From a Dream to Dividends
July 2020 has turned out to be quite the month of milestones. It’s Thankyou Payroll’s 10 year anniversary of onboarding our very first client. Ten years on, the platform has served well over 11,000 businesses and organisations across Aotearoa New Zealand, delivering a top-notch product with exceptional customer service.
This July also marks another monumental milestone, not just for Thankyou Payroll, but for the social enterprise sector in New Zealand. Last week, at our Annual General Meeting, we announced our first dividend payment for our shareholders. That’s not only ‘first’ — it’s also the first dividend paid from an equity crowdfunding campaign, since the legislation changed (in 2014) to allow equity crowdfunding in New Zealand.
We’re also pretty sure Thankyou Payroll is the very first social enterprise, or impact organisation in New Zealand to pay dividends to its shareholders. We’re pretty proud of what this means for the sector.
Since inception Thankyou Payroll has been giving into the community. We established the Thankyou Charitable Trust in 2013 to bring grant funding to underserved communities.
We’re conscious of our environmental footprint and offset what we can’t mitigate for our business operations. We’re carbon positive (because we offset 120% of our emissions) accredited by Ekos, a Living Wage employer, and we provide free payroll intermediary services to registered charities. We’re also currently led by an all female board of directors and CEO, which is rare.
In ten short years Thankyou Payroll has:
- Managed almost $4 BILLION dollars through payroll ($3,861,883,478.40)
- Processed 982,478 employer pay runs
- Distributed over 3.5 million payslips to employees
- Grown from a $7,000 turnover to a $2.8m turnover
- Given $376,534 to under-served communities through Thankyou Charitable Trust
- Been certified Carbon Positive (putting more back than we use)
- Saved charities over $1m in-kind by providing them free services
- Gone from 1 employee and 1 dog, to 22 employees and 12 dogs.
There’s a lot to celebrate this month.
Business for Good, and companies with a model that measures beyond just a profit line are a force to be reckoned with. There is a strong case for a future that focuses on an impact economy; where businesses are environmentally responsible, create social wealth, and are financially successful, providing ROI (Return On Investment) alongside SROI (Social Return On Investment) to stakeholders.
Every time payroll is run on our platform, positive impact ripples out. If you know of any businesses or organisations that would love being part of that, and who like to get the best value for money, please send them our way. We can even help them to transition from their current provider.
There is definitely cake — and we’ve saved you a slice.
