Member Article

WellGiving platform supports ‘Going for Gold’ athletes from Leonard Cheshire care home

Participants and supporters of Leonard Cheshire’s Cheltenham care home, Gloucestershire House, raised over £3K with the help of health and wellbeing platform, WellGiving.

Leonard Cheshire, the UK’s leading disability charity, was founded in 1948 and works across the UK as well as running development projects across the world to support people with disabilities to live, learn and work as independently as they choose, whatever their ability.

The 40-strong team comprised disabled residents from Gloucestershire House in Cheltenham, staff and students from Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Cheltenham College, as well as volunteers, staff and supporters of Leonard Cheshire. The team all cycled their ‘Going for Gold’ journey virtually wherever they were based to raise money for a new therapy bike and essential, adaptive accessories.

BBC Radio Gloucestershire presenter Jon Smith launched the challenge on 16th June 2021, and joined the team himself. The Going for Gold challenge saw participants cycle the equivalent of 5,961 virtual miles, from their starting point in Cheltenham to the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo to show support for disabled athletes taking part in the 2021 Paralympic Games.

The pandemic has had a huge impact on many fundraising activities, and Events Manager for Leonard Cheshire, Sarah Grout, recognised the need to pivot and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances to enable a large team event to take place. They had previously been using a manual system to plot routes and record mileages, and prior to working with WellGiving, had been searching for a way to reduce this administrative burden, while instilling a sense of team spirit across a large virtual event composed of disparate groups of people.

The Going for Gold team piloted the WellGiving platform as it offered a seamless way to track activity across participants in multiple locations and link in to fundraising progress. Sarah commented: “WellGiving is a great solution for connecting the many variables and components of a fundraising challenge: from stakeholders, participants and sponsors; to integrating with platforms like JustGiving and Strava; to communicating with all parties in the process – internal or external. It’s logical and user friendly – perfect for a wide variety of user groups. A useful motivational tool for boosting employee engagement and shaping organisational social responsibility.”

The WellGiving platform was developed by Paul Rhodes, a software engineer with extensive experience in building software for businesses. Wanting to launch a project he was truly passionate about, Paul realised that charity is a powerful motivator for sport and fitness performance after participating in the Birmingham Half Marathon and raising £1000 for a local children’s hospice.

He designed WellGiving as a way to connect people remotely, keep them physically fit all while raising money for charities that have been particularly hard-hit during the pandemic. It promotes better engagement by offering a wide variety of physical activities and challenges from walking, running, football, or even yoga, and with the ability to adapt the software and implement custom challenges, WellGiving is designed to be truly inclusive.

Paul explained: “We were delighted to have the WellGiving platform piloted by the Going for Gold team from Leonard Cheshire. For us it was proof of both the inclusivity and usability of the software, which were two of our major goals from its inception.

“Our aim when developing WellGiving has always been to closely collaborate with our users, and having Leonard Cheshire pilot the software for us during its Beta phase was absolutely invaluable for gathering the insight and feedback that allowed us to improve the platform organically and ensure it is the best possible solution it can be for all of our users.”

Following a successful beta stage, the platform was officially launched in January 2022, and WellGiving is now on track to raise a staggering £1 million for charities all across the UK.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Amelia Black .