SharePoint, Pushups, and Breast Cancer Awareness

As a man, I have noticed that men tend to be less likely than women to get involved in raising funds or participating in Breast Cancer awareness. In an effort to combat this tendency, the men in our office recently decided to see if we could help change the behavior, raising money for the cause in a unique and fun way, and to get the entire company involved as well.  Being typical men, however, we were late by one month for the actual Breast Cancer Awareness month.

What does any of this have to do with SharePoint? Read on...

So as to get the entire office involved, a group of 9 men organized and ran a pushup pledge drive. Yes, you read that correctly: Pushups. Recall that "unique and fun" were among our goals at the outset.

Each man solicited donations from his colleagues on a per-pushup basis, pledging in return to participate in an office pushup contest. Our original goal was $300, but when the final pushup was completed, we had raised over $1,700! The excitement for the contest, including online polls and spirited boasting, really brought the office together in a fun way and got all of our men pumped up to be involved in a worthy cause. Needless to say, donations were accepted from both sexes, and many men and women donated to the cause.

We were able to use our own Web Parts to really make the effort shine. Emily Bien used the SharePoint Poll Web Part to create a poll to get votes from the office staff as to who they thought would win, which led to much smack talk as many of the participants kept up with who the office thought would win. As it turned out, the results of the voting were actually pretty much on target with what the actual results were (collaboration usually leads to the right answers!)

When the big day arrived, all nine participants dropped and did as many pushups as they could manage in 6 minutes. Sweat and shortened breath came from the men as they cranked out their pushups.  Our colleagues watched and cheered us on (sometimes laughing uproariously) as we did our pushups, generating excitement in our version of the race for the cure. Prizes were awarded for the most money raised, as well as the most pushups completed (pink hats in honor of Breast Cancer Research, and a  tiara was also earned by yours truly for having cranked out the least  amount of pushups: 33). 

As it turned out, we had not one but two ringers gents who each did over 100 pushups apiece in the allotted time. Our triple-digit champions were Douglas Jay with 138 pushups, and Tim Do with 114, but all of our contestants were hailed as champions for their participation.

After the contest, SharePoint once again came into play when Jeff Tubb put together a SharePoint list for us (and really learned to love calculated values in the process), allowing in-office donors to donate through our corporate portal, and enabling us to easily track who earned and owed what amounts. By using Sharepoint, we were able to have real-time results of where the donations stood, and allow people easier access to donate without having to go chase down one of the participants.

In the end, everybody was a winner, and we have SharePoint to thank for helping improve the process.