How to build the best Wings for Life World Run team

Why teams are more fun

It’s official. Running in a team, in a group, is amazing. The shared Wings for Life World Run team experience, whether you’re side by side or continents apart, has a wonderful sense of community and boosts your feel-good serotonin hormone.

Creating a team is a super simple, super fun way to level up your community feels. Some people thrill in organizing App Runs Events, but if hunting out a track and promoting an App Run Event is just not you, being a Team Captain absolutely can be.

With a team, you can set a shared target distance, go in hard on the fundraising, create your own team outfit or theme, surprise the world by being the biggest team yet – game on! Florian Neuschwander’s team, Run with the Flow, could hit 1,000 this year! You could beat that!

How to create a team

1. Log in to your account
2. Click on the Teams tab in the menu
3. Click on Create a Team
4. Name your team – get creative
5. Set your team’s fundraising goal – we’re all here to raise money for spinal cord research, after all. You can start as low as you want and increase your goal later.
6. Set your team as private or open to everybody
7. Now your team is created, you need to visit the team’s profile and join it as team captain
8. Give your team the personal touch: Click on edit to add your team’s story
9. Add a team avatar and cover picture – choose a default one or upload your own
10. Share, share, share your team page with your friends, family and social followers. You could download and edit these pictures/frames to add that impressive pro-captain touch!

Explore sharing assets

It’ll take you ten minutes, but it puts you on a path to creating incredible memories for loads of people. You can also speak to your entire team using the team message board in your team profile – it’s a great way to fire up your community spirit.

Team-building tricks

Game on – challenge other teams

To add a bit of competition to team life, you could make things personal:

• Most people in a team
• Run the furthest as a team
• Wear the silliest clothes
• Carry an ironing board – yes, it is a thing
• Raise the most money for spinal cord injury
• Represent every state, province, county, country or continent
• Challenge another local team – make it a local derby or pit sport teams against each other
• Who’s better: football or rugby, field hockey or ice hockey, ballet or hip hop, rowers or cyclists
• Company departments go head-to-head

Use Stories, Reels and videos

Share Stories, Reels or videos of you training or calling out other team captains. Go live on Facebook to show your team where you’ll run – get them to do the same and tag your team.

Share your team picture

Use your team picture across your social channels and tag everyone you want in your team.

Motivate team members

Give them ownership of THEIR team – what do they want the team to be about? Are you going to drive for a fundraising goal? Do you want to beat another team’s combined distance? Do you want every country represented in your team? Do you want to all wear the same silly clothes? Open up the conversation and keep your team talking – it really boosts community spirit.

Personalize your team

Get everyone to wear the same kit, hat, T-shirt, suit or even have them paint their faces so they stand out on race day, and you can see each other, even if you’ve never met.