We are excited to have Harvey on board as a Supporting Partner of Champions Retreat this year! In this blog, Rebecca Smallchua, one half of Harvey shares more on their journey to helping conscious business grow.
It’s been a challenging start to the year with recent events and long term trends. It’s difficult to accept our reality while staying motivated and optimistic. It gets infuriating and upsetting the way things are going, and I wish things would change faster.
However, change often happens slower in the short term, and much faster than we anticipate in the medium term. Last week we hosted a pane with Patagonia, ATEC* and The Neighbourhood Effect – Business Can Lead on Addressing the Climate Crisis at PauseFest. and we started with a couple of questions on what people thought about the planet, the impact they and the business they work in could have. This is what happened…
Government, NGOs, scientists, activists, consumers, employees and businesses all play a role. Arguably business is one of the greatest contributors as they are the front line making products, energy, food, waste. They are regulated by the government, their employees make decisions, consumers choose to buy them or not and often NGOs and activists are challenging them. It’s complicated, but businesses have a role.
We started Harvey almost 1 year ago to help conscious business grow. After over a decade working in marketing roles and consulting some of Australia’s biggest brands and leading social enterprises, we decided to join forces as a husband and wife team (I know, brave!) to combine our experience and skills with our passion as to use business as a force for good.
We believe we can not leave it alone to non-profits or government to create the social and environmental impact we need in the world, and the time is now. It’s urgent. This is not a question about profits vs impact, that’s old thinking, many organisations have proven this is not a compromise. If anything impact/purpose-led organisations can be much more effective, efficient, profitable and influential.
We’ve had the honour of working with incredible businesses who are innovating, challenging the status quo and using business to create positive change. B Corps, Social Enterprises and Purpose-led organisations in a range of industries like clean energy (ATEC*), to circular fashion (A.BCH), ethical banking (Bank Australia), healthy yummy kids snacks (Whole Kids), electric cars (Jaunt), school holiday programs for corporates (KidsCo) to name a few.
We’ve also had the privilege of working with the B Lab team and getting to know movement over the last year – setting marketing strategy, leading B Corp Month, rebuilding a new website and Champs Retreat site.
We’re turning 1 next week so we’ve been busy working on our own B Corp certification and just submitted – practicing what we preach. Wow, it’s work! But a great process for validating and formalising what we’re already doing. We learnt whole new ways to level up our impact with accountability challenging us around supplier diverse ownership, our giving (pro bono time and revenue), environmental stewardship and ethical banking (more about that on our blog).
We are so excited to celebrate our first year in business, our B Corp Certification application and hanging out with all the legends at Champions Retreat.
