Published: January 2022
WellGiving: Supporting team bonding, wellbeing, and charities through bespoke Virtual Challenges
According to an analysis by Deloitte, poor mental health alone costs UK employers up to £45 billion each year. It is widely accepted that regular exercise and being active significantly improves both mental and physical health resulting in healthier, happier workplaces.
WellGiving was created by its founder Paul Rhodes in 2019 as a partner company to his core software business Green Gorilla Apps. It is an online platform that provides bespoke virtual fitness challenges to institutions focused upon improving the mental and physical health of staff with an aim of raising over £1 million for UK charities.
Institutional partners sign up to the WellGiving platform adding a profile. They then set their staff a series of charity challenges that accumulate points, if the pre-determined points totals are achieved it triggers a donation to the chosen charity. WellGiving set a series of different physical challenges assigning points tallies to each one.
The challenges vary in nature from walking and five-a-side football through to workout classes, parkruns, and basketball. Employees are provided with regular updates and reports with frequent opportunities for shared celebration of achievements. For what began as a side interest, WellGiving's growth has been rapid.
In just three years it has developed from a fledging idea to a successful new to market platform product. "Our WellGiving platform has been designed to promote and support charitable cultures within organisations and inspire and motivate staff to improve their physical health through gamification."
Paul joined the BetaDen cohort in 2019 with an embryonic idea of WellGiving's key features and a belief in its potential. With Green Gorilla focused upon software consultancy and support he had no previous experience in terms of building online platforms, receiving regulatory approval, or taking new products to market. He therefore knew that for the business to develop he required significant support with these processes.
Paul had never previously thought about applying for an accelerator programme. It was only through a chance conversation with a peer that he heard about the process. He admitted that he was initially slightly anxious about making a nine-month, one day a week, on-site commitment and wasn't sure what to expect from the programme.
Yet the experience proved to be very rewarding for Paul. He was full of praise for his time on the BetaDen Accelerator citing the support received with presentational skills, regulatory approval applications, marketing, and product testing as particularly important. He also highlighted the importance of BetaDen grant application support, with WellGiving receiving additional funding for help with cybersecurity, labour costs and achieving proof-of-concept.
Paul also saw the support and guidance of the mentors as key to developing WellGiving into a viable product, with him continually drawing upon their extensive experience and problem-solving expertise. He particularly valued the continued challenge, constructive criticism, and eventual product validation they provided. Acknowledging that he came from a very technical and solution orientated background, he saw his mentor's guidance as crucial in helping him to transition toward a more commercially orientated approach.
Paul also cited the grants, shared co-working space, and contact networks as key elements of the programme, highlighting the extensive mutual support that came from sharing the same BetaDen experience with six other companies. The main grant was used by Paul to develop WellGiving's branding, allowing for the development of a new website and the production of supporting promotional videos. For Paul it was this branding, coupled with the increased networking confidence he gained from the programme, that facilitated the attraction of newer, and bigger, customers.
He believed that BetaDen's support and mentoring network provided him with the expertise, understanding, testing, and endorsement he needed to take his product to market, stating that both his product and his levels of confidence improved immeasurably because of his involvement with BetaDen. He described the team as 'amazing champions of small businesses' concluding that the programme was a superb national example of how a local programme can support indigenous commercial growth.
Thanks largely to the support provided by BetaDen, Well Giving goes from strength to strength. Annual research and development investment in the product has increased from minimal levels to some £80,000. WellGiving now has a solid revenue stream with new customers coming from a wide variety of different sectors including schools and local government. They now work with a wide variety of blue-chip companies including international investment banks and large public sector organisations, with the product benefitting from an increased corporate focus upon health and wellbeing. WellGiving has also established several partnerships with other wellbeing firms with WellGiving's physical challenges being added to their wellbeing offering. Within the first six months post launch they had raised over £70,000 for charities, and within a year they had completed over 25 corporate challenges.
Their customer base has grown significantly particularly after the recent refinement to their pricing policy. Paul has taken on two new staff into the main business to facilitate Green Gorillas staff spending 20% of their time working on WellGiving. With interest continuing to grow, there is a large marketing campaign planned for 2022, focused upon ensuring the continuation of their rapid growth. For Paul none of this would have been possible without the support, guidance and mentoring provided by the BetaDen Programme.
