Pelotonia Tapped Rightpoint to Transform a Real-Life Event into an Engaging Digital Experience

Pelotonia, a nationally recognized grassroots philanthropic organization that uses bike rides to fuel cancer research, needed to quickly pivot it’s organizational model to accommodate its newly socially distant community. They reached out to Rightpoint, a Genpact company, to transition their annual in-person fundraiser to a digital experience that expands Pelotonia’s community’s reach from local to global. This partnership resulted in an entirely reimagined digital platform known as My Pelotonia.

Since its establishment in 2008, Pelotonia has raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for cancer research. Pelotonia’s largest fundraising event is their annual three-day Ride Weekend, which includes an opening ceremony event and a two-day bike ride, consistently drawing more than 15,000 people annually, including 8,000 riders and 3,000 volunteers each year. Safety concerns and restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on the 2020 event and pushed Pelotonia to quickly search for an alternative.

With Rightpoint’s digital expertise, Pelotonia was able to completely reimagine the annual event. Rightpoint helped them ideate, design, test and develop an entirely new digital platform — My Pelotonia — to expand and connect the Pelotonia community in new ways and keep the mission alive, even during these challenging times.

“In response to major social and economic upheaval and uncertainty due to COVID-19, we are proud to be working with many companies to help them pivot their products, services, and experiences,” said Ben Johnson, SVP, Emerging Technology at Rightpoint. “Working on this project with Pelotonia’s team was a chance to demonstrate how organizations can approach a concentrated, strategic effort to empower innovation, embrace new creative approaches and rapidly deploy their best ideas.”

To solve this challenge, a collaborative, cross-functional team that included researchers, product and project management, designers, business leaders, digital and social leaders and engineers across Pelotonia and Rightpoint teams was assembled. The team moved rapidly and effectively through the steps of establishing the mission and context, generating ideas through brainstorming and prioritizing, prototyping and validating the new experience.

Within two weeks, the collaborative team had completed the development of My Pelotonia, an innovative platform that augmented the mission and creative concept of Pelotonia’s annual bike ride with a new digital experience and fundraising initiative. My Pelotonia allowed participants to join worldwide, thereby expanding the reach of Pelotonia’s community.

Pelotonia’s Ride Weekend has always been driven by the intersection of unique personal objectives and powerful community support. On the My Pelotonia platform, each participant can create their own personal profile highlighting their individual goals, which might include biking, running, walking, volunteering, writing a book or getting outside with their kids, and then share their inspiration and progress with the community. 

With Rightpoint’s swift assistance, Pelotonia was able to set the groundwork for its ongoing journey and accelerate digital strategies into quick wins, despite the disruption of the pandemic. In addition to turning a purely physical event into an all-new digital experience, the My Pelotonia platform allowed Pelotonia to bring its vision and mission to its largest audience yet and provide opportunities for participants to get involved on a personal level.

“Sometimes, the best thing you can do is jump in. We’re continuing to work on our long-term digital strategy with Rightpoint, but we were pleased to be able to quickly shift gears to address the immediate challenge created by the pandemic,” said Joe Apgar, Chief Operating Officer at Pelotonia. “In retrospect, the experience highlighted the fact that you cannot wait for a crisis to act as a catalyst for change. You need to make innovation a part of your company culture, and transformation can happen in small steps and still have a big impact.”

To learn more about the creation of My Pelotonia, you can read the full case study here.

For more information about My Pelotonia, visit: https://mypelotonia.org/.