Your Community And Your Employees
Prefer to think outside the box?Firefly Team Events would be happy to host all the charitable team-building activities on this list. However, you’re not limited to just these options. In fact, we take it as a point of pride that we’re able to gamify any care package build. If you have a specific community you’d like to help, let us know! We’ll find a reputable, local nonprofit organization that assists your target community — or we’ll come up with other ways to give back — and design an event around how to make that happen. We even handle the tricky parts! Some organizations receive too many donations of a particular item but not enough of another, for example, while others have restrictions regarding what they can and can’t accept. We always communicate with the organization before designing the event so we can make sure any donations will be useful and go where they’re needed. That way, you can maximize the positive impact on your community without having to do the legwork by yourself. |
With that said, here are our tried-and-true events that always make a big difference.
1. Ramp it Up Skateboard Build
Does it seem like every company ever offers a bicycle build as their default charitable activity? We’re not knocking it — we love a good bicycle build, and we host these events frequently — but we also think it’s time to do something a little different.
The primary reason we love skateboard builds is because skateboards are a surprisingly fantastic thing to donate. Skateboarding is a form of risky play, and psychologists say risky play benefits youth because it forces them to develop leadership skills, creative problem solving, and resilience in the face of setbacks. There’s just something about conquering a challenging skateboarding obstacle that helps young brains develop more than safely gliding along on a bike.
As a bonus, decorating the wide, flat deck of a skateboard is just more fun than trying to get paint and stickers to look right on the curved tubes of a bike.
Group Size: 10-500
Location Details: Outdoors (Can be done indoors if necessary)
Time Frame: 2-3 hours
2. Surfboard Design
Similarly, surfing provides that adrenaline rush of risk followed by the fun of riding waves into shore — or the setback of tumbling off at the wrong time and getting thrown around by the great washing machine spin cycle of the sea.
Plus, the broad expanse of a surfboard offers a huge canvas for employees to express their creativity. We’ve seen some truly marvelous designs come out of some of our events.
After the event, surfboards will be donated to nonprofits such as Operation Amped, which helps veterans heal past trauma through a love of surfing and the surfing community.
Group Size: 25+
Location Details: Outdoors (Can be done indoors if necessary)
Time Frame: 1.5-2 hours
3. Golf n Give
Have you ever designed your own mini golf hole? Even if you have, we bet you’ve never used canned goods as your building materials.
Golf n Give combines a day of fun building golf courses using unconventional building supplies with the giving-back aspect of donating all the food to local food banks after the event.
Chances are, your team will be thinking of creative ways to turn a tower of canned peas into a suitable golf obstacle for weeks following this event.
Group Size: 25+
Location Details: Indoors or outdoors
Time Frame: 2-3 hours
4. Doggie Kits
How many millions of dogs are in shelters right now, waiting for some loving family to come along and adopt them? If your heart breaks at the idea of all the pups waiting in shelters, our doggie care kit events can help ease your mind.
Participants will put together care packages for dogs depending on what the shelter needs — we communicate with them first to find out what they actually need, so they don’t wind up with a million dog beds they can’t use — and then send them off to be used and loved by doggos waiting to go to their forever homes.
We encourage participants to include items like leashes, collars, dog bowls, and other supplies that lessen the cost and the inconvenience for people wanting to adopt a dog. Every dollar saved and every inconvenience eliminated makes it more likely that a dog will successfully be adopted.
Group Size: 25+
Location Details: Indoors or outdoors
Time Frame: 1-2.5 hours
5. Duffel Bags for Youth in Foster Care
When kids have to travel between foster homes, they’re often given nothing more than a trash bag as a means of carrying their possessions. Imagine how a child must feel using a trash bag to carry their modest amount of belongings as they transition from home to home. To say it’s heartbreaking and demeaning is an understatement.
While not everyone can adopt a child, everyone can help ease their emotionally difficult transitions by granting these kids some dignity and comfort. Our team-building event participants will fill high-quality duffel bags with comfort items such as blankets, toys, and coloring books and then personalize the outside with cheerful paintings and friendly drawings.
Group Size: 25+
Location Details: Indoors or outdoors
Time Frame: 1-2.5 hours
6. Fluffy Friends
Foster care isn’t the only scary situation kids may face. It’s a sad fact that kids go through traumatic events just like adults do. They also often have to talk to police and relive the events over and over again after the traumatic event is over.
Our Fluffy Friends activity helps these kids find some comfort during some of the scariest times in their lives by providing them with stuffed animals and other huggable, comforting toys that can stay with them throughout the journey.
Group Size: 25+
Location Details: Indoors or outdoors
Time Frame: 1-2.5 hours
7. More Heartfelt Care Packages
Sadly, there’s no shortage of people in need in this world. Now’s your chance to give back by designing your own customized care package and donating it to the person, animal, or nonprofit group of your choice.
Our most popular care package events donate to military members, cancer patients undergoing chemo, and the demographics we’ve already mentioned, such as kids in foster care and dogs awaiting their forever families. However, we are always happy to customize a care package event to benefit any community you have in mind.
Group Size: 25+
Location Details: Indoors or outdoors
Time Frame: 1-2.5 hours
Have a remote team? Fret not! Firefly Team Events can help you put together remote team-building activities that benefit nonprofits just as effectively as in-person events.
Nearly any care package build event can be adapted to take place over a Zoom call. Participants can play games, interact, and put together their care packages under the guidance of one of our event leaders, and then send the package to us to donate, or drop it off at the local nonprofit of their choice.
As an alternative — or in addition — to care packages, consider a remote letter writing event. We’ll guide your employees to write letters to soldiers, to elderly patients in nursing homes, and other other people who might really be in need of a kind word.
A third idea to take your charity team-building activities online is to host an event where participants deliberately review-bomb local establishments — with positive reviews. We’ll encourage your employees to speak up if they ate an amazing dinner at a local establishment or experienced customer service that went above and beyond. Participants can take turns telling their stories to each other and leaving positive reviews to help generate some extra business for their favorite local joints.
When you’re ready to set up your next charity team-building event, give Firefly Team Events a shout!
