Corporate giving as a team building excercise

As an event planner I specialize in creating events for my clients that go beyond the room booking and menu planning. Many times I am asked to create experiences for guests and company staff that make them feel part of a community. For staff this translates into better teamwork, problem solving and helps to reduce conflict in their workplace.

One of the staff team building events I was tasked with was a holiday party where I was charged with energizing the team, connect them to the community at large and ramp up the holiday spirit. I’m happy to say we did it and here’s how.

1. We set aside $20 per staff from the budget for a charitable donation.
2. Reviewing the company’s brand and staff demographics we selected Canuck Place as the featured charity.
3. Contacted Canuck Place fund-raising office and researched areas of need within the organization.
4. Canuck Place created a wish list of toys and items that would enhance the stay of families receiving support at the hospice.
5. Taking the wish list provided we researched prices online and created teams that would cover the cost of each item. For example a toy costing $50 would have 3 staff assigned to it. Team size varied from 1 person up to 5 and included all 48 employees and management.
6. With teams numbers and gifts made into raffle strips 1`manager + 1 employee put all raffle slips into a “hat” and one week prior to the party walked around the office and had every person pull a ticket.
7. Staff then had one week to find their team members, pool their $ resources, source the gift and purchase it.
8. At the start of the party (drinks and appies in the office) we set up a gift wrapping station and invited all teams to wrap their presents.
9. All staff was transported to Canuck Place where they presented their gifts and were invited to treat on homemade cookies and hot chocolate. Canuck Place has amazing holidays light displays so staff were welcome to tour the outside grounds + got to hear a small story about the work and families supported by CP.
10. Inspired by the amazing team at Canuck Place we loaded the staff back into the bus and continued on to the restaurant where they partied on in true holiday style.

So in short a great experience for the employees to work together and give back to a well deserving charity. Employees understood that management cared about them and created an experience that thanked them for the past years work. All in all a huge hit!