Making Impact Work For Startups: How Founders Can Make Progress on the SDGs

Hello everybody, uh, welcome. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are joining us from. My name is Dustin Betts. You are at the Making Impact Work for Startups workshop, and we're here to talk about how founders can make progress on the SDGs. Say hello in the chat if you're joining us here and let us know where you are joining from. I am calling in from Pennsylvania in the United States today, so evening for me. I see some people joining us in here. Hello. Sippen from Canada. Awesome. Somebody from Texas, Sacramento. Awesome. All right, let's go ahead and kick it off here. As I said, my name is Dustin Betts. I'm the global community and content manager at the Founder Institute. If you don't know who we are, the Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. We've helped launch nearly 5,000 companies across 200 cities worldwide. If you're interested in learning more about the Founder Institute, we are enrolling pre-seed stage founders into virtual accelerator programs across all 6 continents. And you can see that list of currently enrolling cities if you go to fi.co/enrolling. So without further ado, let's sort of kick it off with the agenda for today. So we're going to start with a quick presentation by yours truly. We're going to talk about the 4 progress impact frameworks that the Founder Institute has developed. And then we're going to take a first pass together at a guided version of the exercise that's outlined on the worksheet to define your impact thesis. So if you haven't already, please go in and make a copy of that worksheet, or you can— we'll drop the link in the chat, or you can go to bit.ly/impact-worksheet to make a copy. And then last but not least, we're going to have an impact group feedback and networking session. And so we'll leave this running for as long as people want to keep giving one another feedback and networking. So that's really the majority of this event after we go through the exercise first. Okay, you've probably, more than likely, already seen the SDGs many times before. Hopefully you're a little bit familiar with them. But these UN Development Goals really provide the ideal framework to communicate your impact. And why is that? Well, first and foremost, they are globally recognized. When you're communicating impact, it really helps to ground what you're measuring in something that other people understand, and there really is no more framework framework well recognized than the UN SDGs. Secondly, they're nearly universal in terms of encompassing all the potential impact areas that you likely want to work on. Now I say nearly, because there are prob— you know, there's a few areas that are probably es, de aligned that aren't encompassed in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but almost everything that founders are going to want to work on related to social or environmental impact is covered. And lastly, Though they can seem aspirational, the SDGs are actually quite quantitative in nature, especially when you drill down into the sub-goals, as we'll explore today. They get more granular, and they really lend themselves well to measurement, which is really important for quantifying impact. Okay, so let's get the bad part out of the way up front so that we can focus on the good stuff related to impacts for the rest of the event. This is a quote from UN Undersecretary General, and the gist is that the truth is so far, even pre-COVID, but especially now with some of the setbacks, we're really not on track to meet the SDGs by the date of 2030. And so, the feeling at the Founder Institute, we're very focused on early-stage companies, is that we sort of deferred to governments and nonprofits and big multinationals to fix the big problems of the world for too long. And so to create this better future, it's going to require collective efforts from all different sizes of organizations, including really early-stage companies, as well as, you know, for-profit ventures, and companies whose core business interests are not directly impact-related. And that's why we created the For Progress framework that we're gonna talk about, to empower founders to identify achievable impact metrics and make measurable progress. So when we keep saying, you know, for-profit, for-progress companies, What, what do we mean by that? So this is, this is the definition from the Founder Institute that we came up with. And the first part is just having a mission that's aligned with one of these SDGs. The second part's really the most important piece. So you're creating a scalable positive impact, um, that's measured by key performance indicators that are tied to one of these, uh, SDG subgoals. So i.e., you're adopting what we call an impact key performance indicator, or an IKPI. And the last part is that you are displaying that IKPI, you're tracking that IKPI publicly somewhere, so probably on a webpage that you're updating on a regular basis like monthly or quarterly. And if you want to see an example of what that looks like in part 3, tracking an IKPI, go to fi.co/ikpi and you can see what the KPIs look like that we at the Founder Institute are actually tracking for ourselves. Yeah, somebody asked if we can share the link. We will share it. It's fi.co/ikpi. But yeah, we will share that. So okay, when we talk about impact related to startups, you know, basically there's sort of two broad areas. You're either creating direct impact or you're creating some kind of indirect impact. As you scale your impact separate from your company's core value proposition, you need to be clear in order to scale your impact You know, what is your problem target? And then your solution, what is the IKPI metric that you can measure your progress towards that target? So if your company is, you know, direct impact, you're inherently already focused on social or environmental impact, then your proposed impact, you know, problem-solution framework, it might be identical to your business's core value proposition. But for most companies, you know, that fall in the second category, These are two completely different solution frameworks, but they, they importantly scale together with growth. And so that's more indirect. So here's some examples. I'm not going to go through all of them, but the first one on the direct side, so Total Control. This is a cloud-based food waste prevention system. It basically simplifies inventory management, expiration dates, or real-time data on food products. And so You can look up some of the other ones if you wanna check them all out. They're definitely all impact-related. But so Total Control, yeah, food waste management, super tied to SDG 12, Responsible Production and Consumption, as well as SDG 2, Zero Hunger. And then on the indirect side, Sworkit's the top example. This is one of the top personal fitness apps on iOS and Android, and they have workout plans that help their users reach their fitness goals. The core business is pretty aligned, you could say, with SDG 3, which is good health and well-being. However, the team is more deliberate or granular in their impact strategy. It's more narrow. They're focused on an impact side on improving physical fitness in young people. So they provide their app free, currently to more than 10 million students in more than 14,000 schools. And these are metrics that they quantify and report publicly via their youth initiative webpage. So the other companies, you can check them out, Braves Mobility, direct impact, as well as Fairly AI, it's an AI company that's much more indirect impact. But now this is the next step. We're going to get into the exercise now. Please open another tab, don't X me out, but do open another tab to fi.co/progress and open that up so that we can work through it together. This is the progress planner tool, and we're going to use it to quickly sort through the SDG subgoals. As I mentioned, there's more than 200 of them, and we're gonna sort through them quickly to kind of craft succinct impact theses with trackable metrics. So go to fi.co/progress in another tab to follow along and work with the tool. Okay, so if you don't already also have the worksheet open in another tab, you should have that too so that you can fill it out as we go along. This is step 1 on the worksheet. First, we're going to state the impact problem and then align the SDGs. So many of you here today can probably already articulate at least the first fill in the blank. So you, that is defining, you know, what is the social or environmental problem that you see in the world and that you want to solve? And so the one sentence formula is, I believe that a specific problem exists, which is aligned with the UN SDG sub-goal. So you can browse through, you know, using the fi.co/progress, the progress planner. If you're already somewhat familiar with these SDG categories, it's probably easier to just browse. You can kind of guess, you know, which SDGs, the broad category of 17, which of those are closest. But then you'll read through the sub-goal examples and see which ones most closely match. Because even if you're already familiar with the SDGs, probably you don't know the 230+ sub-goals. You can do it that way. If you're feeling stuck, you can also search the Progress Planner by keyword instead. So that might help if you're feeling stuck. So I'm going to go through the first example. This one's printed on the worksheet. It says, "I believe that a substantial number of people in the local community do not have adequate access to toilet facilities at our textile manufacturer location." So this is like a clothing e-commerce company that has a contract manufacturer. And people in the local community where the manufacturer is located don't have access to toilet facilities. So, if you're in the Progress Planner, you could probably guess this is aligned with SDG 6, the clean— the water icon, clean water and sanitation. And more specifically, it's most aligned, I think, with 6.2, which is to achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and to end open defecation. So, that's the example that's printed on the worksheet. There's a second example that's not printed on, but just the worksheet, but to give you another one, sort of food for thought. I could say, this is sort of closer to home, I guess, you know, I believe that children in my own local community whose families are experiencing housing instability, they don't have access to meals outside of school, and that this is especially a problem during COVID-19. So, people with housing instability, families with children, might not have food at home all the time, and it's especially bad now. So this would be a problem aligned with SDG 2, and the subgoal would be 2.2, end all forms of malnutrition in children. Okay, so I know I kind of worked through that pretty quickly, but I want to pause here and kind of get your feedback. Please tell us, you know, in the chat if you came with— oh, okay, somebody in the chat, you have the progress capitalized. Maybe it's case sensitive. It shouldn't say the website's perfect. I don't know what you're seeing there, but you shouldn't see that. But has anybody— please tell us, you know, which SDG sub-goal you're working on in the chat, and if you've finished part 1 already and have— yeah, there's the correct— okay, somebody's working on SDG 5. Life on land. All right, I'm seeing Assistant Professor in Academia, Dr. Najat, is working on 3 different goals. Awesome. So people at least seem to know, you know, which SDGs they're working on, and then you can narrow in, check out the progress tool, and see those sub-goals. And if anybody has their complete SDG-aligned problem statement and wants to drop that in the chat, I would love to see some people who are working through the worksheet along. Feel free to drop it in now. And share it. Nice, okay, I'm seeing, yeah, people are showing their subgoals. Great. Okay, well, I'm gonna move on to step 2, but want to emphasize that there's gonna be lots of time to keep working on the worksheet throughout. Seeing some more answers, great, awesome. Okay, so step 2 on the worksheet is to propose your impact solution and then your measurable metrics. So this is really the creative part, the critical thinking part, you know, the step one is really the easier. Once you've identified, this is where you have to think a little outside the box to think, okay, what, how am I going to create a solution that's going to align with my problem statement? And so the simple one-sentence formula again that we have to kind of make this work is, my company can help, and then how you're going to create your impact, and tracked by, your IKPI metric. So if you're in the Progress Planner, you should look at the IKPI examples for each SDG subgoal. It'll have at least one example in the Progress Planner itself. But, you know, it might not match exactly what your solution idea intends to measure, but it should push you in the right direction. So the IKPI you may well have to come up with yourself. But if you already figured out what your SDG sub-goal is, it has some example IKPIs there in the progress tool that you can check out. And so the example that we have printed on the worksheet, it says my company will donate 5% of net profits to locally build and maintain these public toilet facilities. This is going back to the example in step 1. And it's tracked by the number of communal facilities constructed. That's one potential IKPI, facilities constructed. Pretty big. If you wanted to get sort of more granular with that IKPI, you could perhaps quantify your public toilet facility's usage by installing something like a turnstile, right? So that would give you a little bit more granular. Or even more direct maybe, maybe you could approximate like the number of individuals that you helped by having them register first at a machine out front. To get like a free reusable swipe entry card. So, you know, that's maybe, that's, you know, too high tech or something, and maybe it's not feasible for actually offering like free public toilet facilities, but it's an idea at least that would get you a pretty close approximation of the number of individuals that you've helped if they're registering and receiving like a key entry card that they could reuse multiple times. So just an idea. I guess my note here is that if an iKPI cannot be measured directly, and so you instead need to infer or calculate it, it should still correlate or track with a measurable indicator that's tied to your, your business's core activities in some way. Your iKPI needs to be a quantitative metric, so consider, you know, how could you easily calculate any proposed iKPI through regular data sets, especially if you can't directly measure your unique contribution towards some overall impact. If there's external variables that are out there, or you need to calculate a metric indirectly, kind of some things to keep in mind that even if it's indirect, you want to have an indirect metric that's going to correlate or tie back to your core business activities so that As you grow, even if it's indirectly, your impact grows too. These things scale together. Awesome, I saw Steve and Tyler sharing in the chat. Awesome, great, great. Okay, so I'm gonna keep driving forward here towards step 3, and this is simply putting it all together now. So you're combining parts 1 and 2 basically into a 2-sentence impact thesis. An impact thesis that aligns your ESG problem-solution framework with at least one SDG sub-goal from Part 1, and then in Part 2, your proposed solution, you defined an impact metric that will help you track your progress. I want to pause for another second. I feel like I've been talking for a while. Nice. Okay. I'm checking out the chat now. People— more people are sharing. Awesome. Great. If anybody else is finished with their, you know, solution statement and ready to share it, there's going to be lots of time to share in the group session afterwards, but please feel free to drop it into the chat. And if you're not quite there yet, we kind of worked through this pretty quickly, that's okay. We have the rest of the time here in group feedback and networking session to keep working on your impact thesis together, get ideas from other people, And so I guess I want to encourage you before we do move to the group networking session, just sort of how to, I guess, make the most out of it, to try different things. First, think about different sub-goal impact areas that you're interested in, even if they seem a little more tangential to, to your business. So jump to those other tables for other impact areas, even if it wasn't what you put in step 1 for your SDG, Listen to the impact thesis from those other founders if you're interested in those areas and give them feedback. That might spark an idea for you. And just, I guess, some advice to think about, just things to keep in your head for indirect impact. Think about these, we say it's like spheres of impact, potential positive impact that you can influence sort of beyond your core solution. So thinking beyond your customer, right? How could your impact initiatives affect your team, your partners, your physical environment, suppliers, infrastructure, community, local organizations. And then another thing to maybe keep in mind if you're thinking about a thought exercise for a more direct impact that I like is to think about what would it mean to suspend all the financial dimensions of your business and simply imagine a scenario where your product is free, openly accessible, everybody on earth possesses the knowledge and means to utilize it. In that scenario, who else is avidly using your product if not readily able to do so in the real world, your real go-to-market reality? You know, who's your product and built-to-service? Are there other customer personas or users who actually also need your product solution? So sort of suspending the financial dimensions is a good way to think about direct impact maybe in another way. Okay, really excited about this next part. We're announcing this here and now officially, our Pitch for Progress competition. If and when you finish this activity, you now have a succinct impact thesis statement. You're already more than halfway there to being able to submit an entry to our new Pitch for Progress competition, and it's live now at pitchforprogress.com. Basically, because what you have to do to submit the entry for part 1 is simply a 1-minute elevator pitch video. And no fancy editing, no production values really necessary. Just be clear and concise in your pitch that speaks to your impactful startup idea. We have a lot of really exciting prizes. You can read more about it on the website, but speaking and booth opportunities at Impact Startup events, office hours with Impact VCs, big discounts with partners like HubSpot for startups, $10,000 worth of PR services, fellowship to join any Founder Institute accelerator program if you're not already an alumni. So yeah, if you've gone through this activity, you're really close to being able to submit an entry. So definitely please do go check it out.