Team | Enable everyone to be their best
- All staff spend 90%+ of their time on clients
- Regular, honest check-ins about how we feel
- Prioritise our own growth; if we are better, our clients will be too
- Flexible work, inc 4 days/week option for everyone
Community | Enrich the community where we operate
- Protest and boycott important issues (Australia Day, Melbourne Cup)
- Buy with intention from local and discriminated groups
- Invest $20k in impact businesses plus $20k of time
Environment | Regenerate the environment
- Be climate positive at work and at home
- Donate 5% to the environment
- Re-use, recycle and manage dangerous waste
- Advocate for climate change / inspire sustainable living
Clients | Help conscious business grow
- No destructive clients. Revenue 20% Good (Max). 20% Amazing.
- 3+ value for money. Average 8+ would recommend
- 40% of clients return in following 12 months
- Maintain current revenue
Governance | Open, fair and efficient operations
- Maintain current ownership
- Share templates, documents, insight into business for good
- Improve B Corp score from 134.1 to 135
Yeah… that should be enough to keep us busy!
End note: The power of good business
In early 2020, Simon moderated a panel at Melbourne’s Pause Fest featuring Lily Dempster (CEO of One Small Step), Shannon Bourke (environmental and social initiatives manager at Patagonia) and Ben Jeffreys (chief of ATEC Biodigesters). The theme of the panel was that ethical, sustainable and regenerative business models don’t have to come at the expense of profit. If anything, the opposite is true.
For us, that’s really important to consider. It’s by being profitable that we’re able to make our donations to Greening Australia and other partners, and it’s why we’re able to offer our services and expertise pro bono and run our academy. While our capitalist systems are a long, long way from perfect, we believe there are ways of harnessing that system to be of greater benefit to the planet and our communities. And the more people we can encourage to do it with us, the better off we’ll all be in the long run.
So, what’s the point of all this? In short, we think it’s important to recognise the opportunities that our current system provides to us. Sure, we could’ve set up an NGO and relied on donations or government funding to support the kind of work we want to do. But by setting up a for-profit business, we’re able to make an impact both through our work and by donating to and supporting causes we believe in. That’s the power of good business.
If you have any questions about anything we’ve mentioned in this report, or would like to talk to us for tips or advice on setting up your own for-purpose business, you can get in touch with us at the email address below. Thanks so much for taking the time to dig into this report. We look forward to seeing you again next year!
Becky and Simon Smallchua x
The six areas of this report
Let’s take a look back at the year that was (before wrapping up with some of our goals and intention-setting for 2021).
This is a pretty long article, so we've created an executive summary version here, including a summary of each section.
To keep things simple, we’ve broken this report up into six parts, that speak to six areas that were particularly important to us this past year:
