How to Organize a Step Challenge

Step Challenges are an easy and fun way to bring your team together and promote health and wellness at the same time. 

Your first step: Determine your duration — 3-week or 6-week challenge are popular options

Decide how people will report their steps. Below are some examples:

  • Honor system – allow users to track their own steps using whatever method they prefer
  • Provide pedometers
  • Have them submit pictures of their Applications information from their smart phones
  • Use an app or online platform

Create an event in the event calendar

Adding your event to the Event Calendar in Volunteer Hub will be a great way to track interest and participants and provide an easy way to communicate with them. Ask your Social Purpose Champion to help you add the event to the calendar.

Distribute communications to promote your Step Challenge

    1. Invitation to participate – suggest sending this a couple of weeks before your start date to give participants time to prepare and to download apps if you are using those for tracking

      • If including prizes be sure to specify what they are and how to win

      • Invite participants to share photos/videos from their walks on their favorite social media platforms using the #FirstServeOthers tag

    2. Launch announcement – we suggest sending this a day or two prior to start and include link to Event Listing on Calendar.

    3. Status update – this is a great way to keep people engaged and can create competition and may motivate participants to step it up

    4. Event recap. As part of your recap, don’t focus only on who had the most steps, also calculate total number of steps taken as a group and convert that to other metrics, i.e. equivalent of X miles which is the distance from NY to Florida  

    5. Encourage participants take photos and videos of their involvement and to always use the #FirstServeOthers tag in their social media posts!