TeamUp customers come together to support Ukraine

To support the many global foundations and organisations currently aiding Ukraine, several TeamUp customers and partners have launched charitable campaigns to provide those organisations with donations and supplies for Ukraine's citizens and refugees.

We have seen many trainers, teachers, and gym and studio owners run incredible charitable and philanthropic events and campaigns through their TeamUp booking system and want to take this time to recognise our amazing community for the generosity, contributions and actions they are taking to support Ukraine.

Photo Credit: Northants Pilates 

Karen Grinter, owner of Northants Pilates, Sam Beagle owner of uFit, Richard Giles owner of One Element Tooting & Streatham, Oti Mabuse and Marius Iepure of Oti and Marius Dance Studio, and Business and Partnerships Manager Sarah Bargeron at Body Control Pilates were kind enough to sit down with us and take us through their campaigns and their motivation behind utilising their businesses and communities to contribute and support Ukraine. To learn how they organised their events and how you too can use your system to host your own charitable and philanthropic events, read our interviews with each of them below.

Northants Pilates: “Pay What You Want: Exercise for Ukraine”

Within a week of announcing the “Pay What You Want: Exercise for Ukraine” Pilates Open Day, Karen Grinter and the instructors of Northants Pilates raised over £458, and ultimately raised over £1,600 to date. Listing several in-person and online classes on the 25th and 26th of March, everyone who donated from the selection of donation tiers could participate in a class or simply make a donation.

All donations will be sent to The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) an umbrella group for 15 of the UK's leading aid charities, including Save the Children, Oxfam, British Red Cross and Action Against Hunger. Its Ukraine humanitarian appeal is raising funds for those fleeing their homes. 

One of our clients came to us saying 'wouldn't it be good if you did a 24-hour Pilates class for Ukraine?' And we thought to ourselves no one will want to do Pilates at three in the morning, but we love the idea behind it. We decided to do a day where all profits from all classes would go to charity to support the people of Ukraine.

We set up the classes in TeamUp as pay what you like and Daniel set up lots of class packs for donations starting from £2.50 to £30 and you could choose whatever amount you would like to donate. We had already been planning on hosting an open day to get new people through the door, so we thought this is actually a really good way for people to come and join and participate in a great cause. We took away all our restrictions and forms so that people could come in and have no barrier to signing up.

We had a week to publicize it and during that same week a street food fair was going on so we encouraged people to come and then go to the fair. Many of the classes booked up fairly quickly and some even said they wanted to donate but weren't able to come to the class. We set up a class date in April that wasn't actually a class to attend and I called it “The class that's not going to run” so anyone who wanted to donate only could do so via that class. And we can see that that class alone has earned over £900 from 50 people who have donated via that link alone.

I thought we would raise about £300 or £400 and our online foam roller class alone brought in £200 and really had us blown away. After we listed our classes and started watching donations coming it was amazing to see. People are unbelievably generous and it's their generosity that has made it. All we've done is what we do every day and that's allowed us to provide a vehicle to do some fitness and send donations to these charities supporting Ukraine.

One Element online HiiT Ukraine appeal

On Sunday, March 6th the team at One Element hosted an online HIIT class that raised over £4,029, across 139 supporters on Justgiving.com. In an absolutely incredible display of generosity and community, all donations raised went directly to the British Ukrainian Aid Organisation.

Richard Giles, owner of One Element Tooting & Streatham shared:

Early in the Ukrainian conflict, we were approached by one of our trainers, Ruby Padwick, who asked us if we could do something to raise money for aid to Ukraine. Within 5 days we had about 60 members on a live Sunday morning online session. We don't normally run any sessions on a Sunday, so we decided this would be the best time to have this bonus online session which was open to all our members across our franchise parks. Ruby's energetic session had about 60 members and raised £5,000 for the charity British-Ukrainian Aid from those who did and couldn't attend. Thanks to all our members who took part and donated and Ruby for the suggestion!

While the class has passed, One Element is still raising funds to support Ukraine and you too can do so, by checking out their fundraising page, here.

Oti & Marius Dance Studio's Night of the Stars

During this year's annual Night of the Stars celebration, Oti Mabuse and Marius Iepure Dance Studio focused all of their efforts on those who have been affected by the crisis in Ukraine. In collaboration with Hospices of Hope and the Romanian Culture Institute UK, together they hosted a variety of presentations and dance performances for all to enjoy. All donations and funds raised by their event were donated to Hospice of Hope's 'Help for Ukraine' appeal and are still accepting donations and aid.

uFit: Ukraine donation special with a free workout and giveaway

Sam Beagle and the uFit team created a free workout everyone could join that included a link in his class description to donate to the United World Cultures Foundation. Everyone who signed up to attend this workout and made a donation was entered into a prize draw with the following prizes including “One Month Free to uFit”, “Three Months Free to uFit”, restaurant vouchers, fitness items, food and beverage, and more.

Several of our members are Ukrainian or have Ukrainian partners. Our values and our mission and what we are trying to achieve, we wouldn't be following through with that if we didn't actually help our members when they needed it. We often do team training and team events and wanted to bring everyone together. We spoke to a lot of our members and asked if there was any chance that on the 26th of March they'd o come to the studio for a free workout, bring people, and offer a donation.

In this industry we're lucky that you're training people that you have services you can wap and exchange, so we had a DJ, restaurant owners bring food, other local businesses donate giveaway prizes for free, it was great. We even had a CBD production, Pure Sport give us £350 worth of products to give away. All in all the prizes were between £1000 to £1500.

The wife of one of our members is Ukrainian and she was the grand prize winner of a free month at ufFit. She always wanted to come to our gym, but more recently it's been difficult, so it was fantastic that she won and everyone was so very happy for her.

On TeamUp, I created a separate class of a free workout and it was really easy for people to sign up themselves and register to attend. We asked people to donate via the link in the class description and also send out emails. In the end, we had 34 people in the workout and we split the group into three separate sections between all our coaches. At the end of the session, we had food and drink and our raffle.

Members brought Ukrainian flags and we had signs outside to let people know they could come to join and donate. On the day we raised £800 and it has since gone up to about, £1000. On the day members and nonmembers could donate via the link and we also had QR codes set up through Paypal that they could scan and donate in the gym. We even had about eight or nine nonmembers inquire after about signing up and have since offered them a discount.

This is definitely something we will do again. It brings everyone together in the community. There's a deeper purpose and meaning behind it when you're working out and donating to an important cause that's bigger than yourself. The workout isn't bad compared to what people are facing right now. Doing something like this, for people it's bigger than themselves. There are memories and stories that people can sure and relate to and it ties them more together than the actual workouts themselves. What they get from coming here is way more important than what's happening in the actual workout.

I'd like to think that that is uFit giving them that feeling rather than myself or the other coaches giving them that. It's really important for new members to have the insight and understanding that we're more than a gym. There's more depth behind what we're doing, and people can come here and be a part of things like this and know it's bigger than just coming to work out. It's actually working on yourself and giving back to the community.

Body Control Pilates: fundraising week with 100% of proceeds donated

From April 4th to 9th, 2022, Body Control Pilates will be running a Supporting Ukraine Week with 100% of the proceeds going to the British Ukrainian Aid.

Business and Partnerships Manager, Sarah Bargeron shared,

We really felt that we wanted to do something to help the people of Ukraine. We have a great community of teachers, students and clients and 1500 members around the world. Whenever we've had any fundraising events in the past they've been so supported  and everyone is so generous. We wanted to do something positive so we have organised 30 live-stream Pilates classes over the week of the 4th of April to the 9th of April with all classes live- streamed via Zoom. Classes will be taught by our regular Body Control Pilates class teachers and tutors but we also have some guest presenters and master teachers from different Pilates schools around the world as well. We have Elizabeth Larkam, Maria Earl, Michael King, Suzanne Martin, Ton and Michael teaching classes, these are very respected names in the Pilates world and we are honoured to have them teaching in this event.

Everybody is giving their time free of charge and 100% of the proceeds are going to British Ukrainian Aid. We also have two teachers Anastasiia Viekua and Halyna Dobrovolska teaching from Ukraine, they wanted to do something to help their country. It's very humbling that they're wanting to take part as well. Anastasiia is teaching her class live from Lviv and has said she's hoping that there aren't going to be any air raid sirens or cutting of the network during the class. It makes you realise the day to day situation they are having to live with.

We have made the class numbers larger so that as many people who want to come to the classes can come. We don't want to say no to anybody. All of the classes are one hour long and 12 pounds each. We've also been contacted by people who would like to donate but can't make a class, so we have set up a class called donation, that way even if they can't attend they can still be a part of this event. We have had an amazing response. We have classes running from 7.30am – 8pm (UK time) with teachers teaching from all around the world including Spain, Greece, the USA, Australia, Denmark, and more. It's been great and very moving to have so many from the Pilates world coming together to support Ukraine.

To participate in the Body Control Pilates classes to support Ukraine, check out their class list, here.

How to run charitable donation-based events via TeamUp

There are many ways to create and host one-off charitable events and campaigns through your TeamUp booking system. Some of the most common types of events we have seen include:

• Donation-based classes and “pay what you like” with either a link to donate or “1 class pack membership” with donation amounts going to the organisation
• 100% of proceeds from classes and memberships in a certain period of time go to an organisation
• Giveaways that include entry when you sign up or register for a class during a period of time with proceeds going to an organisation

To learn how to make your own donation based-classes, check out our support guide here, or keep reading for an example you can replicate in your own business.

Creating a prepaid membership for your charitable campaign

In this example, we'll show you how to create prepaid memberships to create donation amounts your customers can make when they register for classes, courses or appointments that belong to your charitable event or campaign.

Using prepaid memberships you can set up certain plans with different donation amounts that customers can purchase.

If you are doing a pay what you like model you can set up several different tiers so that members can select the price they'd like to pay for example £2, £5, £7, £10, £12, £15, £20 and so on.

To get started will need to open your membership settings and select “pack”. With this option, you will be able to set that each pack is valid for one class redemption.

You can name your plans based on the donation for example “£5 donation” or “£10 donation” with the description explaining your campaign and where their donation will be sent or used for.

You can set a time limit on this membership if you would like it to only be available during the dates of your campaign, or begins on the date of the first registration if you want it to be redeemed at any time.

In the pricing section, you will set the amount for the donation.

In the usability section, you can assign this membership to the classes, appointments, or courses that belong to your event or campaign. If you have not yet created those you can return to this page once you have or assign memberships directly from the create a class page.

If you would like this pack to only be good for one class during your campaign, you'll set the pack size to “1” and “no restrictions” as the pack is only valid for the one time class.

Once your membership is created you'll be able to review the details and see it in your memberships list along with your other donation prepaid memberships.

After your prepaid membership(s) is created you can begin creating the classes that correspond to your event and assign your donation memberships to them.

Once your campaign is over, rather than deleting this membership type you can switch on the “Not for sale” status so that if you host another event similar to this in the future all you need to do is turn it back on and update the description to correspond with your event.

Creating classes for your charitable campaign

Once the class type is made you can add the time slots for the class to be scheduled to appear on your calendar so that your members can begin booking the class.

When your customers go to book your classes for your donation-based campaign or event they'll first be prompted to purchase one of the pack memberships associated with the class.

When they have purchased you'll receive their payment and they'll be booked into the class and receive an email confirmation.

It's that easy! Once you have received the payment you can then donate it to the charity or cause you are supporting. And don't forget to review your transaction and VAT fees when creating your campaign.

Are you running an event to support Ukraine?

We'd love to list your event or classes to support the people of Ukraine in this guide. Please email marketing@goteamup.com to let us know the details and we would be happy to include you.

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