There is a tremendous amount of doom and gloom surrounding our modern way of living as a result of dramatic media coverage, heated political movements, and the bleak reality of challenges like the climate crisis and rising political extremism.
Here is just a snapshot of just some of the issues the world is facing at the beginning of September 2020:
- There have been 28 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, with 875,000 recorded deaths
- The climate crisis is accelerating, with the five warmest years since records began have all occurred since 2015
- Approximately 27 million people are currently enslaved in the human trafficking trade around the world
- More than 300,000 children under the age of 18 are being exploited as child soldiers in armed conflicts worldwide
- Millions of people are displaced in regions where ethnic cleansing and violent conflict occurs
- Throughout history, women have been denied the knowledge, means, and freedom to act in the best interest of themselves and their children
- There is significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans by police, which sparked the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, one of the largest movements in U.S. history.
Painting a picture of what we're experiencing as a result of these monumental societal shifts is important, but it doesn't do enough to inspire hope or motivate people to actually do something to reverse these trends and improve their local, national and international outlook.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, there have been unbelievable stories of courage, community and togetherness as people came together to support each other through the crisis. During lockdown, many found the time and space to create the social impact startups that they've been dreaming of - or desperately needed.
There are countless efforts across every industry to reverse the trend and get us out of this mess. Yet our most talented workers are building social apps, advertising platforms, and superfluous consumer products.
The vast majority of private and philanthropic capital isn't being directed toward the biggest threats humanity has ever faced. We must change this if we expect to mitigate the worst impacts of the challenges we currently face.
Since the start of the century, a growing movement of social entrepreneurs are building inspiring startups for a variety of social issues in areas such as healthcare, education, climate change, human rights and more.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a multi-country study, calculated that 3.2 per cent of the world’s population was engaged in starting a social venture (compared with 7.6 per cent starting commercial ventures) and 3.7 per cent running an established one. And those numbers are growing.
To meet this demand and to helps scale the most successful social impact startups, there are a growing number of social innovation funders, impact investors and government organisations who offer capital through a range of vehicles, including venture capital, grants, crowdfunding, social impact accelerators and more.
In fact, the current size of the global impact investing market is estimated to be $502 billion.
Enabling skilled individuals to work on social impact solutions is critical, as well as making sure the funding opportunities are in place for the best startups to scale.
But there are lots of questions we need to answer in order to make this happen:
- How do we discover new social impact startups so we can contribute to their success?
- How can we avoid duplication in startups tackling the same areas?
- How can we find social startups that work in one location and see if it can work in other places?
- How can social impact startups find funding and access to capital to scale their ambitions?
That's where Good Here comes in.
What is Good Here?
Good Here helps you discover social impact startups, connect with the social impact community, and find social impact funding.
Our mission is to highlight the organisations working to solve social issue, focus more attention on progress, directing support to teams on the front lines, and connect the social impact community.
Why did you decide to create Good Here?
We decided to create Good Here after seeing dozens of people go through a similar process of cataloging interesting social impact-focused companies in spreadsheets, blog posts, notes, and elsewhere.
Other projects, such as SI-Drive and Digital Social Innovation, appear dormant or limited in scope. AngelList does have a range of social impact startups listed, but their platform focuses a lot more on for-profit enterprises.
The goal is to unify these efforts and provide the content free to anyone who might find it useful.
What can you do on Good Here?
Using Good Here, the social impact community can:
- showcase social impact startups through organisation profiles
- tag their organisations as part of networks like research alliances or membership bodies;
- explore other social profiles in through our open database
- identify social impact funding opportunities,
- find inspiration and stories of social impact through case studies, blogs and research.
At launch, Good Here is tracking 1,417 startups and 453 funders. Our ambition is to become the central place to find, launch and connect with social impact startups and the social entrepreneurs behind them.
What is on the roadmap for Good Here?
This is really just the beginning of what we’d like to see the Good Here become.
We want to go deeper by including key organisational attributes like headcount, location, investments, and more.
There are also plans to increase the breadth of the database by including books, podcasts, events, data sets, and other important resources related to social impact.
Upcoming features on the Good Here roadmap include:
- bookmark your favourite social impact startups
- input your location to find social impacts near you
- connect with other social entrepreneurs
- see which social impact investors have invested in which startups
- activity streams with updates on the progress organisations are making
Take a look at our product roadmap for an idea of the platform we want to create - and give your ideas too.
Where does the data come from?
Our database is an accumulation of contributions curated by a team of volunteer editors.
We supplement contributions with publicly available data, allowing us to provide key facts about about each organisation.
Why is X category or Y organisation included?
The topic of what does and doesn't qualify as "creating social impact" is filled with differing opinions. The reality is there is not a single right way to create social change, just a myriad of opportunities to have a social impact.
As a result we specifically avoid playing the role of arbiter and have a liberal acceptance policy. In the future, we will provide ways for our users to weigh in on the impact of specific organisations.
For now, join the discussion on our community for how we categorise social impact startups.
How can I support Good Here?
We're grateful to have the support of anyone who believes in what we're doing.
Check out the Contribute page on our website for more information on how you can help.
We also have an open community that you can join and help shape the future of the Good Here project.
How can you get involved?
It's a laborious process to collect good data, images descriptions for each project, which is why some profiles are better than others and many key data missing.
Apply to join our editorial team if you want to help add and update social impact profiles.
Got an in idea for the Good Here platform? Leave your suggestion in our community.
How can I contact the Good Here team?
Have a question that you can't find the answer to? Tweet us at @goodhereorg or email us at hello@goodhere.org.
Here's to making good happen here, there and everywhere!