INTRODUCTION
ChangeSprout Inc., a benefit corporation headquartered in New York, provides digital advocacy tools to progressive organizations around the world.
For many of our customers, 2019 was a year of elections. General elections were held in the UK, Canada, Romania, and Australia. EU citizens went to the polls to elect their new MEPs. Here in the US, the 2020 primary season kicked off, and key off-year elections were held in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Louisiana. At ControlShift, ongoing elections work helped inform improvements to our events tools – making it easier for users to host events and engage with their attendees. In addition to tools for hosts, we also released our local organizing map to make it easier for supporters to get involved in their community and better integrations with third-party event tools.
In 2019, we also continued our investment in admin tools to make it easier for organizations to manage their supporters’ activities at scale and increase their supporters’ impacts. In particular, we released features to improve email deliverability, make it easier for admins to moderate user-generated content, and to integrate with other tools in the advocacy ecosystem. We also completed an accessibility project –– working with customers and third-party auditors to make our tool accessible to all.
GENERAL PUBLIC BENEFIT
Selecting a Third-Party Standard:
For our 2019 annual report, we continued to use B Lab’s B Impact Assessment. B Labs is a leader within the benefit corporation community, and their assessment is one of the most highly regarded third-party standards. By continuing to use the same assessment that we have used in previous years, we can track our impact over time. Additionally, because the B Lab provides tips for improving our impact, we can easily create a roadmap for the coming year.
Pursuit of the General Public Benefit and the Extent the General Public Benefit was Created:
At the time of our incorporation, ChangeSprout decided to pursue a general public benefit, which is defined as a “material positive impact on society and the environment.” As a software provider, we work to provide this positive impact primarily through our support of the ControlShift toolset and VisitThem.org.
Each of our toolsets is aimed at empowering regular people to become leaders and activists in their communities. Our customers have proven that member-led movements – movements which draw on the unique and diverse experiences of supporters and harness their energy into activism – are able to win progressive change on issues large and small.
Around the world in 2019, we’ve seen regular people become powerful leaders and effect real change. Here are some of the people-powered campaigns that ControlShift has powered in the last year:
General Public Benefit:
In Sweden, the government provides funding for public nurseries to care for children while their parents are at work. The Nattis program allowed parents working night shifts to access childcare during their overnight shifts. When the Swedish government announced that it would be cutting the funding for Nattis and shutting down the program, Skiftet members came together to fight against the closure. They were able to prevent the funding cut and save the Nattis program, which is crucial for parents who don’t work normal hours.
RootsAction joined a coalition of organizations that successfully pressured Charlottesville, Virginia’s city council to divest from fossil fuels and firearms.
Over 15,000 ActionStation members pressured the New Zealand government to introduce a bottle deposit program aimed at increasing recycling across the country and reducing the amount of plastic bottles that end up in landfills and oceans. Following the campaign, the government announced that they will be releasing their plan for the bottle deposit program in August.
Coworker.org supporters convinced the National Association of Law Placement to include information about forced arbitration in its employer directory. The NALP is used by law students seeking employment at law firms across the United States, and the move has raised awareness and shone a light on the use of forced arbirtration to quiet sexual harassment, discrimation, and other employee claims.
In the United Kingdom, more than 200,000 38 Degrees supporters fought back against a plan to raise the UK pension age from 65 to 75.
In Hungary, aHang members petitioned to make an outdated maternity ward more modern and more family-friendly, including basic changes like allowing another person in the delivery room during the birth, help with breastfeeding for new mothers, and reuniting babies and parents immediately after birth. The campaign focused on residents of the counties surrounding the hospital, and they secured 277M HUF to modernize the ward.
In Romania, declic members mobilized to ensure that need- and merit-based scholarships continued to be funded. The petition starter raised concern because local governments were refusing to fund the scholarships they’d committed to providing. The campaign called on the Minister of Education to monitor the awarding of these scholarships and ensure that scholarships were fully funded. 30,000 members mobilized in support of the campaign and demanded that the minister provide the needed oversight.
Environment:
The campaigns created on our toolset deal with a diverse range of issues, including the environment. We also work with organizations that are specifically dedicated to environmental protection, like Greenpeace and 350.org.
In the UK, the University College London announced that they’d be divesting from fossil fuels. This was another exciting win for 350.org, and the UK-focused People and Planet, who have been pressuring colleges, universities, and other institutions to divest from fossil fuels. Divestment campaigns have led to more than $10 trillion being divested from fossil fuels around the world.
Greenpeace Andino and their members pressured the Corporación Autónoma Regional de Cundinamarca to cofinance the cleanup of the Bogotá River.
Greenpeace Mexico campaigned and won in their effort to reduce the use of plastic bags, straws, and packaging in markets.
PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT
The results of ChangeSprout’s 2018 assessment, as compared to the previous two years, are below.
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | ||||
| Category | Total Points Earned | Percent Earned | Total Points Earned | Percent Earned | Total Points Earned | Percent Earned |
| Governance | 15.8 | 63.2 | 17.6 | 80.5 | 17.0 | 77.0 |
| Workers | 24.2 | 48.4 | 32 | 56.9 | 35.1 | 76.9 |
| Community | 17.5 | 31.8 | 9.3 | 25.6 | 18.1 | 49.3 |
| Customers | 5.4 | 27 | 5.2 | 77.0 | 39.6 | 89.4 |
| Environment | 30.1 | 40.1 | 2.5 | 37.6 | 4.5 | 47.5 |
DISCUSSION AND PLANS FOR IMPROVEMENTS
Governance:
In the last year, our total score for governance remained about the same, while the percentage of points earned decreased slightly. ChangeSprout Inc. is committed to transparent decision making, and regularly consults with all employees – and where appropriate, customers – on strategic decisions. We also practice financial transparency by sharing the company’s financial information internally.
Increasing our governance score would require legal and structural changes, like changing our ownership model and installing a board of directors, which we are unlikely to undertake in the coming year.
Workers:
In the last year, we improved our performance in the workers category with gains in both our total score and percentage of points earned. Our high performance in the workers category is due to our commitment to providing livable wages for all employees, generous healthcare options, and other employee benefits.
Opportunities to continue improving in 2020 include:
- Increasing professional development opportunities for employees.
- Expanding our employee handbook to include information about grievance resolution processes and an explicit neutrality statement covering employees’ rights to collectively bargain.
Community:
As a fully remote team in two continents, our community is more geographically separated than many other small businesses. Nevertheless, our community scores increased in the last year as we added a new team member based in New York. Based on our assessment from last year, we’ve also incorporated diversity, equity, and inclusion training into our annual training programs for members of staff.
Opportunities for improvement in 2020 include:
- Tracking employee community service hours and providing incentives for community service time.
- Excluding names and identifiable characteristics from resumes and applications when hiring new employees.
Customers:
In 2019 we improved our customer scores, which became our highest percentage category last year. At ChangeSprout, we’re committed to meeting the needs of our customers and building the tools that will help them grow their positive impact in the world. To that end, we continued to solicit feedback from customers on new feature developments, incorporated customer input into our strategic decision making, and updated our pricing model to better serve small organizations and organizations in the global south.
In 2020, we’ll continue to make our commitment to our customers a top priority and work to build the tools that increase their positive impacts.
Environment:
The environment category was our lowest performing category this year. As in past years, many of the questions in this category deal with measuring energy and water usage at corporate offices and other company-controlled facilities. As a fully remote team with employees that work from home and shared coworking spaces, it’s difficult for us to accurately measure the energy and water usage for our team. We have worked to estimate the energy used by our servers – which is likely to be our largest use of energy – and we regularly purchase renewable energy credits which match our estimated energy usage. We also offset corporate travel on a quarterly basis.
In 2020, we can work to improve our environmental impact by adapting B Lab’s new suggestions for virtual office stewardship into guidance that we share with our employees.
General Reflections:
Increased scores in the majority of the assessment’s categories reflect our continued commitment to increasing the public benefit, both in New York and around the world. In 2020, we hope to continue this trend.
COMPENSATION OF DIRECTORS
Nathan Woodhull is ChangeSprout Inc.’s only director. His full-time position has an annual salary of $103,220.
SHAREHOLDERS
Nathan Woodhull, founder of ChangeSprout Inc., is the only shareholder.