According to the Essence of Enterprise report (pdf) released last month by HSBC Private Bank, half of all UK entrepreneurs feel they have a responsibility to support those less fortunate. Many self-starters go much further than regularly donating to a charity – they commit substantial amounts of time, energy and their companies’ expertise to make their communities a better place.
Eight years ago, Ruth Hampson left the fair trade company Cafedirect where she had worked as PA to the managing director, to set up Bean and Bud, an independent coffee shop and tea house in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate. Her business is not a social enterprise, and Hampson isn’t committed to only using Fairtrade products. Instead, her driving focus has been to source the very best quality, single origin coffee beans she can find and to educate customers about the challenges facing coffee farmers. She invests considerable time in seeking out green bean importers and roasters who are as committed as she is to trading with integrity.
So does she pay more for her coffee beans than similar businesses? “Oh gosh yes!” Hampson laughs. “Our suppliers actually go to the farms and build relationships with growers. It’s about fair pricing, but also about working with people [in developing countries] on improving the quality of their product and their operation.”
Looking beyond profit margins
Spending substantially more on your raw product – Hampson also sources all her food items and condiments from small suppliers local to the Harrogate area – inevitably means that profits take a hit. “We could have much better margins if we compromised on quality or sourcing, but I don’t want to do that,” says Hampson.
It’s not just altruism, she points out. The integrity of Bean and Bud’s sourcing is an important point of difference in a crowded market: it prompts consumer and industry interest in her cafe and has led to awards. But as an entrepreneur determined to grow her business, the tensions it creates keep her on her toes, “because there is a ceiling to what you can charge [for a cup of coffee] – pricing is really sensitive for us.”
In Wrexham, the co-founder of telephone answering service Moneypenny, Rachel Clacher, used her company’s emphasis on recruiting and developing people with superb communication skills as the springboard for an idea that has consumed her time and energy for the past three years: a training and mentoring project for young women aged 18-25 who have experienced mental health problems, grown up in care, or are trying to rebuild lives after contact with the youth justice system.
“I just wondered, what would this group of young women be capable of doing if they had a period of support,” Clacher says.
She was no longer running Moneypenny day-to-day when she came up with the project concept, but Clacher’s continuing involvement with her now successful enterprise meant she could ask the board if it would help. Luckily the answer was “yes”. Moneypenny now pays all the administration costs of the Moneypenny Foundation, which runs six-month traineeships for between eight and 10 young women a year. Its staff also volunteer as coaches for the trainees, who do work placements in the care sector, retail, customer services and hospitality.
Not all the young women make it, but of those who have, almost all are now in work or education. One is even about to embark on a degree. Clacher admits that the project has consumed her. “For the first year, I didn’t sleep. I was overwhelmed by the vulnerability of these young women, and by the lives that they had survived so far.”
Passing on skills
Emma Harvey, founder of the communications specialist Seven Consultancy, gives at least one day a month, plus some of her staff’s time and expertise, to the charity Leap Confronting Conflict, which supports vulnerable young people, many of whom have grown up in care, display violent behaviour, or are caught up in the criminal justice system. Having observed that large companies tend not to focus their social responsibility work on smaller charities, she decided to look for “those smaller organisations that are making a big impact but could have the potential to do even more with some extra support and resource”.
The pro-bono work Seven provides Leap with is worth an estimated £2,000 a month, but there is considerable payback. “It feels good to be part of a charity that I care about and for the skills that I’ve developed over the years to be used in a positive way,” Harvey says. She also believes that positive associations with the right charities and offering them free services, motivates her staff and “drives a sense of pride in the organisation”.
Entrepreneurs with a conscience sometimes spring from the unlikeliest of places: David Farr was a broker in the City of London who got fed up of the grinding Underground commute, and after developing a taste for biking his way into work, co-founded NipNip with his brother. Their mechanics now mend and service bikes for the thousands of workers who brave the capital’s busy streets on two wheels every day.
Providing jobs
As a newbie cyclist, Farr explains, he met a homeless man named Glen who was a fellow bicycle enthusiast. Glen was also an ace bike mechanic and three years ago when Farr and his brother set up NipNip, he was one of their first employees.
“Glen inspired me to realise that we could tie in a commercial business with a social purpose,” says Farr. The next step was a meeting with the homelessness charity St Mungo’s to see if there was the potential to help others in the same situation.
All of NipNip’s 300 corporate customers – many of them bluechip companies – have their employees’ bikes serviced by senior mechanics, some of whom are now accompanied by homeless clients of St Mungo’s who train on the job. They also get two days a week of intensive tuition at NipNip HQ. At the end of five weeks, trainees know how to strip down, service and rebuild a bike, and receive the model they have been practising on for free. Some are now employed by NipNip, and are supported to work their way up to becoming expert mechanics.
Farr says that running this side of the business takes “between 25% and a third of my time. My brother has told me off for spending too much time on it. We’ve now reached a good balance, but it has taken three years.”
Why take the trouble?
“I get a lot out if personally,” says Farr, simply. “It was a case of wanting to do something meaningful at the same time as wanting to make as much money as possible.” The proof that the model is a success, he says, can be measured in NipNip’s growth. “We’ve gone from no clients to 300 clients in three years,” he says. “I think there’s a feel-good factor.”
For KIA, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the business’s agenda for the last 30 years. On a global level, the company started the Green Light Project to supply vehicles and people to carry out building work in Africa. In the UK, staff volunteer their time to the Walton Charity to help disadvantaged people in the local area. There are also numerous other initiatives that their factories in Korea and Slovakia are involved with, and charities that the company raises money for.
“We see involvement in CSR projects as good for our people and good for the causes they and the company support,” says Elizabeth Williams, one of the CSR coordinators for the business. “Effective and positive CSR is about doing what is right – both for the organisations a company supports and for the company itself. It’s not just about writing a big cheque.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Kia Fleet, sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Accessing Expertise hub.
