Is your business sustainably authentic?

From her own experience Millie Blackwell explains what happens when you add an authentic mission to your company’s goals. It’s a win-win for the business and the planet.

I once saw sustainability described as something that ‘meets the needs of the present, without diminishing opportunities in the future’. It struck me as being both a positive and non-threatening view of sustainability, in contrast to the expensive, idealistic and overwhelming task many people perceive it to be.

But Showcase Workshop was founded in order to meet the needs of the present: to help large, sales-driven businesses share information efficiently and cost-effectively via smart devices. 
At the time of Showcase’s inception in 2011, mobile devices like iPads had only recently been released, and our customers saw them as a brilliant opportunity to transition from traditional print and email to smarter, more mobile technology.

So, from the very beginning, we were meeting the needs of the present without diminishing opportunities in the future. But – significantly – we weren’t making opportunities for a brighter future. Our clients were choosing Showcase to make their businesses more sustainable, but how could we contribute to the world, beyond providing a piece of software, in a way that was authentic to us?

The answer came to me on a trip to Redwood National Park, California, as I walked beneath the canopy of ancient Redwoods. I realised that Showcase is a tool that, amongst other things, saves printed pages and countless trees (the average tree produces 8,500 sheets of paper!). Conserving our forests for future generations is critical, and contributing a portion of our business profits to this cause offers us a special opportunity to connect with something that’s meaningful to both us and our clients.
 
So, with that, the idea of tracking the number of pageviews in Showcase, and converting those unprinted pages into a donation to plant more trees, was born. 
For us, pageviews is our North Star Metric. As that increases, it tells us that users are engaged and finding value in our software. All parts of our business are authentically invested in increasing the number of pageviews each month, so it made sense for us to link our authentic sustainability effort to our most significant metric. 
 
In October 2017 we launched the Showcase Forest Releaf Fund, where we donate $10 to Trees That Count for every 8,500 page views in Showcase. $10 buys one tree, and if an organisation saves 20 trees in a quarter (that’s 170,000 page views across the organisation), the company can make the donation in their own name. So far we’ve donated $2,100, or planted 210 trees, but our big goal is to contribute at least $10,000 in the next 12 months.
 
Our clients have responded really well to the Fund, and that includes those with established sustainability and environmental values of their own, as well as those who are new to the concept. One client in particular has made a huge effort, and put in place a company reward programme with the aim of reaching 170,000 pageviews in a quarter and having a donation made in their name.

For a business to be more authentic in their sustainability practices, I believe that efforts have to be transparent, easily measurable, and tied to a company’s most widely acknowledged goals. As we’ve found, the outcome of adding an authentic mission to our company’s goals is win-win: we’re attracting and retaining talented staff and fantastic customers, and we’re making a lasting, tangible impact on the world. 

Millie Blackwell (pictured) is co-founder of Showcase Workshop.