Why challenge events might be the most underrated corporate engagement tool

When organisations think about challenge events, they often see them as a fundraising activity. Money is raised, a charity benefits and everyone goes home happy.

But I think that misses the wider point.

The most successful challenge events I’ve seen aren’t just about fundraising. They’re about bringing people together around a shared purpose and helping to raise awareness of a cause they care about. The money is important, but raising awareness of some of the biggest issues facing society today? You can’t put a price on that.

There are also much bigger benefits to the companies and teams taking part. In an age where many companies are grappling with employee engagement, hybrid working and creating meaningful social value, challenge events can deliver benefits far beyond the donation total.

In fact, they sit at the intersection of team building, employee wellbeing, skills development, community engagement and brand affinity.

That’s a pretty remarkable return from what many organisations still view as ‘just a fundraiser’.

Challenge events create teams, not just participants

One of the things I hear most often from corporate partners after volunteering days or fundraising events is that staff who would never normally interact end up working closely together. They meet people from other departments or build stronger relationships with team members who they normally only see in online calls with questionable internet connections.

Research highlighted in Benevity’s State of Corporate Volunteering study found that organisations using team-based volunteering activities saw participation rates 7.5 times higher than organisations that didn’t. The same report concluded that volunteering programmes help improve cross-company connections and strengthen team cohesion in increasingly hybrid workplaces.

Challenge events create the same effect. A finance manager, site supervisor, HR adviser and apprentice suddenly become one team with a common goal. Titles and seniority become less important. Colleagues start to understand each other’s communication styles, pressures and priorities. Previous barriers that create seemingly insurmountable silos suddenly melt away.

The beauty is, those connections don’t disappear once the finish line is crossed. After all, it’s hard to get the image of your line manager caked in mud out of your head just because you’re back at your desks! (Trust me, I’ve tried!)

The innate value of challenge events is so great that at P3 Charity, we’ve deliberately embedded them into our corporate partnership offer because they help create engagement in a way that traditional sponsorship alone rarely achieves.

They build skills that the workplace values

One of the most overlooked benefits of challenge events is the skills they develop. Of course teams face challenges together every day, but the pressures of working together to tackle a system outage or a last-minute deadline are undeniably different to the joys of working together to pull your CEO over a 6-foot wall or running through town dressed as Santas. One builds resilience, the other builds resilience and gives everyone a story they’ll still be telling at the staff Christmas party.

Completing a challenge event requires many of the same capabilities organisations want and need from their employees, but gives teams an enjoyable way of developing them together. Just think: if you could increase your team’s resilience, communication, problem solving, time management, leadership and accountability in an afternoon, you’d say it’s a no brainer, right?

Whether someone is supporting a colleague through training for a marathon, organising logistics for a team event or encouraging others when motivation dips, they are practicing skills that transfer back into the workplace in a very real way.

Corporate volunteering and social impact programmes have long been recognised for their contribution to employee development, with HR leaders consistently citing volunteering experiences as opportunities for building leadership, teamwork and communication skills.

Challenge events offer a similar opportunity, often with even greater levels of collaboration and shared achievement, and arguably a lot more fun!

When social value becomes personal

Many organisations have ESG, CSR or social value targets, but often the challenge is making those commitments feel meaningful to employees and helping them feel a sense of responsibility for achieving them.

A sustainability report may demonstrate impact externally, but a team challenge event allows employees to experience it.

When somebody is raising money for a homelessness service, a supported housing project or a mental health programme, they move beyond reading about social impact and become part of creating it. They read the report, but now they see themselves in it, knowing they’ve been a part of those achievements.

At P3, our corporate partnerships are built around helping organisations create measurable social value while strengthening their connection to communities, and challenge events are often one of the most accessible entry points because they combine employee engagement with tangible community impact.

Not just good for employees, but good for business

There’s another benefit that is sometimes overlooked when it comes to challenge events and creating demonstrable social value.

Many people feel increasingly disconnected from decisions that affect their lives.

Rising living costs, concerns about climate change and worries about increasing social and economic inequality and decreasing community cohesion can leave people feeling that they have little ability to influence wider change. What they can control, however, is where they spend their money.

More and more, people are choosing to engage with businesses that reflect their values and their desire for change and are turning their backs on corporations that they feel undervalue these.

Research consistently shows that consumers increasingly make purchasing decisions based on their values, spending with companies they believe contribute positively to society and avoiding those that do not. Edelman’s 2024 global study found that 60% of consumers are expressing their politics and power through brand choices, and Harvard Business School Online found that 77% of consumers are more motivated to purchase from companies committed to making the world a better place.

But the key here is authenticity. Customers can often tell the difference between a company sponsoring a logo opportunity and employees genuinely investing their time, energy and effort in support of a cause.

Challenge events look like authentic engagement because they are. People can see colleagues training, fundraising and sharing personal stories about why a cause matters to them. That creates emotional connections that are difficult to replicate through conventional marketing.

Value beyond the fundraising total

Too often, challenge events are judged on one metric: how much money was raised.

That’s important, because charities need income and communities need support, but if the only thing you’re measuring is the fundraising total, you’re probably missing most of the value.

The strongest challenge events create relationships between colleagues who would never normally work together. They develop confidence, strengthen organisational culture, connect people to their local communities and give employees a tangible way to see their company’s values in action.

The donation may be spent in a matter of months, but the impact on your people, your culture and your reputation can last much longer.

That’s why the best challenge events aren’t fundraising activities that happen to engage employees. They’re employee engagement activities that happen to raise money at the same time.

Getting started

If you’re thinking about introducing challenge events into your employee engagement, wellbeing or social value programme, the good news is that you don’t need to start from scratch.

At P3, we offer a range of challenge events throughout the year, from walking and running events to more ambitious challenges like mountain treks, giving organisations the flexibility to find something that fits their culture, workforce availability and fitness levels. Whether you’re looking to engage a handful of colleagues or mobilise an entire office, challenge events can be tailored to suit different levels of experience and commitment.

For organisations looking to go further, challenge events can also form part of a wider corporate partnership. Many of our most successful partnerships combine fundraising, volunteering, skills-sharing and social value activity to create deeper relationships with both employees and local communities.

If you’re exploring ways to strengthen employee engagement, build team cohesion and create meaningful community impact, challenge events can be a simple but highly effective place to start.

You can find out more about P3’s challenge events here: Explore P3 Challenge Events

And learn more about our corporate partnerships here: Explore Corporate Partnerships with P3

After all, the hardest part is rarely crossing the finish line. It’s taking the first step.