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Case Studies
Helping Braemar navigate risks and rewards to build a global ESG strategy & framework
Braemar Plc provides expert investment, chartering, and risk management advice to the shipping and energy markets. They are one of the biggest companies in their space. Over the last three years Braemar has rebranded, fully divested their non-core businesses, and refocused their strategy on Shipbroking and Corporate Finance.
As an office-based organisation Braemar’s direct environmental footprint is a very small percentage of the shipping and energy industries’ emissions, but they recognised that they have a role to play in their decarbonisation.
Braemar knew that they needed outside expertise to extend ESG beyond the remit of financial and sustainability reporting into a company-wide strategy and mindset. Isabel Kelly (Profit with Purpose) and Jo Goddard (Green & Good Consulting) working together as ESG Experts were invited to present to the team led by CFO Nick Stone, including Head of Financial Reporting Emma Jones, Group Head of HR Becki Mackay, and Non-Executive Director Elizabeth Gooch.
“As soon as I met Isabel and Jo it was clear that they had a wealth of experience that could benefit us,” said Emma Jones, Head of Financial Reporting.
“I was also drawn to their framework as a way to bring everything together into a single structure starting with our mission statement and moving down through to specifying targets and areas to report on.
“It was just what we needed to provide us with something we could implement and measure, facilitating a more joined up approach to ESG.”
Enriching conversations
ESG Experts kicked off the project by interviewing eleven Braemar board members and senior executives, asking about the company’s purpose, core values, and culture as well as discussing their thoughts on perceived risks, challenges, and opportunities relating to ESG. These conversations helped the team to understand ESG and what it could mean for the business.
To obtain a clear picture and understand the thoughts and fears of people working throughout the organisation, Isabel and Jo supplemented these management discussions by speaking to a wide range of employees throughout the business and learning what mattered most to them. These discussions provided a platform to connect with employees at all levels, hear their thoughts and de-bunk some of the myths and fears around climate change issues like additional governance and greenwashing.
In particular, employees highlighted how important climate change is to them, to their clients, and to people living in coastal areas. Listening to the Braemar team enriched the proposition for their ESG strategy.
It also became apparent that Braemar’s people were so intrinsic to their purpose that ESG Experts added a ‘P’ to their ESPG framework. The ‘P’ pillar outlines Braemar’s commitment to continue to develop and support their existing staff, while agreeing to cultivate a more diverse workforce.
The North Star
ESG Experts work thus far had started to shift Braemar’s thinking from the practical and tactical ‘what’ approach which they were used to, to a more aspirational and strategic discussion based on the ‘why’ of their purpose.
Braemar had already developed a purpose statement as part of their rebrand: “We believe it takes expertise and experience to secure sustainable returns and mitigate risk in a volatile shipping world.” To build on this, ESG Experts helped them to agree on the ‘North Star’ of their ESG strategy. In other words, to define the objective that drives and guides their purpose.
For this key part of the process, Isabel and Jo conducted extensive research into industry trends, and what Braemar’s competitors and bodies like the International Maritime Organisation were saying and doing to address issues like climate change and net zero impact. This information fuelled discussions which ultimately led to Braemar defining their role as brokers and facilitators – a position that allows them to help make the industry be more climate smart and their objective ‘facilitating climate-smart shipping’ became clear.
Changing tides
ESG Experts helped to start discussions, which Braemar’s team is continuing to have, around new potential opportunities for the business such as attracting new institutional investors and developing new services. So far, this has included the launch of the Braemar Offset platform; acquiring a new desk that can broker European Union carbon Allowances (EUA); launching a weekly ‘Net Zero Report’ for shipowners and charterers; as well as helping their clients to make more sustainable decisions when they charter ships, commission newbuildings, or buy second-hand vessels.
What started on the back of the rebrand has led to defining and embedding ESPG into the culture of Braemar, and starting to change the business as a whole. The framework delivered by ESG Experts has not only provided a clear structure with ‘facilitating climate-smart shipping’ at its core, but has elevated ESPG to a global, business-wide commitment.
See Braemar’s ESG implementation plan and commitment to the Sustainable Development here: https://braemar.com/esg/
Profit with Purpose helps Aferian create an ESG strategy aligned to a culture of collaboration and Ikigai
Global media tech company Aferian (formerly known as Amino Technologies) prides itself on making it easy to connect people to the TV and video that they love. It is a growing public company that trades under the ticker symbol AFRN on AIM, London Stock Exchange’s market for small and medium growth companies.
Aferian is a people-driven company with 350 employees worldwide and a culture of collaboration. They take their responsibility to all their stakeholders very seriously. Some informal social and environmental programmes had naturally grown out of this ethos and were running in the background at the company, but without a formal strategy in place around them.
As a public company, Aferian’s board recognised the growing importance of having defined Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) practices in place – from a business and investor viewpoint, as well as an ethical one. They tasked the leadership team to move ESG up the business agenda.
“We were already addressing various elements of both ‘E’ and ‘S’, but using a very piecemeal approach. The board highlighted the need for greater governance in this area.” explained Mark Carlisle, COO and CFO at Aferian.
“We knew we needed to take a step back and look at the big picture to bring all of these initiatives together. We needed to find a way to work with our stakeholders and develop a formalised, measurable ESG framework that was relevant to our business.”
The need for expertise
Aferian’s leadership team recognised that an effective ESG framework needed to incorporate the motivations and priorities of their global workforce and to be shaped within the company – not be dictated from the board. As a result, they decided to work with independent experts who could have honest conversations with team members at all levels of the business.
“Profit with Purpose was the perfect fit for the project. They know that a successful ESG directive needs to align with the business strategy. It was clear that the team Isabel Kelly brought together, including associates Jo Goddard and Leigh Thompson, had the knowledge, methodology and expertise to carry this out.” said Mark.
“Isabel’s experience on the board at The Panoply, another AIM-listed company, was invaluable. She understood the issues we were facing, how to work with a business of our size and how to communicate with the board.”
A reason for being
To understand Aferian’s business, its ESG appetite, and key projects – particularly around employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, and supporting future talent – Profit with Purpose started by speaking to Aferian’s management. These conversations revealed awareness of environmental issues related to product packaging, business travel and energy use, but also that there was more they could be doing.
The Profit with Purpose team heard praise for CEO Donald McGarva for his values and leadership – and learned from Donald about ‘Ikigai’: which translates as ‘a reason for being’ and having a meaningful direction or purpose in life.
Profit with Purpose recognised the significance of Ikigai to his leadership style and to the company culture, and understood that Aferian’s ESG strategy should align to it.
“Ikigai personifies Aferian as a people-driven organisation,” explained Mark.
“Profit with Purpose understood its importance and ran with the idea, incorporating it into their work and using it to help develop and underpin our ESG strategy.”
Creating the vision
The conversations with management and the wider employee base made it clear to Profit with Purpose that there was a desire within Aferian to move forward with embedding ESG into the organisation.
A key step was to help Jamie Mackinlay, SVP Global Sales and Marketing, and his marketing team to write Aferian’s ESG vision statement. Now published in their annual report, this statement forms the foundation of Aferian’s ESG framework and ongoing activity, and will inform how they measure success:
In everything we do, we are mindful of our responsibility to ensure a diverse workforce and a positive work environment; to source responsibly through our supply chain; to reduce our impact on the planet and to engage compassionately with our communities.
Being focused
Tying the vision statement to tangible, measurable objectives is essential to embedding purpose into an organisation. Profit with Purpose initially identified nine of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals most relevant to Aferian, for them to narrow down.
“We were at risk of trying to spread ourselves too thinly to make any kind of impact,” explained Mark.
“Profit with Purpose helped us to narrow down our options and define something we could implement and progress.”
Supply chain governance
Aferian works with component manufacturers in China and Taiwan, and, though among the smaller players in the market, they wanted to gain an even greater knowledge of their suppliers’ manufacturing processes and understand how to mitigate ESG-related risk.
Profit with Purpose reviewed Aferian’s existing supply chain governance process and recommended next steps such as developing a comprehensive risk register and a standard ESG process for all of its suppliers. They also encouraged Aferian to consider joining supply chain assessment organisation Sedex and industry initiatives.
Using the Framework
Aferian are now using the ESG framework to move forward on their journey – working to fulfil the vision statement and SDG commitments, and including their employees and stakeholders every step of the way.
“ESG is now truly at the heart of our company and driving our culture as an organisation. Thanks to Profit with Purpose’s expertise, hard work and due diligence, our ESG strategy is already opening us up to new business opportunities and helping us to monitor, measure and evaluate our business practices,” concluded Mark.
“We would not have arrived here without the work that Profit with Purpose did for us. They listened to our team, helped us to identify a clear path and focus our priorities – delivering a strategy that meets the requirement of our board, matches the goals and passions of our team and aligns with the direction and strategy of Aferian as a listed business.”
See Aferian’s Investor Centre for their ESG Report, commitments and actions.
Creating a better tomorrow as a socially responsible strapline …
As the world’s largest credit bureau, Experian takes the issue of financial inclusion very seriously. Committed to ‘creating a better tomorrow’, the core business is built around the power of data and its ability to transform lives around the world, helping people to realise their dreams – whether that means buying a house, a car, celebrating a wedding, funding their family’s education, or starting a new business.
Since 2013, Experian has funded social innovation projects aimed at promoting financial well-being and helping people who have low credit scores or are credit ‘invisible’ due to having a limited financial track record. The programme has reached over 34 million people worldwide and provides around US$1.2million in internal product development funding each year, resulting in innovations and products aimed at promoting financial inclusion under the Experian brand.
Examples of Social Innovation products funded around the world include an app to improve financial confidence for people without bank accounts in South Africa, identity verification for those without formal documentation in India, and an online debt renegotiation platform in Brazil.
Experian aims to reach 100 million additional people through Social Innovation products and services by 2025.
As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, Experian has also launched a new external Social Innovation fund with MIT Solve, as part of its Financial Health Recovery Programme.
Profit with Purpose has been working with Experian’s Corporate Responsibility team since 2019 to help elevate and align their vision and strategy to the company’s growth strategy, to make the best use of Experian’s resources, and to set goals and metrics to show progress towards their social impact objectives.
Purpose-driven, business-savvy
Experian’s Global Head of Social Innovation and UK&I Head of Corporate Responsibility, Richard Donovan, first met Profit with Purpose Founder Isabel Kelly at a Three Hands event on corporate social purpose where they were both speaking in 2018. Based on the strength of her presentation, Richard introduced himself and invited Isabel to be a guest speaker at Experian’s internal Corporate Responsibility (CR) conference later that year.
“We bring our 15-strong Corporate Responsibility community together from across the globe each year and are always looking for credible and inspirational speakers we can engage with and learn from,” said Richard. “Isabel fit the bill perfectly. She was not only an insightful speaker, but she challenged the team to ask questions and look for answers. Her knowledge of the pivot point between the commercial and non-profit sectors was vital.”
Isabel’s presentation aligned well with the objective for the meeting set out by Abigail Lovell, Experian’s Global SVP for Corporate Responsibility, which was to elevate CR within the business to be fully aligned with the overall commercial vision and strategy, and to make use of the full set of available resources: people, profit and product.
View from the top – discovering management’s perspective
The CR team’s perception was that there was a low level of interest in their work from many in Experian’s management team; that it was seen as a nice-to-have, valuable for some employees, but unrelated to the company’s overall business objectives.
To better understand the approach to CR throughout the business, Isabel kicked off her work by speaking to around 50 global senior leaders: from the UK to the US, Brazil, Australia, Singapore and India. Braced for cynical responses, she was met with the opposite – not a single conversation was negative and leaders clearly articulated their passion and understanding for how Experian’s product, data and analytics have the potential to contribute significant social value for vulnerable communities.
From those conversations, Isabel and the Experian CR team received the endorsement they needed to start working towards globally consistent CR activities with high-level metrics, rolling up to a clear social impact vision focused on financial inclusion.
“Isabel’s findings from her conversations were a huge step forward for us,” continued Richard. “It was as useful to discover what the management team didn’t value as what they did, and has allowed the CR team to have different conversations with them.”
Global vision, local actions
With clarity of direction and senior endorsement, Profit with Purpose and Experian agreed a set of activities and milestones including drafting the new high-level framework, defining key social impact metrics, and syncing messaging to Experian’s global communications strategy.
Experian has now started the global roll-out of their new Impact Framework, as described in the 2020 Sustainable Business Report:
“This Framework is supported by a global vision, principles, methods and metrics; and it takes into account potential internal and external challenges that we could face as a business.
Our Impact Framework is being rolled out at global and regional levels of the business. Each region can tailor the Framework to local social challenges, culture and employee engagement. Over the next twelve months, we plan to review our community investment, partnerships and local programmes to make sure they align with the new Framework’s focus on improving financial lives.”
The strategic shift of CR – combined with the Social Innovation agenda, community investment, and a new environmental strategy – have fulfilled the desired direction of the board, with Abigail Lovell presenting multiple times at recent board and leadership meetings.
The measure of success
Articulating the social impact being made was key for the elevation of CR at Experian. By focusing less on the inputs (money given, volunteer hours) as the end goal, and instead aligning inputs to a headline metric focused on financial health, Profit with Purpose – working with expert associate The Social Innovation Partnership – helped shift the CR team’s thinking to focus on key beneficiaries and goals.
The 2020 Sustainable Business Report outlines this evolution, aimed at aligning Experian’s success measures with the United National Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
“Our goal is to be able to measure the number of people who have improved their financial lives as a result of Experian’s people, product and profit, and understand how many were unbanked or underbanked. We’re currently developing new metrics to more effectively measure the impact of our products and programmes on financial lives and our contribution towards the UN SDGs.”
This move toward using the UN’s SDGs as a bellwether for measuring success means that it’s not just the board taking a greater interest in the CR strategy; measurable social impact reported within agreed frameworks (including several already being used by Experian) is increasingly of interest to companies’ investor relations teams who are keen to be included in the growing number of sustainable or impact investment funds.
Crisis Response
Experian’s CR team had started to implement its new Impact Framework when COVID hit, so the groundwork was already in place to expand the CR strategy to include financial health and recovery.
“COVID has been a defining moment for us as a business. The dire financial impact of the virus will be devasting to so many communities, and it is our responsibility as a company to act,” said Richard.
“To ensure we could make the biggest impact on the communities suffering the most, we wanted to kick off the external fund and invite other investors to contribute.”
By this stage, the CR team viewed Isabel as a trusted colleague and got in touch with Profit with Purpose for support in helping to identify those communities hardest hit by the economic impact of the virus. Happy to help, the Profit with Purpose team carried out an initial triage exercise, speaking to organisations in their network of global NGOs and narrowing down the list of potential partners for Experian to approach for their COVID initiatives.
“We could not have accomplished this work on our own,” concluded Richard. “Isabel and her associates bring extensive experience and expertise to every project and their network of connections has proved invaluable in helping us in our COVID response as well as implementing our CR strategy. Their independence means they can also offer valuable insights and perspective to the work they deliver.”
Kick It Out
Planning for Focused Impact
Kick It Out is UK football’s equality and inclusion organisation. Over the last 20 years Kick It Out has worked throughout the football, education and community sectors to challenge discrimination, encourage inclusive practices and campaign for positive change.
Profit with Purpose worked with Kick It Out’s CEO to review key organisational successes and challenges and drafted a set of recommendations and actions to contribute to their new strategic plan.
Born from the ‘Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football’ campaign in 1993 in response to widespread calls from clubs, players and fans to tackle racist attitudes within the game, Kick It Out was established as an NGO in 1997. It has subsequently widened its objectives and programs significantly to cover all aspects of inequality and exclusion in football and works with The FA, the League, clubs, fans and players.
Now a 13-person team with 20 years of diverse and impactful programming under their belt, Kick it Out wanted objective, expert consulting assistance as they went about crafting a more focused organizational vision and strategic priorities to guide the organization and its stakeholders through the next phase of growth.
To assist in this process, Profit with Purpose conducted a one-day download session with Kick It Out’s CEO. Together they reviewed organizational history, current reality, and key successes and challenges, examining the organization through a financial, operational and social impact lens.
Following the workshop Profit with Purpose produced a clear and instructive summary report covering key findings, prioritized recommendations, and a proposed structure for a new strategic plan.
Like many maturing nonprofits with a solid track record and established methods and programs, enlisting some experienced, objective consulting advice helped Kick It Out see the organization from a different perspective, identify their challenges, how best to use their resources and how to move towards implementing their future vision.
“Working with Isabel was extremely helpful.” CEO Roisin Wood said. “She was empathetic, incisive and very practical, helping me refine and consolidate the strategy ideas I’ve had over the last few years and turn these into a clear plan for the year ahead. I feel confident in where I want to take things.
The Stewarts Foundation
Giving structure to great generosity
Profit with Purpose contributed to this project under the umbrella of Giving Evidence, founded by the brilliant Caroline Fiennes. Caroline has worked at charities, run charities and now focuses on ensuring that charitable giving is effective and based on evidence. As the title of her book says, It Ain’t What You Give, It’s the Way that you Give It’.
Stewarts asked Giving Evidence to review its charitable giving, which is done through The Stewart’s Foundation.
The Stewarts Foundation was set up in 2010 and has grown as the firm has grown; by 2016 it was giving considerable sums. The firm’s leadership wanted an expert eye to review how it could perform better. Grant-giving had diversified as partners, who are all trustees of the Foundation, had introduced new charities and themes.
Giving Evidence undertook a review and presented a plan intended to create a clear focus and grant-making structure for the Foundation, giving them a firm footing for the next 10 years.
Our data-gathering comprised reviewing grants for the last few years and other documentation including grant agreements, as well as interviewing the partners. We learned that the purpose of the Foundation is to make a significant social impact, to reflect the increased diversity of the firm’s activities, and to contribute to a sense of pride and cohesion throughout the firm and to its overall brand identity.
Based on our findings and knowledge of the social and philanthropic sectors we drafted a vision and set of values suggesting direction as well as structure for the grant-making. We introduced the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a framework to help choose between the diverse causes supported by the partners.
The Stewarts Foundation’s current vision, focus, and values as shared on the firm’s website:
The Foundation’s vision is to: |
- Create opportunities for the disadvantaged in our society
- Treat people less fortunate than ourselves with compassion and respect
- Make a substantial social impact by giving to excellent non-profits in the UK that are focussed on:
- Alleviating poverty
- Enabling access to justice
- Supporting disability
- Providing educational opportunity
The Foundation’s values align closely to those of the Firm and our staff:
- Focus
- Respect
- Excellence
At the end of the engagement, we provided documentation giving a synthesis of all that we had heard, together with our recommendations and the next steps for the trustees. The document also provided further reading on effective charitable giving selected from Giving Evidence publications, for example about the benefit of unrestricted over restricted granting.
Finally, we provided a working document to guide implementation, to be reviewed on an annual basis by the trustees to ensure that their vision, values and the grant-making activities and themes they have chosen continue to be relevant. The working document contained recommendations for how to assess progress and report impact, as well as how to manage grantee relationships.
“Working with Giving Evidence to review The Stewarts Foundation helped us to upgrade and professionalise our charitable giving, including formalising agreements and expectations for the grant recipients and making those grants meaningful in size. We benefited from the expert insight provided by the Giving Evidence team’s many years of working in the field of effective social change.” Stewarts, October 2016
Sage Foundation
Formalising an existing philanthropic culture; creating delighted employees
In November 2014, new Sage CEO Stephen Kelly brought a new vision for the 35-year-old FTSE100 company, including creating the Sage Foundation.
Sage debunked the myth that it’s impossible to ‘retrofit’ philanthropy into an established company; Sage employees were already finding ways to give their time and technology to nonprofits from the UK to South Africa, North America and beyond.
My six-month task was to discover what was already being done around the world and bring it together with into a global strategy with a clear vision, mission, structure and funding model.
Sage decided to commit to giving 2% of employee time, 2% of free cash flow and 2 donated licenses of its three flagship products to support eligible registered nonprofits.
As a company which is passionate about its SME customer base, it became clear that the focus for Sage’s philanthropy should be on creating social equality and economic opportunity in the communities where they operate around the world.
Working closely with the one existing CSR manager and a former Salesforce Foundation colleague, I created a Vision for Board approval, and an outline for employee engagement, grant programs, and a product donation program, together with recommendations on the structure, funding model, technology, and governance requirements.
I supported the internal and external announcement of the Foundation. I hired a small global team and supported them as they began their implementation of the Sage Foundation employee engagement, grants, and product donation programs.
They now have a Foundation leader and new team members in place and their Vision for Sage’s philanthropy is becoming fully embedded as a core part of the company.
My abiding memory at Sage will be the almost tangible excitement from employees on hearing about the launch of the Sage Foundation; for many of them, it was something they had longed for.
One employee emailed me saying he’d thought he was going to have to leave the company to fulfill his philanthropic passion, but now he had five volunteering days, access to grants and had the company’s endorsement for bringing his passion for social change into the workplace, he was more than happy to stay where he was.
Previous Work
Salesforce
Bringing together people, grants and technology to maximise impact
Since its birth in 1999 the global Salesforce Foundation now (salesforce.org) has delivered hundreds of thousands of employee volunteering hours, donated over $100m in grants and given Salesforce technology to 28,000 nonprofit and education organisations.
Its reach stretches from Silicon Valley to London’s Silicon Roundabout to Nairobi’s Silicon Savannah.
With the extraordinary leadership of Salesforce Founder Marc Benioff and the gift of seven days’ volunteer time per employee, 1% of salesforce product, 1% of pre-IPO equity and two markets (nonprofit & education), we realised that bringing these resources together delivered powerful, integrated and self-sustaining philanthropic programs.
A core tenet of Salesforce’s philanthropy is to get great technology into the hands of nonprofit and education organisations who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford it.
As Director of EMEA and then International, I was responsible for creating a robustly governed international Product Donation Program ensuring that any eligible nonprofit or education organisation in over 110 countries could receive, and make good use of, donated Salesforce product.
Nonprofits make amazing use of Salesforce technology to enhance their impact; from fundraising to supporting youth entrepreneurship and managing child welfare, from tackling homelessness to providing sanitation in slums.
In 2008 the Salesforce Foundation moved into a revenue generating model. Beyond donating salesforce technology to nonprofits, we started selling additional licenses at an 80% discount, with all income funding the growth, grants and programs of the Foundation.
From 2010 I implemented this model internationally as a business unit within salesforce.com, using the existing corporate sales, legal, governance and tax structures. We quickly became profitable, growing to $12m revenue at the end of 2014, and winning global nonprofit household names as customers.
We supported many Partners in the Salesforce ecosystem to develop products and service offerings for the Foundation’s customers as a way of creating their own integrated corporate philanthropy.
And one of our goals was to unleash the philanthropist in every employee by empowering them to use their volunteer time to fulfil their passion for whatever issue was important to them; helping kids to read, giving their skills to implement salesforce for a charity, teaching rugby at a school in Africa.
Over the years we ran BizAcademy; a grant-funded collaboration with nonprofits around the world, which engaged hundreds of Salesforce volunteers teaching Salesforce technology and sales to young people as skills for employment.
Conceived in San Francisco, my team and I rolled BizAcademy out across the world, reaching hundreds of young people in the US, UK, Ireland, Japan, India, Australia, Singapore and beyond.
Each young person got a helping hand into an apprenticeship, internship, job or further education through participation in this program. They had mentors and developed relationships with employees that opened doors for them into the next stage of their life.
At Salesforce, volunteering is as varied as the employees, and participation rates are extremely high at 80%. Employees often cite the Foundation among the top reasons that they love working for the company.
Salesforce’s 1% model of integrated philanthropy has lead the way for many other companies to Pledge 1% of their own time, product or profit for social impact.