Why Doing Good, is Good Business.

The world is changing rapidly and we are seeing huge leaps in AI, and with that some lofty claims about what the world will look like in the next 10 years.

From Elon Musk saying money will lose all its value and Steven Barlett dedicating an extraordinary amount of time talking about AI and the advances we can expect, one thing that keeps coming up is that AI will mean we have more. And with that, there will be people who are left behind as advancement in AI wipes entire industries and skills off the table with automation and make us a disconnected society.

Experts say we will become more alienated from one another as we rely more and more on technology within the confines of our own homes and we will then actively seek out communities and ways to engage. This is where we believe volunteering and community giving will play a huge part. It will quite simply become the way we connect with people around us.

In Exeter, we have already seen some pioneering businesses doing incredible things with their time and money for our local community. Companies like Nexus, driven by the great Sarah Bailey who are one of the biggest philanthropist businesses in town and The Mortgage Quarter with their amazing Christmas appeals, but what happens when trying to do good, becomes a full time job?

There are some incredible charities who do an amazing job at funding and prioritising fundraising which they do well, but what happens to the rest of them? The small pleas for help like a community food distributor with an alarm that keeps going off? Or a request by a SEND education body for some onsite staff training on AI in how they can harness this superpower to make it work for them. These are in fact real requests posted on CommonGood in January, a new online giving portal, the brainchild of Nikki Fairclough and Sophie Weeks, local entrepreneurs who have felt the pains of trying to do real good in our city while being time poor.

CommonGood, at its essence, is a local, social responsibility enabler, aiming to make volunteering and philanthropic endeavours easy for businesses in the South West and ultimately the whole of the UK with interest from outside the UK already shaping their future plans. Many companies now have comprehensive ESG policies. ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. It is a framework used to measure a company's sustainability, ethical impact, and risk management regarding the environment, its relationships with people, and its internal management practices. 

There are also some amazing schemes like BCorp which help companies verify their claims on what they are doing for the environment. A Certified B Corporation, or B Corp, is a for-profit company verified by the non-profit network B Lab to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. 

But how easy is it to find opportunities within your city to make a difference that

a) fit within a businesses timeframes and

b) are relevant to the interest of their staff?

With ‘doing good’, currently being the corporate buzz word, are we giving enough importance to what is important to the people within an organisation? Are we making an actual impact on those that need it most in a way that has the ability to actually change our communities for the good?

Top down ESG has also been a huge sticking point in businesses… it is great to have passions, but when a company pushes staff to serve a cause that is chosen by the leadership, and not by the staff – can staff members truly ever be engaged? Businesses should and can engage with their staff to ask them what is important to them, rather than setting a single charity as the benefactor of all the good being done within an organisation.

Skill based volunteering is also so important. We have worked within organisations where we have seen activities like litter picking take up whole days for companies… we have watched legal departments and accountants walk behind council cleaners, squabbling over who can pick up anything left and whole teams returning with one bag of litter between all of them. The aim is to get skills into where they are needed. If you are a legal professional or an electrician, we want to see you using your specialist skills to help charitable organisations because ultimately, funding specialist skills they need come off their donation bottom line.

I had the pleasure of working with a company called Churches Fire and Security on a project once, we had agreed to do some match funding with them on an animal enclosure project at a local Pre School in Exeter. Little Exeter agreed to fund the cost of the animal enclosure but the school was experiencing antisocial behaviour around the Goat enclosure so I approached Churches Fire and Security and they jumped at the opportunity to put their skills to excellent use for this project and helped with the camera’s and the install – a huge undertaking but one that earned them a plaque and some serious kudos with the kids and parents who attend the school.

This is how we want to see businesses giving back – within their skilled subject rather than taking those skilled individuals out into a field to pick up litter. There are plenty of organisations like Churches who are willing to help, but the opportunities need to be easy to find and clearly set out for them in the locations and time frames that make them easy to access – CommonGood sets out to do this as well as gamifying the concept of volunteering, and who doesn’t like a little healthy local competition?

The idea of gamifying it means that companies within a city can compete to see where their impact places them – driving them towards carving out more time… more impact and opening doors for them to sit at tables full of similar organisations who care deeply about their cities and also make an impact. Because who doesn’t want to do business with organisations who honestly care about the communities they serve?

Join CommonGoodUK for as little as £170 (excl vat) for SME to £900 (excl vat) for large businesses for a year subscription, giving you immediate access to local opportunities to do good. 25% of all CommonGood’s profits are reinvested into opportunities on their portal, creating a truly circular social system. Commongooduk.com