Impact Unlimited is built around one simple belief: that business can and should be more driven by good purpose and not just profit. We know that that is not only possible, but happening, now.
Through our content and events, we’ll share powerful, inspirational stories from people delivering positive social and environmental change in practice, honest about the challenges in front of them.
At our launch event this month at Shoreditch Treehouse, we brought senior figures together who care about a better future – including charities, purpose-driven startups, corporates, impact investors and academics. We also included people who want their businesses to do better.
The gathering reflected a bigger idea at the heart of our work. Which is that, when you bring the right people together, great things can happen.
That’s just as well, because the challenges facing society, communities and the planet are becoming more complex, more interconnected and harder for any single organisation to solve alone.
Complex challenges demand collaboration
Climate resilience, inequality, economic inactivity, community regeneration and public health don’t sit within one sector or institution. These complex challenges demand collaboration between people in different sectors, with different expertise, networks and perspectives.
The narrative out there can feel bleak at times. The scale of our challenges – economic uncertainty, social division, pressure on public services and the climate crisis – can leave us feeling overwhelmed. That’s exactly why we need more positive examples of what is working, now.
Across business, investment, charities and communities, extraordinary people are already collaborating to build solutions to tangible challenges. Together, whey’re creating healthier lives, stronger communities, greener cities and more inclusive economic opportunities.
Business wants more than just profit
More and more businesses are realising that they can no longer pursue pure profit. The UK now has nearly 3,000 certified, purpose-driven B Corps – and that’s just the businesses that have gone through the laborious process that B Corp accreditation requires. Many more are delivering positive change – and still more are starting to commit to it.
The future belongs to businesses and organisations that create this long-term value – not just for their shareholders, but for their people, the community and the planet. Responsible capitalism exists, is evident, and in difficult times it needs more visibility and support.
That’s why Impact Unlimited exists. Our mission is to champion founders, investors and others creating social and environmental impact alongside commercial success – at the same time as building a community that helps them move further and faster.
We’re as interested in connection and collaboration as we are in storytelling. Collaboration matters because it can create momentum, action and scale.
One of the clearest themes to emerge from our launch conversations was the importance of community in accelerating positive change. We also heard compelling stories from those helping to deliver it.
Inspirational stories matter
Tessa Clarke, co-founder and CEO of Olio, shared how her frustration with food waste led to the creation of a UK tech-for-good success story. To date, Olio has built a community of nearly 10 million users, redistributed 140 million meals and saved 44 billion litres of water.
The most powerful lesson from Tessa’s story was not just the scale of the business, but the mechanics behind it. Olio works because millions of small individual actions, rooted in generosity and connection, add up to collective, systemic impact. When people have the right tools and incentives, communities can be engines of change.
Author Mike Dickson, the founder of children’s mobility charity Whizz-Kidz, shared a perspective that resonates with all of us. What began with an impulsive decision to run the London Marathon evolved into a movement that has helped 70,000 young people gain mobility and independence.
His reflections were timely because in an environment of unsettling news, it’s easy for people to feel powerless. Mike’s message was that impact often starts when ordinary people decide to act. A wider lesson, shared in Mike’s latest book, was just as important: giving changes not just the lives of those who receive support, but also the outlook of those who choose to give.
Paul Miller, CEO of Bethnal Green Ventures – Europe’s largest tech-for-good VC, reinforced the importance of collaboration. When BGV began, the idea of profit from purpose-driven tech was seen by many as mad. But the organisation has backed more than 200 ventures and its products and services have impacted 21 million lives.
Paul’s most important insight was that community was not something that formed around success. In fact, it helped create it. To this day, BGV’s startup founders actively support one another, sharing knowledge and solving problems collectively. That culture of collaboration became a critical ingredient in the organisation’s growth and in the success of the ventures it has backed since.
Richard Brass, one of the leading figures on the UK impact scene, added an important systems perspective. His work across impact investing, regeneration, culture and public policy highlights a reality that too many entrepreneurs encounter: impact is hard to scale without structural support.
Good ideas and determined founders matter for sure. But policy alignment, institutional partnership and patient capital matter too. If responsible capitalism is to become a bigger force in the economy, we need stronger bridges between entrepreneurship, finance and policymaking. That’s because progress happens fastest when those worlds come together, and work together.
Kate Sheldon, CEO of Trees for Cities, shared her charity’s success story, but also grounded it in a live, very practical challenge. Across three decades, the charity has planted more than two million trees and engaged a quarter of a million people. A key challenge it faces now is in helping young trees survive in hotter, drier weather caused by climate change.
This challenge captures something fundamental about the nature of work to deliver impact. Launching an idea is relatively easy – but the real test lies in sustaining, adapting and scaling it as the world changes.
That thinking is set to inform how Impact Unlimited will deliver.
Meeting impact challenges
Alongside great storytelling and bringing great people together – both of which we will do – we’ll run a new initiative, the Impact Unlimited Challenge, connecting organisations facing day-to-day operational problems with people in our community who can help solve them.
Expertise could come from founders, investors, technologists, strategists or specialists in different sectors. The principle is simple – no single organisation has all the answers, but communities built around shared purpose and collective working can unlock better solutions than when they’re working alone.
Trees for Cities – which is to be Impact Unlimited’s founding charity partner – will be the first example of this approach in action. In a world facing big challenges, some might say tree planting is frivolous. I disagree. Trees matter, for climate mitigation, community cohesion and healthy urban living, particularly in deprived areas.
The principles of shared purpose and collaboration reflects a broader ambition for our project.
If we want responsible capitalism to grow, we need more than just case studies. We also need stronger ecosystems to grow around the people trying to create positive change. That means better networks, deliberate collaboration, stronger support and more spaces where ideas can be challenged, improved and scaled. It also demands credible evidence.
That’s just what we’re looking to build with Impact Unlimited. In uncertain times, inspiring stories matter. Communities that can help turn that inspiration into action matter even more.
Photo by Jonathan Perugia/Gaia Visual.
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