Giving back doesn't always look like volunteering

CLIENT: Lombard and Credeq

CHARITY PARTNER: Men's Foundation of South Africa

CAMPAIGN: Movember

Not every act of giving needs a dedicated day.

Employee giving is often pictured as a big, occasional thing: a day on site, a bus to a community project. Lombard and Credeq's Movember campaign made the opposite case. For employees, giving back in November looked like a lunchtime walk, a Thursday in gym kit, or growing a moustache they'd normally have shaved off in week one. Nothing about it asked people to give up more of themselves than they already had to spare. The campaign let a month of small, ordinary choices add up to real money for men's mental health.

How movement became money
The mechanic was simple by design. Employees signed up for R50, joined the Lombard Movember group on Strava and moved. Every logged kilometre or minute converted directly into a company contribution:

R4 per kilometre running or walking

R2 per kilometre cycling

R0.50 per minute of any other workout — boxing, swimming, stairs, dance, anything that counted as effort

There was no separate ask for a donation on top of a workout. The exercise was the donation. Someone's regular Tuesday run became a line item for the Men's Foundation of South Africa without them changing anything about their week except logging it.

More than one door in.
Not everyone runs, and Fforgood's data consistently shows that participation climbs when there's more than one way to take part. Lombard and Credeq built two more doors into the same campaign:

Bro with the Best Mo.
Employees grew a moustache through November and submitted a photo by the 27th to compete for the title. No fitness requirement, no distance to log, just visible, funny participation that kept Movember on people's minds all month.

Thrive-mber Thursdays.
Every Thursday in November, employees came to work in exercise gear and took a break for short, silly office games:

• Battle of the Bins (sink a paper ball from the furthest distance, standing on one leg) and Sticky Summit (stick a sticky note the highest on a wall)
• Target Toss (land a hacky sack in the target area) and Hack Attack (keep a hacky sack in the air the most times using only your feet)
• Hoopathon (longest hula-hoop) and Chair-iots of Fire (most spins on an office chair, one kick-off only)

The Hack Attack round produced the standout moment of the month: the Mafube team taking the win in a corridor showdown that turned an ordinary Thursday morning into the thing everyone was talking about at lunch.

That's the real point of the "small acts" side of this campaign. A hacky sack game and a sticky note contest raised no money at all, but they kept energy and visibility high enough that the fundraising side kept moving too. Impact isn't only the Rand value; it's also a team choosing to spend a Thursday morning laughing together instead of at their desks.

The podium
At month's end, the Strava leaderboard had its own winners. Their kilometres, logged doing something, ended up doing double duty, better for them, and worth more for the cause.

The numbers
Employees put in R3 500 of their own money through entry fees. The company's exercise-matching mechanic took that further turning logged kilometres and minutes into R15 000+ on its own.

The final total: R22 709 for the Men's Foundation of South Africa, more than six times what staff contributed directly.

When a company puts a Rand value on effort people are already putting in, the number adds up fast without asking anyone to dig into their own pocket beyond the entry fee.

Why it worked
Three things made a one-month, no-travel, no-special-skills campaign land with participants.

• The barrier to entry was almost nothing. Signing up cost R50 and joining a Strava group takes thirty seconds. There was no minimum distance, no fitness threshold, and no requirement to be "a runner."
• The incentive was visible and immediate. Every kilometre had a Rand value attached to it in real time on Strava, so participants could see their own effort converting into impact as the month went on, not after the fact.
• It stayed fun for four weeks straight. A month-long campaign risks losing momentum by week two. Thrive-mber Thursdays and Bro with the Best Mo gave people a reason to stay engaged even on the days they didn't log a workout, which is why the campaign still had energy and a corridor full of people trying to out-hacky-sack each other.

Could this work for you?

A few things make it worth trying regardless of your CSI budget or team size.

It reaches people your big activation doesn't. Not everyone can take a day off site or travel to a community project. A campaign that runs inside people's existing routines opens a door for employees who'd otherwise sit CSI participation out entirely.

It costs almost nothing to launch. No venue, no transport, no NPO site visit to coordinate. Just a Strava group, a matching rate you set, and a charity partner willing to receive the funds.

The honest pitch to make internally isn't "let's do less." It's "let's also count what people are already doing."