We Give Blood Drive (Big Ten / Abbott)
Annual Aug-Dec competition where 20+ Big Ten universities (and by extension their host cities/regions - Lincoln NE, State College PA, Madison WI, etc.) compete to collect the most blood donations from their student/community base. The winning school's community gets $1m from Abbott for student/community health. 2024 winner Nebraska collected enough donations to save ~60,000 lives across Big Ten regions.
University-vs-university ranking on raw blood donations, but each university is anchored to a real city/college-town - so it's effectively Lincoln vs Madison vs State College vs Columbus competing as places. Public weekly standings.
Each university mobilizes student government, athletic boosters, fraternities, alumni clubs and host-city blood centres (Versiti, ImpactLife, NY Blood Center) to collectively run drives - turning rival fraternities into teammates.
A college-sport-rivalry shell wrapped around a serious public-health crisis (US blood supply). The $1m prize must fund local community health, so winning anchors money back to the area.
Others in the same family
Defi Sante (Capsana, Quebec)
Quebec-wide 6-week challenge each spring run by Capsana, asking citizens to commit to '5 portions of fruit/veg, 30 min activity, 2 hours quality sleep daily.' Municipalities sign up to mobilize residents, and the campaign awards 'Municipalites Championnes' status to top-performing towns and pays out ~$20k in prizes for citizen events. 21 municipalities crowned champions in a single recent edition.
GoodGym - Community Missions & Group Runs
Runners meet weekly at an Area base, run to a community project (sheltered housing garden, foodbank, park), do manual work for an hour, then run back. Area Activators are paid local coordinators; missions are solo runs to do a task for an older neighbour ('coach run').
STADTRADELN (CITY CYCLING)
Run by Climate Alliance, a 21-day campaign where municipalities sign up to compete on per-capita and absolute cycling kilometers. Mandatory team affiliation; tracked via the CITY CYCLING app GPS or paper log.
aruku& / ALKOO by NAVITIME (Japan municipal walking)
aruku& (ONE COMPATH) and ALKOO by NAVITIME are gamified pedometer apps that municipalities adopt to run citizen step competitions. Walkers gain points, redeem for local prizes/discounts. Miyagi prefecture's 'Health Walk' explicitly ranks municipalities (市町村) against each other.
CitizenLab / Go Vocal Representativeness Dashboard
Belgian civic-engagement SaaS used by cities across Europe to run consultations, ideation, participatory budgeting. The Representativeness Dashboard compares each participating cohort's demographics (age, gender, neighbourhood, education) against the underlying ward/postcode-level population so cities can see which neighbourhoods are over- or under-represented in real time, and target outreach.
Defi Ensemble, on bouge (ParticipACTION Community Challenge)
Every June, Canadian communities (cities, towns, First Nations, rural municipalities) log physical-activity minutes via the ParticipACTION app to compete for the title of 'Canada's Most Active Community' and a CAD $100,000 prize, plus 12 regional prizes ($5k-$10k) for the most active community in each province/territory. Quebec City won the 'most active community in Quebec' prize multiple times. Over $1.5m awarded to 49 communities since 2019; $7.2m in grants for follow-on local sport initiatives.