Elympics year 2: The results
Roughly a 5 minute read by Alex
Leap years aside, 28th February is an important day at Engage for two reasons: Not only does it mark the end of our financial year, but also heralds the culmination of another 12 months of blood, sweat and tears… which we’ve come to affectionately know as Elympics.
For those not familiar with Elympics, it’s our annual challenge to not only become the healthiest agency on the block, but to also raise money for our four fantastic Leeds charities. You can read all about it here.
In Elympics Year One we cycled, ran and swam our way to raising £7,130. Could we better this amount second time round or would we go the way of Grease 2 and end up being a disappointing sequel?…
Drumroll please!
Well the results have been counted and and we’re pleased to announce that we smashed last year’s total, raising close to 8k and giving us a great target to aim for as Elympics enters its third year.
With a podium topping individual total of £856.39, Dave was crowned this year’s King of Elympics. Pretty good going since he’s the oldest most mature member of the team, although he did reportedly take delivery of a few suspicious packages throughout the year, which is subject to an ongoing investigation.
You can see a snapshot of the top of the final leaderboard below, or view the full version over here.
I have to say *warning: incoming humblebrag* that as a relatively small team, we’re really proud of our final total and it’s great to see the money raised making a positive and measurable impact for the charities we support. It also brings our cumulative two year fundraising total to £15,025 - equivalent to over 32,000 miles of exercise, or 1.3 times around the Earth.
With health and wellbeing at work being such a hot topic at the moment too, it’s great to see Elympics acting as a catalyst to enable the team to improve the health of their body and minds through exercise; a commitment which continues to have a noticeable positive impact on the overall health of the team and culture.
I just did a quick calculation on last year’s sick days and we had 36 across the whole team, or 1.125 per person. This is well under the UK average of 4.3 which would equate to a whopping 137 days absence and lost productivity for our team of 32. The proof’s in the pudding and all that.
- 36 Engage sick days in the last 12 months
- 1.125 Average number of sick days per person
- 4.3 The UK national average sick days per person
The whole topic undoubtedly warrants more screen space, so hopefully I’ll find time to do another blog post on that soon.
Where the money went
Below is a quick round-up from our charities on how they’ve been putting the money to good use over the last 12 months.
CATCH Leeds
“The funds raised through Elympics have had a direct positive impact on the young people and wider community we support. Running a community building can be tough with all the running costs and bills. Elympics has allowed us to focus on the delivery of our much needed services without the increased pressures of having to fundraise or find funding to run our building.”
Open Country
“It’s been great having the support of Engage Interactive once again this year. The financial support that you have given us from the ‘Elympics’ has been incredibly beneficial, allowing us to buy an extra tandem for our disability cycling clubs, which now cover five local towns and cities, including Harrogate, Wetherby and neighbouring Wakefield. Times are tough right now for small charities like ours, and knowing there are progressive firms like yours rooting for us is a really big shot in the arm.”
Toast Love Coffee
“We’re hugely thankful to Engage, not just for their financial support - which has enabled us to take risks on new projects and know we can cover the bills that month - but also, and perhaps more importantly, for giving of themselves, and their time and skills, to sit down with us and share of themselves, to enable us to grow and feel stronger and braver in the work that we are doing.”
Read more about Toast Love Coffee
Lineham Farm
“Engage have shown the most fantastic support to Lineham Farm Children’s Charity whilst at the same time encouraging staff fitness through Elympics. We desperately needed a fleet of new bikes for our daily mountain biking programme and with the extremely generous donations from the company we were able to buy 10 brand new bikes. Since receiving the bikes we have had 50 schools and other children doing activities during school holidays. Mountain biking is certainly one of our most popular activities and so over 1,500 young people have cycled through the woods and up and down the farm. That’s pedal power!”
So, what’s next?
We did a hard reset of everything on the 1st March in preparation for another exciting year of Elympics. We’ll be bringing a few updates to the website in the coming weeks and are currently working hard on designing the World’s first Engage cycling jerseys. So if you spot one of us out and about, give us a wave (or slip us a tenner donation, as it’ll save us having to cycle another 50 miles!)
You can follow our Elympics progress over on the Elympics website and our Instagram.