Doing Good with Do Nation

Written by Rachael B. - October 19, 2017

When Wholegrain Digital was founded in 2007, it was the realisation of a vision of a new way of being in business. Created with the purpose of making websites that help positive organisations thrive, we’ve always been driven by the belief that business can be a force for positive change in the world.

This philosophy underpins everything we do, from the services we offer (and those we use!) to the clients we work with and the staff we hire. Every member of our team embodies our company values of being open, caring, positive and brave across all aspects of their work, and are also personally committed to making a positive difference in the world.

So, when fellow B Corporation Do Nation opened up a B Corps hub, to measure the collective impact B Corporations in the UK are having, the team were quick to jump on board and equally quick to move up the B Corps Doing Good leaderboard!

What is Do Nation?

Do Nation’s purpose is to start a movement; to create a nation of people prepared to change their behaviours – to do something – to create a better world. But getting people to change their habits is hard. So Do Nation have created a clever online pledging platform to help make it easy. Powered by years of research around behaviour change, this platform encourages people to make sustainable small changes to their lifestyles for a set period of time, with many keeping their new habits for the long-term.

What did we do?

Our team was excited to sign up to engage in a bit of healthy competition and embrace new, healthier habits. Making 57 pledges between us – that’s more than three each – the lifestyle changes we made include:

  Avoiding excessive packaging
    Becoming a part-time vegan
 

  Choosing public transport over driving

   Decluttering and Donating unwanted clothes
    Ditching disposable cups
    Drinking tap instead of bottled water
    Eating seasonably
    Switching to a green energy supplier
    Taking shorter showers
    Turning down the thermostat

And the outrageously simple…

 Turning off the lights (Do try this at home!)

Several team members noted that many of the pledges were easy to do. We were also pleased to note that there were a lot that we are all already doing, so we each looked for habits that would be a genuine change.

We are all winners

While we enjoyed the competition with our fellow B Corps – coming in at second place behind Forster Communications – just joining the campaign and sticking to our pledges makes us all winners.

Do Nation’s report on the collective impact we’ve all had showed that B Corps have much higher participation rates than other employee programmes, with the average being 67% (compared to 39%) for B Corporation employees.

We were excited to learn that as a team we saved the carbon equivalent of two and a half car trips from London to Timbuktu! And together, all the B Corps who took part have so far saved as much carbon as is produced by producing, shipping, and selling more than 1 million bananas. That’s bananas! ;).

Read the full report over on Do Nation’s blog.

Are You A Do-er?

Why not make a pledge yourself today? Or better yet, get a bit of competition going between your teams by starting a company-wide campaign that allows you to measure the impact you have when you all work together towards a healthier, happier and more sustainable world.