Rather than just give cash to causes, we want to share our marketing expertise to the benefit of those organisations fighting for a better world, and who could be more successful if their own digital marketing were more effective.
Disquiet Dog and the local community
We’re a ‘distributed’ company where none of us work together in the same physical office. That was still something of a novelty until 2020 kicked the door in and made remote working much more the norm than the exception.
We’re notionally based on the south coast of England but our team members are scattered internationally. Despite that, we’re all local to somewhere, and we’re rooted in our communities. I’m based in Worthing in West Sussex, and it’s a vibrant place for some of the sectors we work in - international education, digital marketing, leisure and tourism in particular.
We’re known for how enthusiastic and supportive we are of our clients’ goals and visions, but we’re equally invested in the communities around them, particularly when it comes to looking after the environment. There are significant challenges to face up to when it comes to the coexistence of travel and tourism on the one hand, and carbon neutrality and environmental protection on the other, for example.
In the past we have done the carbon offset work - we have calculated how much we travel (very little actually) and we’ve planted the trees to compensate. And we’ve supported charities with donations. And we’ll continue to do that.
But now we’ve decided to expand on those commitments, and embed our support for community and environment at the heart of our business model.
So we’re now formally adopting a pay-it-forward approach. We think we’ve found a way to actively support environmentally positive initiatives in our communities and we’re determined to make it work.
This is the plan:
We want to be a force for good, in our own way. So we’ve decided that we want to support local initiatives that are trying to achieve great things for other people, for places or for the planet.
Giving money would be (too) obvious and (too) easy to duck out of. So rather than a financial donation, we want to give away expertise - the thing we know the most about is marketing and digital marketing, so it figures we should use our skills to support those people and organisations who could do with our help.
Operation Bernard*
The way it will work is this: We bank a number of hours each month which can be spent on local community support - the number of hours we bank are a proportion of the total of hours billed to clients that month. It’s important to note, this doesn’t cost our existing clients a penny more.
We will look at what works and see if we need to change it (we’re fans of agile, after all), but the first promise is that for every 10 hours we bill clients for, we will bank one hour of our time for local community support (the numbers people amongst you will note that this is 10% of our time).
So, to make sure that’s clear - we are donating company time, not employee time. Our team will be paid for the work they do for charities and they will be as committed to those projects as they are to all our clients.
There are details on the formal process which can be made available to you, but the intention is that we will offer up free consultancy, training or support to initiatives, charities and other organisations which we deem to be pointing the planet and its people in the right direction.
We may group charities together in a workshop, or the free work may, on occasion, lead to some paid work - but this is not sneaking in pitches in the guise of donation. And if the work requires us to incur expenses, we’d expect the charity to pay them (necessary travel, course books, or workshop space for example).
We can offer any service within our competency that we would provide to fee-paying clients, but we’re expecting that there will be a tendency for our local community support to centre more on digital marketing courses, keynotes and plenaries, and digital consultancy.
We’ll keep an eye on the sort of organisations which request our support, but we’re anticipating that they will fall into categories such as:
- Registered charities, community initiatives and similar groups and individuals whose prime operational activity is obviously charitable and for the greater good.
- Grass-roots start up initiatives which don’t have formal charitable status, but where individuals or groups are striving to bring about change on a low or zero budget through environmental improvements or well-being projects.
Some of our clients are already registered charities, but they give their services at market rates and we’ll continue to give our services to them in the same way. And, in the end, we’ll decide who we can support. In much the same way as we decide who we work with. We are committed to generating community support hours and we are committed to giving them away. To the right people, in the right way.
We’d like to communicate around this - to make sure that other charitable organisations know that it’s available, to amplify the work of the charity and, yes, to make sure possible fee-paying clients know we’re here too. So we’d want to create case studies, with logos, photos, video, audio or written testimonials. It’s not that we want credit, though that’s nice, but we do want people to know that it’s happening and available.
So, if this sounds like something you’d like to use for your charity, you can apply here. Tell us what you’re up to and how we might be able to help. We want this scheme to evolve in collaboration with our community - so please get in touch if you have other comments and suggestions for us.
Notes to Editors
If you would like more information about Operation Bernard and Disquiet Dog, contact MD Richard Bradford on 07984 674807, or via email richard.bradfordATdisquietdog.com
*And why Bernard? In case you're in doubt, the dog in the picture is a St Bernard pup, and the breed is famous for helping to rescue people in difficulty. We thought it was the right blend of apt canine reference and cheesy cliché!
