Feeling stuck growing my social impact business
Hello everyone!
I'm trying to develop my social impact business, but feeling stuck right now.
The main idea behind it is to give individuals an opportunity to gradually build a tangible, positive environmental impact by joining forest restoration at scale, and to make it as easy and convenient as possible while addressing downsides of existing tree planting and voluntary carbon offset initiatives.
I've managed to get a small grant to formally register a company, and create a simple website and web application. I’ve also already got a few municipalities interested in partnering, pledging the land for over 10 million trees, with the potential for much more! Also have a few subscribers to our planting plans across the EU and the US.
The problem is, I struggle greatly with getting enough people to contribute, to jumpstart our field operations.
I was thinking that I am doing everything by the book regarding initial outreach (posting in relevant social media groups, launching platforms, direct messaging and mailing), but just can’t get much positive results, while competitors (on whom I improved to create my project) managed to get decent success even in the first year of operations. Although I don’t know what budget and connections they’ve had.
I don’t know if I have such bad luck or what, but I have a tremendous problem when reaching out to people, organizations, or media. If anyone even bother to respond, then it is either just a statement that this is ‘such an important and needed project’ (but it seems not so important for them to support it), and they ‘wish me luck’ (I can’t do anything with wishes), or if they even declare initial interest and support it ends with ghosting. Not to mention a few openly hostile encounters.
If everyone who declared their support went through with their promises, we’d be already planting, and here I am, stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation, where people expect me to show completed projects to even consider contributing, while I need initial support to even start them.
I just don’t know what to do to keep it going…
Replies
Hi Karl,
I feel your pain... I am also building a social impact and "If everyone who declared their support went through with their promises, we’d be already planting" hit me hard as if everyone who declared their support went through my app would be in a different place.
But, what I learn is that it's all about resilience. Don't give up just yet. And if you want to have a chat about struggles of impact startups let me know :)
This is a strong community thing – we usually did socially responsible things as a civic association, and it was more community-based than profit-oriented.
Have you tried to partner with any complementary businesses? Or try to find some organisations that did something similar and ask them. Because maybe they also faced a situation like this.
Pokecut
Social impact work is a lot like growing a forest. The first few years, it looks like nothing’s happening. But underground, the roots are spreading. It’s not bad luck, Karl—it’s just the slow, stubborn business of making real change. Keep at it, water regularly (with both effort and humor), and don’t be afraid to try something a little wild.