E091 - Kathryn Luckock from Share Impact

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Kat, welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Your company, Share Impact, You work with a lot of social entrepreneurs. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Yes, thank you. Thanks very much, Will, and thanks for inviting me on the podcast. So yeah, my name is Kat, and I am the coach for social entrepreneurs. So I set up Share Impact nearly 3 years ago now, with a vision to help social entrepreneurs measure and communicate their impact better so they could actually run sustainable, profitable businesses. And this really came out of my experience of being a social entrepreneur myself. So back in 2013, me and my best friend Jen were given an amazing opportunity to actually turn a sort of not-for-profit organization into a social enterprise that ran an education program in schools. I'll maybe tell you a little bit more about that later, but through that experience of setting up a and growing that business, we learned a huge amount about social entrepreneurship, but also for me what I found really interesting was how we approached social entrepreneurship slightly differently to a lot of other social entrepreneurs in the UK, and particularly our approach to wanting to generate a trading income and not being reliant on grants and funding, but also wanting to have both a social and an environmental impact. Whereas although it's changing, a lot of social entrepreneurs very much and quite rightly have social impact as their mission, but often ignore the environmental elements that I think lots of businesses should just consider as the course of their business, and I think as social entrepreneurs it's increasingly important. But also that, yeah, as I said, lots of social entrepreneurs not really recognizing how to generate sales, how to have a profitable trading income, and very much have this sort of dependency on grant funding. And also not really being able to communicate their social or environmental impact very well, and very much focusing on describing what they do, not the difference that they make, which for me is obviously the essential part of a social enterprise. So as I was transitioning and thinking about what I was going to do next after running and leading Solutions for the Planet, this is really what I was always thinking about, was how can I help more social entrepreneurs to recognize the importance of generating a trading income and measuring and communicating their impact better so that they can actually generate those sales, they can attract customers, they can build a tribe around what their mission is. So that's what Share Impact's about, in not a very concise way, but it's essentially trying— for me, it's trying to create an ecosystem of social entrepreneurs and an economy of social enterprises that actually does good in the world.

So do you find a lot of social entrepreneurs wanting or needing grants? It's interesting that you mentioned it twice just now.

Yeah, so I think a lot— I think there's definitely different camps, but often the social entrepreneurs I come into contact with are either organisations that have come out of the third sector or are filling a public service role. service sort of area and therefore have a mindset within like the charity space that they need to kind of generate income through grants or funding or sometimes investment, but don't necessarily come to social entrepreneurship with a business mindset and with an approach that they need to generate income through trading. Or the others, which is a much smaller area actually, but is Sometimes I come across people who have a business, but they're not very successful in that business, and so for some reason think that having a social enterprise is the new thing to do, the new buzz, because they believe there's grants funding out there for that, and think that because they might be able to shift their business slightly to have some social good or some environmental good, that they're looking at that. And so I often have initial client calls with people in that situation, but actually, you know, coach them around, well, you know, social entrepreneurship is like any other business. You still need to generate sales, and if that's the issue you're having with your existing business, you really just need to learn and focus doing that side of things. But I absolutely recognise there are lots of people running very successful social enterprises who come from a business background and run it as a business. That's not my target client group.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's funny, it just resonated with me because we've never— we actually did, we took a £5,000 grant for something last year, but in reality we haven't really taken a grant at all, ever. And that has always worried me, the fact that if you become reliant on it, then what happens if dries up, then you're completely skewed with your P&L. You haven't got a true P&L if you take it on.

Exactly, and I think there's real advantages to accessing grants, especially at startup phase. I think if you're testing things out, you're piloting things, getting a grant to start up is a brilliant way and actually increases the access for lots of people who otherwise wouldn't be able to implement their ideas that they have, which are brilliant. So I think grants are brilliant for startup stages, but I think lots of people, because they get a grant starting up, they forget to sort of do their business plan and think through how they're going to generate an income, and then get into this trap and this kind of wheel of always applying for grants. But I also think grants are brilliant if you're piloting something new in your business, if you're trialling something new, and, you know, or you're putting it towards some new research and development. or building capacity, and I think that's great and needed and valuable. So I'm not against grants, but I think they need to be used at certain times and in proportion, and recognising in social enterprises that as a social enterprise you're a business, it's just you're a business that does good.

Yeah, no, I totally, totally agree. And you touched upon something that I also have noticed amongst B Corps and sustainability businesses. And I'm smiling because I just, I just see it quite a lot where people aren't— social enterprises that— social entrepreneurs that don't have a huge environmental stance— stance?

Focus.

Or they don't take it seriously. They kind of are doing loads of really good stuff And it's kind of left on the side.

Yeah, and I find it interesting and problematic because for me, coming to business with ethics and principles and core values around social environmental impact are kind of core to me and they're all intertwined. So like, you know, having a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals or just wanting to do good in the world, I don't see you— I don't see, and I can't in my own head separate social impact out from environmental impact. I think they're completely intertwined, and I think if you come from a perspective of understanding just general, you know, understanding sustainability and wanting to create sustainability, global sustainability, and you recognize that the social, the environmental, and the economic all come together as one. And so for me, it's part of that that I find it very difficult to understand why social enterprises set up with very clear and important social aims but don't have any recognition to even some basic environmental principles and values that they could be doing just small things towards in running their business, if not in terms of their core mission.

Why do you think that is?

So I think it's a lack of awareness and knowledge. I think it's the same for everybody globally in terms of, you know, some people are very aware and knowledgeable, and there are still significant proportions of a population that just don't know and don't know how things are interconnected. And I think lots of organizations do just set up with a very clear social purpose And often are so focused on that one thing that they're completely switched off from a lot of other things that are either associated to that particular issue and/or what else is going on, which I think is a big business— sorry, a big challenge for businesses generally when you're, you know, always looking inward and not looking at what's external, both positive and negative, to your business. And I think, and then I think just a lack of those that are interested and would like to be doing something and are just not sure where they could start. And I think feel a little bit like that maybe that it has to be part of their mission rather than seeing that it could be just part of their operations and doesn't have to be a core part of their purpose and mission like their social aims are. And what's interesting is over the last couple of months I've seen quite a lot of comments and posts on LinkedIn and questions posed around how more voluntary organisations and charities can embed environmental practices into their operations, and that's come up a little bit for social entrepreneurs but much more so in the voluntary and community sector, which I found really interesting and sort of been trying to follow. Because I think it's those organizations starting to see this wider alignment of their bigger values and the impact that they're having as an organization.

Interesting, interesting. I wonder if we'll see more people wanting to report emissions and want to reduce. I wonder if— yeah, because I know that we've seen a massive uptake on it in the last I'd say a year or two. And, um, like, we expect to see it more and more within— we tend to deal with private businesses in Green Elements.

Yep.

But, um, yeah, it's— yeah, hopefully, hopefully.

Fingers crossed.

We've been doing this for long enough to, uh, to have seen ebbs and ebbs and ebbs and flows. Yeah, okay, brilliant, thank you. But I do genuinely, I actually think that we are— I don't think we're going to see a back channeling. I think it will continue to grow now. Did say that in 2008, but yeah.

I do think there's much more public awareness, and I do think, you know, the younger generation are not giving up on the message, you know, they're not letting go of it. And I think, although as always, it's not like— it's, I think it's unrealistic to think that that's the whole youth, you know, but I think it's interesting how the Extinction Rebellion, but also just the youth movement in terms of climate, the climate, like tackling the climate crisis, Has completely shifted, um, what you— like, even just in terms of what you see in mainstream media and what's covered these days over the last 12 to 18 months. Like, I think it's, it's dramatically different, and I don't think we've seen a shift like that happen so quickly as well before. I think there has been a sort of a tidal change in public awareness, if not public action.

Yeah, yeah, and workforce is getting older. I mean, we've— what, I think millennials are now 40, coming up to about 40 years old.

Yes.

And if it is, in inverse commas, millennials, and I know I fall just outside that, but if they are all thinking similarly about sustainability, then there'll be an awful lot of millennials running organizations now. And it's quite senior in organizations because they're getting to the top of their career ladder. And therefore, they will be making the decisions that need to be made. So we'll see changes on the back of that as well. And I guess, hopefully, at some point, government will have younger people. Then— I'm not going political.

Yeah, well, let's see. I would love to see certain people— Yeah, who I would love to see in positions of power all over the world. So fingers crossed.

Yeah, I wonder if there is actually a correlation if you look at the more sustainable nations, whether they have younger leaders. I've never thought about it, but off the top of my head, I think that possibly is true.

Yeah, just more in touch.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. What would you say your business superpower was?

So I think it's really tapping into helping people understand what makes them unique and how they can communicate that. So often with my clients— so generally I work with female social entrepreneurs, and often they have a really clear vision and a very clear message. But I think they just get lost in it and they don't feel often it's good enough or it's strong enough or it needs to be more, it needs to be glossier and fancier. And so a lot of the work I do is around coaching them through gaining confidence in what it is they want to create and trusting their intuition and really helping them grow that message and get that message out there to a bigger audience. So yeah, that would, I suppose, is if I had to pick one thing, is what I'd say the superpower is.

That's interesting. So you've seen quite a lot of organisations running, and you've talked a bit about their struggles. What would you say some of the biggest struggles you've seen have been and how they've overcome them?

I think for lots of social entrepreneurs, and this may just be the people that I work with, but the access to finance and when they're getting started or wanting to, you know, scale up is one of the biggest issues. And I don't think it's that there's a lack of access to finance necessarily. I think it's a lack of knowledge about how to access that finance, and particularly for women. And we know that globally women access— I think it's a ridiculously small percent, and I always forget the percentage, but it's less than 10% of the global finance that's available. Women just aren't accessing it for all sorts of different reasons. And so that's one of the biggest hurdles. Like, I think generally having an understanding— and this is not something I have either necessarily— but have— it's something I'm sort of learning more about and realizing that we have a lack of sort of financial literacy in terms of money and what's, you know, that we don't just have to generate money ourselves necessarily as an income, that, you know, you can negotiate with all sorts of different partners and players and stakeholders to access finance and investment. But for some reason there is a big block particularly for women in doing so. And, you know, there's all sorts of different reasons around that. I think for social entrepreneurs in particular as well, one of the biggest challenges, as I said earlier, which is why I set up my business, is just not understanding how to measure their impact. So having very clear vision and definitely creating the impact that they want to create, but thinking that this idea of impact measurement has to be incredibly complex or done by a PhD student or academic, which in some cases will be the case, but I think for startups or social entrepreneurs that are in the first few years of business, often doesn't require such complex levels of academic rigour or research. It's really about sort of a straightforward approach to thinking through how they can demonstrate their impact in different ways. And sometimes that might require bringing people in to do some of the work for them, but more likely it's because of their lack of capacity than their lack of ability to do it. So one of the things for me is to sort of simplify and make it more accessible for people to understand how they can get started in thinking through particularly their social impact measurement. I think around the environmental side, that is not my area of expertise at all necessarily, and so it's still an area where we were trying to bring people in and explore that with them. But I also think it's evolving in lots of different ways because there's also this tension between using existing models and frameworks around what social good is. But when you're a completely new, innovative, radical-thinking social enterprise transforming things quite differently and kind of setting new values or new paradigms and things, The old models of measurement don't necessarily align, and so there's some challenges there in actually creating new measures for what that social good and that social impact actually is, which I think again is what some social enterprises really struggle with because they don't think that they can do that. They think that it has to kind of conform, even though they're creating completely radical solutions.

Okay. How do you— what's the most innovative way that you've seen people engage their staff, suppliers, customers with their mission and purpose?

Well, that's a good question. I think one of the things I think— I don't know if it's innovative, but I think what works really well is When brands and the people within those brands are just really open and honest about how they run their business. So there's complete transparency and accountability, and there's a real sense— so on social media, for example, they're always sharing behind the scenes of how they're running their business. So everything from— so you really know who the people are in the business, you know the stories, you know what's going on day to day, you kind of see the good and the bad of what's going on in that brand. And I think for me, that's something I really align to, and I always look for brands that have that kind of thing because— and I don't know what it is, there's probably some really clever psychology around it— but I do think you feel part of the family kind of thing. You feel part of that brand and you're invested in them, and I suppose you've built a relationship with the people that make up that brand, and it's not this kind of distant business, it's actually something you feel part of. So I think lots of social entrepreneurs are doing that quite cleverly and really kind of— because it's part of their values to be open and transparent, they kind of have that openness on all their communications as well so that they're, you know— And also having customers, for example, create their content, their social media content, so that, you know, if you buy a particular product and then you wear it and you take a photo and you tag them in, they will share that as, you know, their content because it's showing their customers as well.

Yeah, that's really good. That's, yeah, I guess, and that's where we should be going, is that transparency and that honesty, isn't it?

Yeah, and I think it's really knowing because I think consumers are becoming more savvy about supply chains, human rights, environmental practices. They're asking more questions and the way they're asking more questions and putting more pressure on brands is through social media. It gives us that access to brands to challenge publicly where brands have to kind of show up and respond. And so I think social enterprises are just doing that naturally because they see when you don't do that and you don't have that openness, all sorts of things can go wrong. And so I think it's just part of— it becomes part of the culture to do that.

Okay. And what do you think, if you could give some advice to our listeners about helping them with their purpose, what do you think that would be?

I think if people don't feel they have a purpose to their business and they feel like they want to have a, you know, in terms of a social environmental purpose, I think it's almost harder to, you know, obviously if you're starting out it's easy to kind of think, well, what's the why? Why are we doing this? What are we doing? But I think if you're already existing as a business and you're looking at, we want to maybe sort of define and have a clearer purpose, I think the best thing to do could be to actually engage with your stakeholders and your customers and find out— because there probably already is a bigger purpose. They just— it's just unpacking that and stuff. And I'm just going back to an example that I think is brought up in lots of books around purpose. and, you know, discovering your why and stuff, but it's an airline in the States that looked at— that went through this process basically. They were really struggling and realized that they needed to kind of bring staff, customers, everybody back on board with a more clearly defined purpose. And I'm not going to be able to explain it very well now or what it was, but essentially it was around, you know, relationships and everybody, both staff and customers, and the experience that staff and customers have being the most important thing, which actually I think for an airline company isn't necessarily— and it might sound like, well, that's just lip service, it's an easy thing, but they really embedded it in. And I'll share this example so that you can kind of maybe share it with the audience. I'm not explaining it very well at all, Will, but it was a really powerful way—

You are, you are explaining it.

their business to make that difference.

Okay, yeah, I think— I actually think I know who you— I think it's US Airways you're talking about, I think.