Pro Purpose is a “profit for purpose” organisation that helps businesses embed giving and social impact into their operations in a sustainable way. Driven by the belief that generous businesses are a vital part of the solution, Pro Purpose transforms small and medium companies by helping them transform the world. Since 202, they’ve created a collective impact of $2 million towards a range of projects including safe housing, clean water and child sponsorship.
Offering a comprehensive framework, Pro Purpose helps businesses build their Purpose Pledge, a plan for giving that aligns with company brand and values. From helping them choose charitable projects both in Australia and overseas to then tracking their impact and sharing their stories, Pro Purpose is creating a movement of like-minded organisations.
With a goal to become the largest global movement of Profit for Purpose businesses, they are aiming to onboard 70,000 businesses by 2035 to collectively give $1 billion. As cofounder Alana Nicholls says, “Our purpose is to create opportunities - for both the businesses we work with and for people in poverty and disadvantage.”
Alana Nicholls:
Pro-purpose originated through the trade business that my husband and I started when we were very young called Platinum Electricians. The business grew quickly; within five years we had 30 staff and were looking at what was next we decided to franchise. We've always believed in the idea of profit for purpose - that if you create wealth, it's not just for yourself, but how you can use it to help your local and global community. This has always been a core driver for us, so, when we started to franchise our business, we knew that the bigger our business grew, the more impact we wanted to have.
We decided to invite our franchisees on the journey with us. One day when I was hanging the washing out on the line this idea dropped - One Van, One Child. Essentially, our business is tradies in vans so what if every van sponsored a child? This simple idea is what we now call a Purpose Pledge - how a business can pledge towards sustainable social impact in a way that aligns with their business model. And it just took off. Over a nine-year period, we had sponsored over 200 children from a local community in Zambia.
The decision to sponsor children in the same community was a strategic one. My husband and I went over to visit them, with all our franchisees and after that trip, in 2012 we started a non-profit, Platinum Foundation and got our suppliers involved to help fund projects - we started building water wells, toilet blocks and a range of other impact projects in the same community. Three months into this initiative, World Vision reached out to us about a bus company in the Blue Mountains of Sydney who loved our idea and wanted to be One Bus, One Child. This was when I knew that our work was never just going to be about our own brand and that we would help other businesses do the same. The idea sat on the shelf for about a decade, until about three years ago, we decided to start piloting other small and medium businesses and creating new projects with new charity partners. Now businesses can come to us and choose projects that align with their brand, values and purpose.
Alana Nicholls:
One thing I’ve learned about myself, is that my purpose is to equip leaders to live and give with purpose. I love seeing people in what I call like their ‘Grace Lane’. I want to help people uncover that purpose for themselves and then to live and give from that place - whether it's financial or giving wisdom and experience, it's just in the DNA of humanity.
The other part of my story is that I’m the offspring of a sponsored child. My dad grew up in Fiji during the 1960s on one of the outer islands in extreme poverty. He was one of eight children, and they all lived under a shack with a tin roof in the local village. But one day a beautiful couple from Sydney called Mr and Mrs Moon hopped off a cruise ship from Sydney, and they were greeted by local women and their young children selling handicraft souvenirs, including my dad who ended up engraving their name onto a sword that the couple bought. It was this moment of divine providence where the couple decided to pay for my dad’s entire high school education.
And just like that, my dad was placed into the best boarding school in Fiji and when he was 16 years old, they brought him to Sydney for a two-week holiday before sending him to do a trade apprenticeship with the London Guild of Carpentry and Joinery. My dad being the recipient of that generosity, created the family culture that I grew up in. Mr and Mrs Moon never got to see my dad flourish as an adult or watched him send his children to the local private school, but I can’t help thinking about the generational impact – that back in the 1960s one couple helped a young boy in Fiji and now his daughter is spearheading a revolution in generosity.
Alana Nicholls:
First and foremost, Pro Purpose is a movement that’s igniting a revolution in generosity, within Australia's small and medium businesses. It's about creating a collective scaled impact that's simple and intentional. Our job is to make giving with purpose simple for SMEs; we help them uncover their purpose and build their Purpose Pledge by connecting them with a social impact that aligns with their purpose and brand. We use a ‘pledge calculator’ to input in numbers so their pledge is sustainable, and their generosity doesn’t become a random, ad-hoc donation. We believe in embedding regular giving, month after month year after year, and then we track their impact through our strong partnerships with on-the-ground charities. So, if a business chooses to focus on family homelessness in Australia, we’ll partner them with Mission Australia and then track how many nights of safe housing they've helped provide.
And finally, we help them share their impact story through our Purpose Portal which has all the tools and templates ready to plug and play. It’s important for us to do the full circle because we really believe the power of sharing your impact story - we have a saying “Stand & Shine” because a lot of businesses and donors like to keep it private, but if you can share your impact story boldly but humbly, that's what inspires others to do the same. And that's how you grow a viral movement.
Alana Nicholls:
Our purpose is about collective impact that transforms lives. We know that transformation happens at both the giving and receiving end. In businesses, we see how it sparks real impact, especially in terms of culture, because they align their team and talent around a shared purpose of creating lasting change. I love this quote by Richard Branson where he says that the brands that will thrive in the future are those that have a greater purpose than profit. And we see that every day.
There's so much research around shaping purposeful culture, and studies are showing that it’s the second most important factor for Gen Z through to Millennials when considering a place of work. I also think that it helps to gauge your customers because people champion brands when they know that it's aligned to impact. Purpose-led businesses just grow faster.
In terms of the charities, it can be hard for them to reach small and medium business owners and although their giving potential might be smaller at the start, there’ so much opportunity for it to become embedded into the business and gradually increase. But what’s been great is the opportunity for this to be done collectively and at scale.
One charity partner told us that seeing people, who would never donated to their organisation, start giving and then to watch that giving grow by 20% one year and then 45% the next, shows the power of the collective. I love watching how the trajectory of giving in our graphs keeps going up as businesses embed it and feel more connected to it. And there’s a lifelong value of these donations for the charities they’re supporting, so it's a real win-win.
Alana Nicholls:
I’ve learned about the power of collective giving for scaled impact. If you want to create lasting generational change, the key is to partner with amazing organizations on the ground who know what they're doing and you're seeing that tangible impact. A lot of donors have experience in business and wealth creation, but those skills don’t always translate to what works on the ground. It’s about coming in with humility and working together in partnership. I’ve also learned that small and medium businesses, have a desire and willingness to be a part of the solutions - they want to make social impact, but often they don’t know where to start so I think the power of simplicity is key.
Alana Nicholls:
We have a big aspiration that by 2035, we’ll have 70,000 SMEs creating $1 billion in social impact. We’re at the start of that journey and our growth plan is something called ‘Who’s Your One?’ where we encourage every Pro Purpose business each year, to inspire one business to join the movement. And if we do that year after year, we’re hoping it becomes this viral movement which will get us to our target of 70,000 businesses.
