Impactful’s story so far…

Where did it all begin…?

A little over a year ago, I met my Impactful co-founders, Rima & Max on Year Here, a social enterprise fellowship & incubator. We came from very different backgrounds: from chartered accounting to management consulting to the charity sector, each of us believing that there was a better, more sustainable way of creating change, and that businesses have the potential to have positive social and environmental impact.

After 5 months on individual frontline placements across the education sector, trying to find innovative ways to improve the situations faced by the young people we were in contact with: from work readiness packs that helped to close the cultural capital gap between school and work; to a project designed to focus and support female students within the pupil referral unit setting; to creating co-design initiatives to better respond and facilitate the transition of newly arrived girls into the UK education system. Once we completed that phase we were put on a consulting project team together, which is where it all began. We were given the brief by ForwardPMX, a digital marketing agency, to help them put purpose on par with profit. The idea of applying our social impact expertise in a commercial setting really excited us.

As the project ended we knew we had something, we saw how much progress and impact we were able to make within two months — we knew we couldn’t stop there and that we could apply the same processes to other companies. We decided to take the idea on and with the support of Year Here’s venture lab phase we developed Impactful : a social innovation agency working with small to medium sized businesses, embedding social and environmental impact through every part of their business.

We started 2020 energised and ready to work. We incorporated Impactful, confident in the idea and that businesses were starting to think seriously about their social and environmental impact and ready to focus on building our client base…and then Covid-19 hit. Oof. Not the greatest time for any business, especially small ones, just starting out, who want businesses to prioritise thinking about their social and environmental impact — we took a step back and took some time to understand our purpose and relevance, in a time where many are just trying to stay afloat.

We went back to the drawing board, how do we continue to further our mission in this new reality?

We decided to focus on :

• Creating a Social Innovation Playbook — Even before Covid happened we realised so many small businesses don’t have the time or resources to access our services, or may think that they’re too small to start thinking about their impact. Also, the world of social impact is complex and heavy with jargon and it can be difficult to navigate — so we wanted to simplify it, make it accessible. The creation of this Playbook is a perfect opportunity to enable all companies, regardless of their size, to start unlocking their social and environmental impact potential.
• Speaking to business leaders — Through this we have been speaking to a wide variety of business leaders from different industries to understand from them, what their business priorities are for the upcoming year and their take on social and environmental impact. What interests them in the space and what obstacles they face when thinking about using their business for good.
• Our mission & vision- Alongside incredible insights for the Playbook, what has come from talking to many business leaders is reassurance that we’re on the right track, that despite Covid, businesses are still thinking about how they can be a force for good and that they are interested in understanding how to do so.
• Making the world of social impact accessible — I spoke on a podcast talking about passion and purpose, we’ve been on TV talking about the future of work, we have been published in Here & Now about The Unseen Cost of Internet Streaming. We’ve also been writing a lot! So if you want to know more about How to make your business actively anti-racist, or the Dangers of purpose washing follow the links!

Looking back, we are proud of our achievements over the past six months, but there’s more to come. Looking forward:

• Finish our Playbook — We’re aiming to publish this in September and will be sharing that through our website and broadly through our networks. Watch this space!
• Leadership Research — Continue our research and speak to more business leaders to understand better what their motivations and obstacles are when trying to engage in the world of social and environmental impact, what they’ve already tested and within that what was or wasn’t successful. Also, what tools, resources and information they would want to see in the Playbook. If you know of anyone that may be interested in exploring this please do email us, we’re always up for a cuppa and chat :)
• Network Building — Build our network to create more partnerships which will enable us to scale our impact! We’ve recently been accepted on to London & Partners business growth programme, which will help us widen our network into the commercial space, beyond the social impact world that we have been immersed in for the last year. If you want to connect or collaborate, we’d love to hear from you.
• Learning & Sharing — We’re forever learning about the world of social and environmental impact and diving deep into the numerous ways businesses can have impact through everything that they do. We will continue to share our learnings in our blogs and if you have anything you’d like to know more about please do let us know as we’re always looking for new areas to explore.

At Impactful, our mission is to work with businesses to unlock their ability to contribute to lasting social change and environmental sustainability. If you’d like to know more please Email us at hello@impactful.world.