Top 10 Best Holiday Team Building Events

a group of people in red jumpsuits are playing with balloons in a room.

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and there’s no better way to end up on Santa's Nice List than doing a good deed. Over a third of our clients (that's over 250 events per year!) are combining team building with charity to spread the good cheer.

If you're looking for holiday-inspired team building ideas, Feet First Eventertainment has fun, energetic team building activities with no boring trust falls or long lectures. Here are some of our most popular options for the festive season:

1. Bike Build

Ready, set…Bike Build! This holiday team building activity turns employees into warriors, competing in physical, mental and just plain funny challenges for a philanthropic cause. Each team gets points that are converted into bicycle parts. At the end, we tally up the points, and the winning team donates all their assembled bicycles to your chosen charity.

Through our Bike Build, we have helped companies donate literally thousands of bicycles to Boys and Girls Clubs throughout the country. Where possible, we arrange for the children from the organization to pick up the bicycles themselves, which makes for an unforgettable moment.

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2. Gameshow Extravaganza

Picture your employees. Some might be sitting at desks, others chatting around the water cooler. Now picture your employees as contestants on an adrenaline-pumping game show that pits team against team for the thrill of healthy competition. That's exactly what you'll get when you host a Gameshow Extravaganza, which brings groups of 30 to 1,000 together for maximum festive fun. It's our most popular holiday event because it can work seamlessly with a lunch or dinner, as we group tables into teams - and the energy in the room goes through the roof!

Our team at Feet First will even customize the game show to your preferences. For example, if you're releasing a new program or product line, we can tailor the questions to help excite employees while educating them about it. We can also add inside jokes that employees love or incorporate festive flair into this team building activity with fun holiday-themed questions. Our Game Show Extravaganza includes a variety of different game shows including Family Feud, Name That Tune, Minute to Win It and Jeopardy!

3. The Great Charity Challenge

Put the cheer in charity with one of the greatest team building activities you can plan for your holiday celebration. We pretty much guarantee that everyone who participates in The Great Charity Challenge will walk away with a sense of pride because each point they win is designed to give back to others. With every game, teams rack up points and stock up on items like personal hygiene products or household goods. Items are then assembled into a truly memorable care package to be gifted to military families, seniors or homeless shelters

These high-energy challenges are suitable for groups of 20 to 600 and can take place indoors or outdoors.

4. Michael-CAN-gelo

Let your team release their inner architect with towers, landmarks and pure creativity — built entirely from canned goods. The Michael-CAN-gelo team building experience puts the “can” in “can-do attitude.” Here's how it works:

It all starts with a generous selection of canned goods.
Each team is given a photograph of a famous landmark, an internationally famous statue or a building.
Teams have two hours to complete their replica of the structure in the photograph.
Exciting challenges let teams win additional building supplies to take their architectural masterpieces to the next level.
Once all the structures are built, we photograph the replicas, and teams vote for the best one.
Canned goods are then donated to a local food bank.

5. Build a Critter

Competition meets cuteness with Build a Critter, one of our most popular team building activities. In this event, employees compete in a series of holiday team building games to win supplies that they can use to fill and decorate stuffed animals that are then donated to kids through local charities. Employees also design custom t-shirts for the critters to wear! They also have the option to include a heartfelt message (or their best dad joke — we don't judge) to the child who will be receiving each stuffed critter!

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6. Mini Golf Give-Back

Mini Golf Give-Back is a great holiday team building activity that allows your group to give back to others while also exercising their creative muscles - and even working on their putting skills! This event works well for groups of 20 to 500 and takes around two hours. So, how does it work?

Each team uses canned food to build its own mini-golf hole, making it as creative as possible. We provide the themes — think Vegas, Music and Movies, or whatever fits your vibe — to be the jumping-off point for their engineering madness. Once all the holes are created, the teams get to play the course they've made. All the canned food is then donated to a local food bank or pantry at the conclusion of the event.

7. Style Your Soles

Fashion meets philanthropy with the Style Your Soles team building activity. Teams receive many pairs of canvas shoes and decorating supplies. Teams are also given a theme like Sports, Music or Movies. Each group then decorates their shoes with that theme, and they'll also name their unique shoe lines and craft a commercial, poster or jingle to “advertise” their creation.

Once everyone votes for Best Shoe Line, Best Designs and Best Presentation, all the decorated shoes are donated to a local homeless shelter. The winner earns the title of being the office's "most creative” and all the bragging rights that come with it.

8. Pay It Forward

Put kindness in motion with our Pay It Forward team building activity that gives employees a chance to make a stranger's day. Here's how it works:

We give each team a video camera and envelopes containing Random Acts of Kindness requests. Some examples may include asking a stranger to call their mother just to say they love her or reading a story to children.
Every act of kindness is assigned a certain point value, and teams receive bonus points for coming up with their own ideas.
With every act of kindness, employees document their good deeds with a video camera.
After a few hours, teams gather at a nearby restaurant, where they share a meal while enjoying a watch party of all the videos they made.
The points are tallied, and the winning team is announced.

9. Amazing Race for Charity

Just as thrilling as the Amazing Race TV show, our Amazing Race for Charity is the ultimate holiday party team building event. It's a scavenger hunt that lets your group explore a specific location within your city. It's the perfect holiday team building activity because it gets employees out of the office, in a city center where they'll solve clues and compete in a series of unique - and hilarious challenges.

In addition to competing in challenges, teams also collect items for donation along the journey. They'll receive items to create hygiene kits for shelters or fill backpacks with school supplies for local children. At the end of the race, all participants meet at a restaurant, where we tabulate the points and announce the winners. Teams then present their backpacks, filled with all the items they collected for donation, to the chosen charity.

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10. Water Works

Water Works is one of those holiday team building ideas that allows employees to make a direct impact on people. It improves the lives of children and families in remote villages in Uganda by providing access to clean drinking water. On the day of the event, we divide employees into groups of up 10 people. Every team receives instructions and all the items they need to build a portable emergency water filtration device.

But that's not all! In addition to building and donating these portable water filters, your company is also matching that donation one for one with much larger household water filters. These larger, household water systems are too big to build and ship from the US - so they are sourced and donated by our charity partners in Africa.

So after assembling the portable filtration systems during the event, we then have each team create a large piece of artwork. We then take a photo of each of these artworks - and they are printed on stickers by our charity partners in Uganda. These artworks are placed on each of the household systems when they are installed in Africa - and each artwork is assigned a tracking number.

When the water filtration systems are installed and donated to the families in the villages, our partners take a picture of the family standing next to the filtration device clearly displaying your employees' artwork and tracking number - so you can see the faces of the people whose lives you have impacted!

Bring Back Holiday Cheer With Feet First Eventertainment

Feet First Eventertainment is dedicated to creating FUN and MEMORABLE Team Events! For more than 30 years, we've taken our skills from creating challenges for TV shows like Survivor - to creating smart, interactive games that transform team-building into something employees actually look forward to.

It's no surprise that 75% of our events are from repeat clients because our people are the best in the business. We were also named the 2023 Best Team Building Services Provider by Manage HR magazine.

If you're looking to turn your holiday event into something FANTASTIC, make sure to contact us today!