For more information on Ecologi as an organisation, and our decision to operate as a social-enterprise
We’re not a charity, but a social enterprise. This means we’re not registered as a non-profit.
Back in early 2019 before Ecologi launched, it had always been the plan to structure the organisation as a non-profit. It made sense as it aligned so well with our mission.
As things developed and so did the ambition of what we could achieve, so too did the pressure of how much funding the organisation would need. Ordinarily, a company wouldn’t need massively fast growth, it could launch, get early customers, gain revenue over a year or two and then grow the team modestly and repeat.
With the climate and ecological disasters, there isn’t that luxury of time. An organisation that has the potential to fund significant amounts of climate action needs a lot of capital upfront. Charities and non-profits can access grants and tax incentives, however, it does significantly put the scale at risk. Often grants are significantly smaller than typical multimillion-pound investments for high-growth companies. But as a non-profit, there is no incentive for investments to happen. This was our quandary before we launched - how do we ensure our organisation truly serves its mission and never wains from it?
Whilst Ecologi may have been started as a for-profit company, commitment to transparency through our public impact ledger (which includes all of our revenue data, impact stats, supplier receipts and board meeting minutes) puts us up there with some of the best charities.
On top of this, we were very happy to announce that at the end of 2021, we became verified as a B Corp, a project that we had started in 2020. The evaluation process measures a business's social and environmental performance, and importantly also requires a legal commitment for an organisation to have a positive impact on society and the environment and for this to be defined in its governing documents.
We are now also partially owned by our community having completed a crowdfund with Crowdcube. Community ownership is central to Ecologi and we're proud to have an army of active investors and ambassadors, helping us in our mission to reverse climate change.
The success of our model has allowed Ecologi and our customers to support the planting of trees and the avoidance of carbon. With continued growth and engagement from our community, we can make a real difference at pace.