FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
All You Need To Know About Our Virtual Challenges
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Based on clinical and public health recommendations for daily physical activity, the app will suggest a Standard Daily Target of exercise and movement calories based on age, gender, and weight which approximates 7 miles of moderate walking per day. In the App, you will have an ability to customize that higher or lower across Beginner, Moderate, Standard, Advanced and Expert levels depending on how hard you want to push yourself. Consider reviewing your Typical Burn in the app to compare to you recent historical metrics.
Your points for a given day are calculated as Active Energy in Apple Health divided by your Daily Target selected for the challenge times 100, subject to a 250 point cap. For example, my Daily Target is 660 and on a day where I moved 1300 Active Energy units, my score would be 1300/660×100 = 197 points.
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First, sign up and donate for the challenge at Compete for Causes or the relevant non-profit donation page. Upon checkout, you will receive email instructions enabling you to enter the challenge on the App.
Even though your Move points data will begin showing up in the App under Profile and the Home Page, the leaderboard points will not become active until the start of the challenge you have joined.
Other common issues:
Please make sure you have the latest iOS version of software on your iPhone.
Please turn off your iPhone and re-start to see if this fixes any problems.
If you are using a wearable, make sure both wearable and iPhone have bluetooth “on” to transmit data between them.
Please make sure you can see Active Energy data in Apple Health or alternatively red ring Move calories in Apple Fitness. Active Energy is the only data Compete for Causes App needs, and if you see data in either of those apps, you should be able to participate (and transmit the data to the app). Check this by going to Apple Health > Activity > Active Energy and scrolling down to Data Sources to make sure your wearable and your desired app (e.g. Oura, Strava, Garmin) is feeding into Apple Health.
If you have 0 Active Energy in Apple Health on a given day, you can expect to see 0 on the leaderboard.
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Depending on whether the challenge has corporate sponsors, the challenge may provide prizes to those in the competition. Winners would be selected via random drawings and be notified promptly after such drawings.
(There is no payment of any kind to enter the competition or win these prizes. The size of any donation will not increase your chances of winning. To enter without purchase, simply sign up with no donation.)
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If using a wearable, wear it during exercise but also during daily movement (e.g. grocery store run). Passive movement could be 30-40% of your Daily Target.
During exercise, use Apple Fitness or other exercise apps and turn on/off at start and end of the workout; an elevated heart rate/motion burns more calories.
Charge your wearables while sleeping or when sedentary (e.g. meals, desk job)
If you have tech issues (e.g. daily scores looks wrong), please email us.
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Signup for the event on the non-profit’s website, get connected to the challenge in our App, and your connection with Apple Health will enable sharing of your daily active calories during the upcoming days of the fitness competition. A $50-250 donation during signup is suggested but not required and measurement of your active calories will be handled automatically in the App. You need an Apple iPhone that enables Move calories (red ring) to be measured in the Apple Fitness app or as Active Energy in Apple Health. An Apple Watch is preferred because it also tracks passive movement throughout your day (e.g. walking through grocery store), but other wearables (e.g. Oura, Garmin, Suunto) have been proved to work as well in past challanges.
If you only have an iPhone (no wearables), I would suggest downloading the Strava app whose running, walking and cycling workouts will generate calories estimates and push those into Apple Health . You must allow Strava to "write" data to Apple Health, specifically enabling the "Workouts" and "Active Energy" options in the Health app's permissions for Strava.
Finally, you must select a Daily Target active calories goal in the App.
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Each challenge duration is customized by the non-profit beneficiary, but 1-3 weeks are the most common. Everyone’s goal in a challange is oriented around hitting your Daily Target throughout the duration of the challenge, including potential “rest days” built into the great Challenge Goal for the group.
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Each person’s Daily Target for active calories, if achieved, will be equal to 100 points or the equivalent of closing one’s red ring in the Apple Fitness app. This allows people of different ages, weights and genders to calibrate to one scoring system. If you choose Beginner level, your Daily Target is 0.6x of our App’s recommendation and Expert level is 1.5x!
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There is no minimum number of active calories to burn. However, if every participant were to achieve their their cumulative points or Challenge Goal, this will help earn 100% of all participant donations and matching pledge commitments from individuals and corporate sponsors. The maximum points one can earn in a day is 250 points (i.e. a very hard day of physical exertion).
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The beneficiary non-profit will receive donations from a Challenge Fund which is comprised of two different sources. One source is aggregate of net proceeds from each participant’s donation who has entered the challenge. The other source is pledge commitments from individuals and corporate sponsors whose donation to the non-profit has been committed to be contingent and proportional to the overall Group Points achieved (i.e. aggregate of all participants points). The total Challenge Fund amount possible is based on the percentage of participants who hit their goal by the end of the competition. For example, if 80% of the leaderboard participants hit their goal, 80% of the Challenge Fund would result in donations.
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Regular exercise controls weight, combats health conditions/disease and drives longevity. Exercising with friends enriches relationships. Competition and rewards drive personal performance. You will be more motivated by risk of not earning the match donation. You can drive habit forming change in your exercise. Finally, giving to non-profits is rewarding.
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We can maintain your privacy in the App’s leaderboards by using a pseudonym instead of your name, however your name will be viewable for anyone who clicks on your profile. We will maintain the privacy of your email; it is not available to others in the App. In addition, the App’s leaderboard cannot be found by search engines.
In future versions of the App, we will consider more privacy features.
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The donor’s will be asked to make their donations to the non-profit. The amount contributed will be based on the % of the Group Points achieved relative to the sum of the Challenge Goal of each participant.
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Any exercise or movements which cause Move calories in Apple Fitness or Apple Health will count. Examples include walking, tennis, soccer, pickleball, gym classes, running errands. It is common for people to close a third of their ring in a day even without an intentional exercise activity based on movement around the house alone.
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You and your friends active calories will be evident in the leaderboards within the challenge area of the App.
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We are a grassroots organization founded in 2023 with a mission to create physical competitions which motivate individuals to increase their fitness levels, charitable giving and engagement with friends and family. The co-founders include Jeff Szekeres, Adam Rhodes and Andre Niemeyer and also include CTO, Jackson Szekeres, and advisors Craig Lee and Mike Coward.
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Other than those disclosed by name in the competition, the donors are high net worth individuals, foundations or corporate sponsors who are known to the Compete for Causes or the beneficiary non-profit and who wished to remain anonymous.
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The competition raises awareness about the non-profits mission and impact and could lead to future new donors.
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Compete for Causes is a technology platform which facilitates innovative fitness challenges for the purposes of raising awareness and funds for charities. The Founders currently contribute their time for philanthropic purposes and do charge the non-profit fees for putting on the challenges in an effort to defray costs of running the enterprise.
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The App maintains various leaderboards to compare yourself to the overall group, members of Teams, your Favorites and those at various Difficult Levels.
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Apple uses algorithms based on your age, gender, weight plus data from its heart sensor and accelerometer to determine approximate calories burned. Make sure your vitals for age and weight are updated in Apple Health for more precise readings. Also make sure you wearable is snug against your skin for more accurate readings.
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The Daily Targets are meant to be challenging to achieve. If you have to exercise more than 75 minutes per day to achieve your Daily Target at Standard level, please consider lowering to Beginner or Moderate levels in future challenges.
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If you have donated via the non-profit website, you can deduct your donation for tax purposes. If you donate via the Compete for Causes store, at the end of the competition, Compete for Causes will make a single donation to to the non-profit owed from the aggregate of the participant donations received. If sending via Compete for Causes, we believe individuals should not be able to call their “buy-in” a charitable contribution because Compete for Causes makes the actual donation. Please consult with your personal tax advisor for formal position on this matter.
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All of the organizers can be reached at info@competeforcauses.com.