If you’re reading this, you probably know a bit about Harvey already, but here’s the gist: we’re a strategic marketing company, founded in 2019, and we’re all about unlocking the potential of the New Economy to create a better world. For the planet, for our grandkids, for everyone. We want to help conscious businesses grow.
This is our fifth Impact Report for our fifth year in business (phew!) and while it’s no cakewalk, it was significantly easier than last year. We publish these every year because we believe accountability and transparency are the hallmarks of good business. We also want to document our learnings as we go – the good stuff and the bad – in the hopes that it will help other companies.
2024 was another fantastic year, full of amazing clients, stretch goals, challenges and Big Questions. On the personal side of things, Simon and I built a house (with more than enough decisions and blowouts and delays), raised two kids under three, and felt the impact of the cost of living crisis head-on (hello interest rates 😣). Growth didn’t quite go as planned, we made intentional decisions not to grow when we didn’t feel we were ready. Year five was all about refining our processes and doubling down on design & websites. We explored a variety of approaches (old and new) to website builds and manage stuff like scope creep, being focused on every dollar vs doing our best work..
Simon and I also did some ‘deep thinking’ about our personal and career goals, and where we want to take Harvey moving forward. The plan is to carefully grow with more senior people who can lead the business, freeing us up for more strategic, hands-on work (the reason we started the business).
But the really exciting news is that we finally got the spirit of Harvey down on paper - “Curiosity Done Well”. Which came from a leadership workshop with Global Leadership Foundation. Our spirit is about digging deep to understand with dependable delivery while achieving impact for clients. If we nail those three things, our sixth year will be our best yet.
If you have any questions about this report, or you’d like to chat Impact Reporting over coffee sometime, get in touch via email or socials. We love meeting like-minded businesses. Thanks for taking the time to dig into Harvey. We look forward to seeing you in 2025.
Becky Smallchua x
This Impact Report is a summary of our FY23-24, broken into 7 parts, plus this executive summary. We’ve tried to make it simple and easy, so you can dive deeper into specific chapters:
- FY 23 - 24 Results - traffic light review
- Clients - Help conscious business grow
- Team - Enable everyone to be their best
- Community - Lift the communities we’re a part of
- Environment - Crank up the action on climate and environment
- Governance - Operate fairly and squarely as an impact business
- Goals - eyes on FY 24-25
My personal highlights
Client work
- Helped 32 clients who directly impacted 13 of the UN sustainable development goals with a particular focus on the Poverty, Gender Equality, Good Work & Economy, Financial Equality, and Food goals.
- Another big year of website builds (10 Webflow & Shopify launches!) We're particularly proud of The Sociable Weaver, Compass and Dreamy. Oh, and we became an official Webflow Certified Partner!
- We continued to support Merry People’s Shopify & email automation to grow AU/NZ, US/CA and UK with Design, Analytics & Development.
- Delivered our biggest customer research project to date in the travel category for an undisclosed global travel brand across 5 markets, including 35 interviews, 2,500 survey respondents and analysis of 300k+ bookings to develop strategic opportunity recommendations.
- Built our design capability in-house, delivering brand identities like Chaulk, plus branded resources for Common Ground’s NAIDOC campaign.
- Dived deep into the disability sector to understand the complexities of the NDIS system with our client, Cerebral Palsy Support Network. Also defined a new marketing strategy and positioning for the organisation.
Other nifty things
- Provided $340k of discounts to our most impactful, for-purpose clients.
- Got our B Corp re-certification with the exact same score of 134.1 (bizarre and awesome).
- Took an impact trip to our Studio Schools of Australia, who are pioneering a ground-breaking model of Indigenous Education on Bunuba Country (Fitzroy Crossing, WA).
- Hosted an event on Zero Emissions Day with our friends at Portable to discuss business’s role in reducing carbon emissions.
- Undertook leadership coaching with Global Leadership Foundation to understand and develop our emotional health levels.
- Shared our learnings with fellow B Corps on our collective journey towards a more purpose-driven future at B Corp Assembly and about ‘How to communicate B Corp’ on a panel with Compass Studio and B Lab Australia.
We worked with impactful organisations of all shapes, sizes and industries
We worked with an interesting mix of client partners this year! We’ve continued to do what we love across research, brand and marketing, but we’ve also leant much more about tech and impact strategy. All up, we worked with 32 clients in 2024.
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Revisiting our impact and giving model
When we started out, we committed to an annual 5% donation to climate. In our first 3 years of business, we donated a total of $84,000 to Greening Australia and Beyond Zero Emissions. Unfortunately, due to a challenging financial position FY 23/2422/23 we were not able to donate (more details here). This year, we’re reviewing our giving model and considering investments in clean tech enterprises and/or donations to charitable organisations fighting climate change. We haven’t come to a final decision yet, but plan to combine FY 23/24 contribution with FY 24/25.
The Business Pickle… didn’t work out how we hoped
After developing impact strategy services through our new venture The Business Pickle for 24 months, and after engaging with hundreds of organisations, including research and consulting work, we've found limited appetite to prioritise new impact initiatives right now. Which is a bit of a bummer.
I think we were optimistic that there was intent and goodwill from many organisations, but when push came to shove they were focused on existing business, maintaining financial sustainability, team culture and competitive difference in a rapidly changing environment (financial, political, AI, and regulatory).
In short, businesses were struggling to keep up with existing pressures, and couldn't genuinely engage in impact strategy. This was a bit disappointing, depressing even, but there are regulatory and shareholder pressures coming that will hopefully force the issue. Or maybe, when we emerge from this period of instability, impact can become a greater focus once more.
We will continue to integrate impact, purpose and values in the work we do, and we’ll be standing by to support impact initiatives (if and when they pop up). In the meantime, we'll focus on unlocking the potential of existing impactful organisations.
What’s this ‘Curiosity Done Well’ thing?
We’ve always thought curiosity is an underappreciated virtue. Good things happen when you’re curious, which is why we landed on “Curiosity Done Well” as our spirit.
So what does it mean?
Curiosity
Well, it starts with asking the right questions. Listening without knowing, without judgement. Really getting to know our clients. Using data to dig beneath the surface and see what’s going on with a brand.
Done
Great understanding is fabulous, but impact is only realised when actions are taken (or not taken). We care about delivering quality work on time, and on budget, where stakeholders are on board, understand and manage it moving forward.
Well
Impact, did it shift the dial? Is our client's business more impactful, efficient or growing? Are they improving their impact on people and planet? Curiosity comes back in, getting feedback from the target audiences and business metrics to continually adapt and improve our results.
