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Why Goodsted?

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Selin Yigitbasi-Ducker
checkVerified writer
PUBLISHED ON December 11, 2019

It’s no secret that the world we inhabit is in trouble. Overpopulation, growing social inequality, and the depletion of our planet’s key resources and destruction of natural habitats. Take a look at the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 . These are hugely important targets, but we’re not moving fast enough to achieve them before it’s too late.

We have to work together. We need to unite behind common goals, across all sectors and industries in order to create the positive impact and incremental progress that is needed to enact long-lasting social and environmental development.

We created Goodsted, a digital platform to help communities collaborate, share skills and resources more effectively to progress impactful projects and enterprises by tackling challenges together.

Goodsted is not just a search engine for causes you care about, not just another volunteering platform. It’s not just a community engagement portal, or an impact reporting tool. Goodsted is all of these in one.

 

 

Purpose-driven generation

Millennials — who make up the majority of the workforce — are looking to work in companies who aim to contribute to social and environmental development.

Companies often try to engage their employees by offering paid volunteering days, and for good reason: 90% of companies found a positive correlation between employee participation in volunteering and higher employee engagement scores.

However, research shows that out of 11 million people who are given this opportunity, the engagement rate only come to 14.3% meaning £1.4bn worth of volunteering is not being put to use. The mistake here would be to think that this is because the remaining 85.7% don’t care about volunteering. The truth is, the opportunities that are on offer to them, simply aren’t engaging enough.

Almost 80% of millennials would like to use their skills when volunteering. This means that they don’t just want to attend a glorified team-building activity. They want to connect with fulfilling initiatives that align with their passions and interests, and which will genuinely benefit from their particular skill set. They want to see that the time they spent creates positive impact.

As an employer, this is a high bar to be set. Finding just one such specific impact initiative is time-consuming, let alone finding a different one for each individual person. And tracking and reporting on all of this activity is equally overwhelming. It makes sense that most employers aren’t able to offer the purpose-rich skilled volunteering opportunities that individuals connect best with. Luckily, we’re here to help!

Goodsted handles all of this stuff so that more employees can find purposeful volunteering opportunities without overwhelming their HR department. By engaging employees, we will be able to re-capture the lost value that’s being recorded.

 

Disconnected communities

We live in a hyper-connected world, but in some ways we are more disconnected than ever. We are all aware of the problems we face as societies, and so many of us want to do something to help but feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.

Of the adult population in the UK, only about 10% volunteered between 2017 and 2018. Research suggests that this means there’s an incredible untapped resource of around 90 million UK adults that could be motivated and engaged to take part to a greater extent in their communities. And that’s without even mentioning high-school and student involvement!

There are already change-makers in local neighbourhoods who are taking action, but too often they struggle in isolation. They face challenges finding support and tapping into resources, not to mention the workload involved in recording and broadcasting the progress that they make.

We have built Goodsted because we think we can help. We have created a platform where anyone who wants to can see the important work that is being done in their neighbourhood. Where people from one locality can be inspired by another, learning from each others’ journeys. And where councils and communities are better connected, able to support each other more effectively and visualise and celebrate their united progress.

 

The Rise of impact enterprises

We’re entering an age of unprecedented entrepreneurialism. And with our heightened social and environmental conscience, there are increasing numbers of companies being created with impact and sustainability at their core. Charities are no longer the only type of impact organisation out there, and these new businesses propose the exciting possibility of being financially sustainable rather than relying exclusively on fundraising. That’s not to say that starting an impact enterprise is easy though. For any business, the first few years are incredibly tough, and only 1 in 10 makes it to year four.

We genuinely believe that if we are to succeed in achieving social and environmental progress, more of these amazing ideas, initiatives and enterprises need to reach maturity.

Organisations trying to enact positive change face the same barriers as individuals: limited resources; tough competition for funding; and there are areas that they need guidance or support in, but don’t know where to turn. In-kind and volunteer support is a strong alternative resource for these organisations, but the opportunity cost of organising and managing it all often counteracts the benefit received.

Goodsted removes the hassle of actively hunting for help, by providing much-needed visibility for social and environmental initiatives. It makes it easy to communicate with supporters and share successes, and most importantly — helps early-stage and growth-stage startups through the rocky first few years of operation so that they can go on to change the world for the better.

Our goal is to connect these important initiatives with the passionate people who’re interested and equipped to support them, so that more great ideas have a chance to grow.

 

So, how does it work?

Goodsted is a digital platform for collaborating and sharing resources for social progress. We make it easy to give and receive in-kind support for purposeful initiatives and enterprises, enabling an engaging, accountable and measurable process.

Through the platform, leaders of initiatives or enterprises can put forward challenges, and request the type of support they need to accomplish the challenge. This challenge can be anything you can think of, as long as it helps progress an initiative for achieving social or environmental impact.

Let’s say you’re working on tackling homelessness. Your challenge could be “How can I create an inspiring brand and marketing strategy?”, or “Can we create an event for the homeless which will make them more employable?”. Once you’ve shared this with the Goodsted community, you will be able to gather volunteers with specific skills to your cause, look for space or products to help you achieve your goals, and communicate your successes with everyone who’s engaged with your challenge.

No longer should we have to feel helpless or alone! If you’re looking to support social impact initiatives, you can easily access diverse range of opportunities fit with your skillset, interest and availability. And by creating your own profile, you’ll be able to create a team or join existing communities and display all the great work that you’ve been a part of so far.

 

Current Progress and Next Steps!

We have had a busy last year at Goodsted, and are incredibly proud of the milestones we’ve achieved. We started out with just an idea based on frustrations we experienced in our own lives, and after 2 years of researching, prototyping, testing, and iterating, we now have a beta platform ready for piloting and are gathering together individuals and organisations to be a part of this journey with us.

 

We’re extremely thankful for all the support we’ve received so far in the past year and are pleased to have won international awards — being chosen from a stellar group of start-ups to win The Next Generation Entrepreneur Award, given by the Family Business Network and Lombard Odier, and The Top Next Generation Entrepreneur Award granted by the CampdenFB and BNP Paribas.

W e have been accepted to two accelerators: We in Social Tech by Deutsche Bank and Accelerate — the NWES and EY Foundation social enterprise accelerator. And we’re constantly meeting clusters, councils and companies who are excited to start using our platform and engaging with our ecosystem.

And what’s most exciting is that this is only just beginning! Our vision is that Goodsted will be used by everyone, everywhere, to take action for initiatives that they care most about. We have begun our journey in London, but the plan is to make the platform accessible and available to communities all around the world.

If this is something that excites you as much as it does us, then come and get involved! Sign up on www.goodsted.com to create your own profile, and start leading or supporting challenges today!

 

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