In late 2017 EcoMatters Environment Trust and The Agent-C (now Crave Global) received seed funding to develop and prototype two web platform concepts to engage people in helping to restore the mauri of the Hauraki Gulf. Following successful prototyping, they were awarded $116,263 for the next phase of development in March 2018.

The concepts were:

a) Guardians of the Gulf: a platform where the public, businesses and non-profit organisations (NPOs) come together to create environmental campaigns to restore land and sea in the Hauraki Gulf.

b) GiveChain: a platform to create a system where businesses are encouraged and supported to make positive environmental changes.

The collaboration was managed by EcoMatters CEO Damon Birchfield, and Crave Global’s Creative Director Hadleigh Averill. It brought together a unique combination of skills, including environmental knowledge and action, public relations and creative advertising, and website development. Damon and Hadleigh had worked together previously and were excited to apply their combined experience to prototype new ideas and test their viability.

This case study presents key outcomes and learnings for Guardians of the Gulf and GiveChain.

Guardians of the Gulf

Guardians of the Gulf involved prototyping a website to enable:

• NPOs to promote environmental campaigns that would impact positively on the mauri of the Hauraki Gulf.

• The public to support the campaigns through donations, signing petitions or volunteering.

• Businesses to support campaigns and offer rewards/incentives to the public who signed up to support them.

This unique platform is an innovative way to bring NPOs, businesses and the public together to create a win-win-win situation for all parties. It tests the viability of using environmental campaigns to drive advertising and sales outcomes for businesses, while also assisting NPO’s to engage the public to effect positive change in the Hauraki Gulf. Most exciting is the potential of the platform to automate the interactions between stakeholders and enable their various needs to be met. For example, the platform can potentially automatically connect NPOs with businesses that may want to support them, and businesses with campaigns they may want to support.

The pilot website was launched in November 2018 with the following campaigns:

• Kiwi Bottle Drive, to bring back bottle deposit schemes and reduce plastic pollution.

• Sir Peter Blake Trust, seeking financial support to educate children about the state of the Hauraki Gulf and how to improve it.

• Waiheke Resources Trust seeking financial support and volunteers to reduce carbon miles and food waste. Businesses such as Ecostore, Resenes, Big Street Bikers, Atomic Coffee and Ooooby offered realistic rewards (such as vouchers) to members of the public who signed up to the website and supported the campaigns. A public relations (PR) campaign accompanied the launch in order to gain media attention (see here), build awareness of Guardians of the Gulf, and drive on-line traffic to the website.

The pilot found that Guardians of the Gulf is a strong concept and platform to engage NPO’s, businesses and the public. Robust social media metrics and survey results showed high levels of interest in the idea, along with positive feedback from the businesses involved, and from users that redeemed their rewards. There was a high level of interest from people aged 45+, however this could be broadened by using alternative social media platforms that are more popular with a younger demographic.

Initially, and prior to the launch of the pilot website, EcoMatters and Crave Global proactively engaged with and encouraged NPOs to take part. Barriers of being ‘too busy’ were overcome with the offer of support and advice to design campaigns and write content. However, the unintended consequence of this support was that NPO’s were not fully signed up to the proposition, and there was limited take up of offers from the public (such as volunteering). Future iterations of the website will make it easier for NPOs to develop their own campaigns and remove barriers to engaging, in much the same way as crowdfunding sites such as Pledgeme. This will engender stronger ownership of campaign content and outcomes, whilst ensuring better communication with NPOs core supporters.

Early results show that the platform is a useful tool for NPOs to engage the public in their campaigns. One NPO commented, “I see huge potential, including some larger partnerships with volunteering agencies or similar avenues to jumpstart use of the platform”. Another NPO said, “The concept of ‘give something get something’ worked really well as a new approach to crowd funding in New Zealand”.

Business interest in Guardians of the Gulf was greater than anticipated, especially as a way to generate positive PR and demonstrate their sustainability and corporate responsibility, rather than drive sales and advertising, which had been anticipated as a key motivating factor for businesses. All businesses approached to participate in the pilot agreed, and overall tended to have some level of environmental and social awareness. The opportunity to participate prompted some businesses to look at their sustainability model more thoroughly and the website has the potential to drive organisations towards being more sustainable. Future iterations of the website will enable businesses to have greater oversight of what’s happening on the website and they can self-select on to the site. There is significant opportunity for NPOs and businesses to connect and access each other’s member and customer databases for promoting campaigns (for example, Resene has a database of 200,000 customers).

One business commented, “We thought the whole idea was innovative while also very understandable, and were delighted to be part of it – our expectations were met, but we would love to see it developed further”. One of the NPOs said, “Having a corporate want to support us is great. I wish we had the ability (staff and time resources) to follow through with those people who decided that we were worthwhile and develop that relationship”.

Public survey feedback highlighted that people liked how the website provided an easy-to-use collection of causes and actions for the local environment and community. The rewards were an important tool to incentivise the public to take action and need to be compelling and appealing to a range of people – including nonenvironmentalists. Some of the rewards didn’t get any uptake, which is useful information as it reveals the scale of interest in different types of incentives, what’s required to get people to act, and for rewards to be large enough to match the request. Rewards were unexpectedly more useful to businesses as they provided an opportunity to increase brand awareness irrespective of whether someone chose their reward or not.

As trust in the Guardians of the Gulf platform develops, NPOs will be more inclined to develop and load great environmental campaigns onto the website, and it has the potential to become a central hub to promote and engage the public in campaigns. In the short term, it is a useful tool for the wider GIFT community and can serve as a hub for GIFT funded environmental campaigns targeting the Hauraki Gulf. One of the NPOs mentioned that being able to load their own campaign was the critical next step and an improvement to be made.

Damon and Hadleigh have enjoyed the flexibility of the GIFT grant – it has given them a sense of autonomy and ownership of the project, and a strong sense of obligation to achieve outcomes. They acknowledge the strength of their collaboration and the spirit of cooperation that binds them, and find it frustrating when they see others not operating with the same principles. They have found that treading such new ground can be daunting, but continue to be invigorated by the work, through seeing the wins, finding solutions, and reframing perceptions. For Crave Global, the focus on mauri has led to a more holistic perspective at an individual and collective level and a transformational shift in how they do business. They are working with a different set of intentions, using a more inclusive and considered process, and integrating this into other areas of their business.

Now that the prototype testing is complete, and its potential has been realised, the website is ready for next stage investment. This would involve developing a business model for the sustainability of the project, including governance, operations, ownership, and a financial model. The Guardians of the Gulf platform now requires the recruitment of a suitable relationship manager who can continue to build the offering, the relationship between NPOs and businesses, and the network of businesses who are on board for the long haul as sustainable programme initiative partners. There are also important digital improvements to be made and a marketing strategy required to continue the promotion of the site.

The vision is a fully developed website that allows campaigners and businesses to use the platform without significant assistance from Guardians staff.

GiveChain

GiveChain aimed to create a system whereby businesses are encouraged and supported to make positive environmental change. Traditionally, behaviour change by businesses to adopt more sustainable and environmentally friendly business practice is driven by public pressure and advocacy. Government regulatory frameworks are also a driver, but typically offer few incentives, are unresponsive and slow to enforce.

GiveChain tested this question: What if instead of trying to force businesses to change through pressure, they were invited to join in an ecosystem of positive change? Instead of ‘people versus business’, could we reframe to ‘people and business versus the challenges of sustainable practice’? What if businesses were approached on the basis of a mutual goal to restore the mauri of the Hauraki Gulf by working together and helping each other achieve common goals and collective benefits?

The GiveChain pilot aimed to test if this new model and way of thinking was viable in the current business environment, and whether it could potentially support businesses to be profitably sustainable.

Despite approaching a number of businesses, only Ports of Auckland and Ecostore were willing to explore the concept further and consider the application of GiveChain to their business, and particularly their supply chain.

Ecostore progressed to the next step and took the opportunity to explore solutions for a particular issue regarding packaging recycling, and have subsequently developed options for how they might do this. ,

One of the key premises with the GiveChain concept is that businesses would know the major challenges and barriers they face to adopting more sustainable business practices. However, the trial highlighted that businesses hadn’t asked these questions of themselves, and didn’t know how to become more sustainable, which may explain the low take-up of the opportunity to test GiveChain. Instead, and for Ecostore, discussions have focused on an earlier stage – that is clarifying what sustainability means for their business and creative problem solving for how their business can be more sustainable.

Another potential barrier was that a cost/benefit analysis of implementing sustainable solutions hadn’t been fully considered by businesses, and was not built into the GiveChain model. In general, businesses focus on the costs, and therefore barriers, to implementing sustainable solutions. However, Crave Global note that when financial benefits drive business decisions, vision and direction for a range of outcomes can be mobilised.

In summary, GiveChain has not panned out as intended and has not opened up the discussions with business and community that had been hoped for. Businesses did not appear ready to enter into multi-level relationships with other businesses with whom they don’t have an existing relationship, and any action that may be perceived to jeopardise brand reputation is a ‘no go zone’. In addition, transparency and a willingness to collaborate, even with businesses that don’t share the same values, is required. Unfortunately these issues outweighed the opportunity for businesses to try something different, and to work in a different way.

While this pilot hasn’t achieved what was intended, it has highlighted a clear need for innovative thinking around business problems that relate to sustainability. There needs to be strong drivers for change with appropriate incentives for businesses to adopt sustainable business practices and account for their negative externalities. Businesses need support to develop their internal business case and strategy for sustainability, which will move them towards implementing more sustainable business practices.