Engage

Rugby League’s partnership with financial services provider Engage Mutual has continued to be an excellent pairing. Following seven successful years as Super League’s title sponsor, the values it shares with the game, in particular supporting local communities, has seen the partnership continue in the form of grassroots support and sponsorship of the game’s match officials. As a customer owned organisation, Engage Mutual place great importance on supporting its customers, and the communities in which they live and work.

These values saw Engage Mutual work tirelessly with clubs, the media, rugby league charities and the RFL on numerous campaigns and initiatives for the benefit of the game and all those who participate in it.

The change to the ‘Man of the Match’ scheme is a great example of this. In partnership with Sky Sports, Engage Mutual introduced charitable donations as the reward and players were asked, during their post-match televised interview, where they would like a donation to go. This raised both funds, and some much needed awareness for a variety of good causes.

Continued support for the Rugby League Benevolent Fund and The Steve Prescott Foundation has meant they have been a consistent backer of events such as the RFL President’s Ball, ‘Touchathons’, ‘Rowathons’, Three Peaks Challenges, plus a plethora of other extreme physical challenges led by the inspirational Steve Prescott MBE.

Other campaigns have included ‘engage with your health’; where player ambassadors have helped promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle to fans of all ages, and ‘engage with your club’; which promotes the benefits of a mutual approach when it comes to making affordable renovations to community clubs’ facilities via volunteer workforces.

For more details about Engage Mutual please visit www.engagemutual.com

Engage with your club

Engage Mutual, the Rugby League Foundation and the RFL Facilities Trust joined forces to help the community game to organise action events where members, supporters, friends and family work collaboratively to make basic facility improvements and enhancements.

Introduced in 2011 by Engage Mutual; the ‘engage with your club’ initiative was the first of its kind to focus on inspiring clubs to create a volunteering event where everyone joins together in order to reinvigorate their facilities by sprucing up ageing changing rooms, installing new pitch barriers or litter picking and tidying up over grown shrubbery. Not only can one of these events have fantastic results, they can also leave a legacy of increased volunteer numbers and a wider sense of community spirit.

Support was provided with downloadable hints and tips sheets, information and ideas sharing, promotional giveaways (including t-shirts and posters) and a national PR campaign to promote the campaign. As an additional incentive two prizes of £2,500 were up for grabs for two clubs that really embraced the concept, and all other participating clubs were entered into a free draw to win one of 10 cash prizes of £1000.

A total of 80 community rugby league clubs signed up to be involved in 2012.

For more details on the initiative visit www.engagemutual.com/rugby