Smashing targets: our year 3 Elympics results
Roughly a 5 minute read by Alex
February 28th saw us surge across the finish line after another epic 365 days of Elympics, and set a brand new PB in the process!
This year we set ourselves the challenging target of exercising our way to £8,000 and I’m hugely proud to announce that we took the gold with a whopping… <drumroll please>
That’s a huge 30% up on our target, with every penny going towards making a real difference to the Leeds charities we’ve been supporting.
Since Elympics started back in 2016 we’ve now exercised our way to raising over £25,000 which is the equivalent of cycling 125,000 miles (at 20p a mile) or 5 times around the World!
As for the final standings, you can see view the top 10 Elympians below and view the full leaderboard over on the website.
Being a bit of a nerd for numbers and with 3 years worth of data now available, what better time to do a year-on-year comparison?!
The chart shows that whilst our number of activities and money raised increased, our actual distance was down from its peak in 2016. This is because not all exercises we track are distance based and a lot of the team have been using the new office gym for HIIT classes and similar, contributing a much larger number of activities than previous years. We did work a lot harder for those miles though, as reflected in our elevation hitting a record this year.
Where the money went
We deliberately chose charities where we could follow the money and see how it was being put to good use. Below is how it all got spent.
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!”
“CATCH is a volunteer led charity based in the heart of Harehills. The funds raised through Elympics have had a direct positive impact on the young people and wider community we support”
Ash Razzaq MBE, Founder at CATCH
So what’s in store for year 4?
Well to start off with, we’ve upped our target to £10,000. It’s going to be tough as we only just scraped in this year, but we do like a challenge! We’re also working on a brand new website for Elympics which we should be ready to showcase shortly.
After three years and £25k raised, we’ve been giving close consideration as to what other local charities would benefit from our fund raising. We’ll therefore be announcing our 2019 beneficiaries on our social channels over the next few weeks,
Other than that, I really hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Elympics and please get in touch if it’s something you might be interested in taking up in your workplace, as we’re always keen to help others get healthier whilst helping causes close to their hearts. You can also follow our progress on the Elympics website or Instagram.