Give LIVE: Supporting Mental Health in Remote Work

Mental wellbeing tips, Big Orange Heart mental health resources for remote workers, and fundraising in times of stress.

The tech community has always had a large component of remote/work-from-home employees and freelancers. The pandemic that began in 2020 increased that number exponentially. And while we’re still figuring out what the future of remote vs. office work looks like for many companies going forward, working remotely won’t be going away for many of us.

With remote work comes mental well-being challenges – isolation, disenfranchised feelings, time management, and physical health that impacts our mental health.

There are many things we can do to support our mental health, and that’s where Big Orange Heart comes in!

Watch Give LIVE

We were live on May 19, 2021 to talk about mental wellbeing in remote work with Dan Maby, founder of Big Orange Heart, Rachel Di Martino, Owner of Geek Unicorn, and myself, Michelle Frechette, your Director of Customer Success for GiveWP and board member at Big Orange Heart. Watch the conversation or read about it below.

About Big Orange Heart

The mission of Big Orange Heart is:

“To support and promote positive well-being and mental health within remote working communities.”

They are the world’s first peer support community dedicated to remote workers providing access to well-being support and a thriving community.

The team members, volunteers, and supporters of the Big Orange Heart Foundation collectively bring decades of experience working within the distributed work model. The approach is holistic – delivering support and mentorship across the organization focusing on Mental Health, Physical Health, and Skills Health – ensuring preventative measures are focused on, to help reduce the potential impact of mental ill-health for the distributed workforce.

Big Orange Heart has proven time and again that even when we work remotely, we’re stronger together, providing a bridge across the physical distance to connect remote workers.

A Global Shift in Remote Work

Facing the challenge of isolation, especially with the pandemic, is one of the main focuses for Big Orange Heart. Working remotely is isolating, and with the pandemic, even more people have begun working from home.

Big Orange Heart strives to find ways for people to connect and have open, honest conversations. This is the thing that remote workers are missing most in their work environment. Without in-person interactions there is no opportunity for these conversations, which are important for our mental health.

Since “watercooler chats” are so important in the workplace, Big Orange Heart aims to recreate this type of conversation through programs like their Life Groups.

“Having that ability to connect with others and being in an environment which is set up to be safe and enable individuals to have those conversations is really where our Life Groups come into play.”
-Dan Maby

Life Groups Replace In-Person Watercooler Chats

Big Orange Heart Life groups are made up of five to six people. The goal is to enable people to connect with one another and build circles of trust. They try to group individuals who have different experiences so that there is varying and interesting conversation.

This started within the WordPress community so there are plenty of WordPressers in these groups. Recently, they have expanded out into the wider remote working community so there are a lot of different types of tech backgrounds represented in the life groups as well.

These life groups are the perfect place to talk through problems and chat about things on your mind. You can join a Life Group at Big Orange Heart anytime you want! Just go to their signup page.

Another wonderful resource for remote workers are the Big Orange Heart Slack channels. They have a variety of topics to choose from, like a daily mental wellbeing check-in and a spoonie channel for people with chronic illnesses.

Having other people that have similar things going on, it’s comforting. It’s one of those places where you just feel at home immediately. They get it and they don’t question you. It makes a real difference to have a community around you.

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Tips to Maintain Mental Well-being

Everyone is different, but it comes back to the physical, psychological, and social balance concepts discussed earlier. There needs to be a balance.

Here are some tips from our chat: 

  • Be intentional about resting and sleeping.
  • Use meditation to help you concentrate.
  • Do things with your hands, like woodwork, drawing, or a jigsaw puzzle.
  • Physical exercise helps burn off mental energy.
  • Compartmentalize your space.
  • Schedule (virtual) social time with friends.
  • Block out personal and mental well-being time in your calendar.
  • Have a daily ritual or routine.
  • Plan your intentions for the next day the night before.

Holistic Mental Well-being: Bio-Psycho-Social Relationships

Our discussion also focused on the holistic view of mental well-being as a bio-psycho-social relationship. Big Orange Heart emphasizes the impact of the relationship between physical and mental health in addition to your social experiences and environments.

The goal is to make sure that there are resources to support people with all three aspects of mental well-being. It’s important to educate remote workers on keeping a healthy balance in their lives.

One key aspect of keeping this balance is community events.

Big Orange Heart Events & WordFest

Community events are a wonderful opportunity for remote workers who don’t normally have interaction with many other people.

Before the pandemic, Big Orange Heart had a very involved events community. The past year forced them to change up their face-to-face events and come up with a way to bring the community together online. That’s how WordFest came to be.

WordFest is a twenty-four hour live event hosted online for the global WordPress community. The first WordFest was held in January 2021. The next one is July 23, 2021! Visit the WordFest website for more information.

Big Orange Heart also developed their own custom event platform for online events. This platform is available for other communities to use for free. They usually hold about ten events per month on the platform.

Using GiveWP for Fundraising with Big Orange Heart

Big Orange Heart uses a variety of fundraising tactics and solutions, so their GiveWP implementations are unique.

“GiveWP has been a phenomenal solution for us at Big Orange Heart… We love to bend it and stretch it… As a solution, it’s been perfect for us… It’s as extensible as we need it to be.”
-Dan

There are two main forms on the Big Orange Heart website for giving. One is general donations for recurring or one-time giving with an optional gift. You can also sign up for their newsletter when you give because they’re using a GiveWP marketing add-on. You can even give in honor of or in memory of someone because they’ve also added the Tributes add-on.

Launching a Quick Nonprofit Website During the Pandemic

When the pandemic hit, one of Rachel’s clients was very reliant on local businesses. So when they closed, they lost a lot of revenue and business. They happened to have a charity associated with their board that had been in place since 1984, but it has no website associated with it because they never needed it until last year.

During the pandemic, they decided to build a website.

“We built it in record time with GiveWP. We had the decision to build the site on Thursday and it was launched  on Tuesday… The real powerhouse with that was the GiveWP plugin.”
-Rachel Di Martino

They raised $16,000 in under three weeks, which was the first time they had ever done online donations.

Amplify your fundraising with a GiveWP Plan

You Don’t Have to Be a Charity to Use GiveWP

One of our favorite ways to see GiveWP used is for individual fundraising. Sometimes people are going through a hard time, like a natural disaster or a medical emergency, and GiveWP is there to help them.

You can use GiveWP…

  • As a tip jar
  • To crowdfund projects and personal needs
  • In support of medical needs
  • For sponsorships
  • And more

“The beauty of Give is that you have both ends of the spectrum, if you like. It’s a very easy solution to implement in a short space of time, but equally is extensible.”
– Dan

Have you ordered your Mental Wellbeing gear yet?

Our “Your Mental Wellbeing Matters” merchandise is only available for the month of May 2021. Get yours now! All profits go to Big Orange Heart.

Celebrate Mental Health Month swag - tshirts, hoodies, and totes.

The Experts

Who participated in this conversation?

Dan Maby

Dan Maby
Dan is the Founder of Big Orange Heart, helping to deliver his vision of better well-being and mental health support within remote working communities. He’s passionate about supporting people and thrives on mentoring others.

Rachel Di Martino

Rachel Di Martino
Rachel is the owner of Geek Unicorn, a Canadian web design company that makes women-led businesses stand out online like a Unicorn in a field of horses. She’s a shameless sharer of knowledge who loves to give away her best tips to improve your online presence.

Michelle Frechette

Michelle Frechette
Michelle Frechette is the Director of Customer Success at GiveWP, is co-founder of UnderrepresentedInTech.com, Podcast Barista at WPCoffeeTalk, and board member at Big Orange Heart.

About the Author

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