Kelly sets up Social Change UK with £550 and works for the first 12 months from a bedroom and numerous coffee shops. Three major wins in the first year - a big project looking at healthy towns, a social marketing campaign to reduce teenage pregnancy and the design and delivery of a healthy takeaways pilot in Lincolnshire.
Fed up with small spaces and loud cafe's, Social Change UK moves into new offices at Sparkhouse Studios in the centre of Lincoln. First coffee machine installed and the first employee employed (a junior designer called James). More briefs won including a social marketing project to reduce smoking in pregnancy in Wolverhampton, reducing demand in A&E and getting more people to the dentist.
Kelly appears on the BBC Inside Out programme talking about the very successful takeaways project. In fact, it was so successful, the project was highly commended in the Best Social Marketing category at the prestigious HSJ Awards.
A research assistant is added to the team and Kelly wins her first entrepreneurial award - the growth through innovation award at the Angels Business Awards. The same year, she is asked to deliver a guest lecture at SAID Business School at Oxford University and a research project gets national media attention. Briefs worked on this year include drug and alcohol harm reduction in Derby, teenage pregnancy in Lincolnshire, and mental health commissioning for The Huntercombe Group.
Social Change UK moves into the Enterprise Building to accomodate a growing team and starts work on a project to make allergens more clearly labelled on food. A new social marketing training programme is launched and delivered to over 200 public sector professionals. Briefs won this year include fire safety, loneliness, placemaking and lung cancer.
The team move to a bigger office on the outskirts of Lincoln. After several hours on Pinterest, blackboard paint, beanbags and giant lego bricks are purchased. Social Change UK hold its first conference on purpose and sustainable business attracting over 200 delegates. Topics worked on this year include the gender pay gap, poverty, GP demand and how to combat the bystander effect. Two more team members are added to the line up.
More services are added to the menu including animation and video production and Bobby is employed to concentrate only on video and digital content creation. Projects worked on this year include Making Every Opportunity Count for Greenwich, Heads Up - a campaign to prevent male suicide in Buckinghamshire, and Quit for Them - for Public Health Wales. It was also a bumper year for awards and accolades. We were shortlisted and became finalists in 6 awards this year: best website design, best public sector campaign, best not for profit strategy, best digital campaign, best use of data and analytics, and marketing campaign of the year.
Kelly is honoured to be asked to deliver a TedTalk. It’s all about purpose (who would have guessed?). GoodandKind is born this year and the team spend a whole year developing this feel-good product. A couple of new creative types come and go but the biggest entrance this year was the arrival of Joey to the team. He loves cuddles and fuss and occasionally gives feedback on creative concepts with a woof or two (usually after we have bribed him with sausage).
Our healthy placemaking research, in partnership with Design Council launches in the Houses of Parliament with cross party support and another two changemakers are added to the line up - a research assistant and another digital content creator. UX is added to the menu of services and the lovely Savannah skills up to take on UX projects. Big issues worked on this year include child sexual exploitation, childhood obesity, Police visibility and promoting health and wellbeing to the over 50’s.
The team moved (yet again) to bigger offices in the city centre - a beautiful grade II listed former school in the heart of Lincoln city and another three changemakers join the team. We invited fellow #changemakers from Italy to our new office and hosted a five-day training course on social marketing. Good and Kind was shortlisted for a Tech for Good award and was highly commended. It was a stonker of a year for awards and nominations because our Jiggle Wiggle Campaign for Sexual Health Matters was not only shortlisted at the UK Agency Awards but it scooped Campaign of the Year (Not-for-profit) at the prestigious Drum Social Purpose Awards. We literally cannot pick the award up it is that heavy! Issues worked on this year included: mental health, diabetes prevention, physical activity, social prescribing, breastfeeding, smoking during pregnancy, childhood obesity… and so much more!
2020. The year started like any other ordinary year. We celebrated some great client wins in January which included onboarding a global business looking to do good with their influence and power. We launched a fantastic NHS campaign in Sheffield to reduce admissions in A&E in January, and by late February we were celebrating wins on new briefs in Norfolk, London and Wales. A global pandemic forced our team to head home in March, but this didn’t stop our changemakers. In lockdown we conducted research, working remotely, looking at the impacts of COVID. We worked with several NHS organisations and local authorities on various COVID related briefs – from helping them with behaviour change and communicating restrictions, to creating digital dashboards and using UX/UI to help people understand data. Our CEO did lots of interviews exploring human behaviour and she appeared on a global news programme, now seen by over 2 million people. The year ended in lockdown [still] and despite a brief flirtation with the office [just 1 month], the team ended the year at home, working on several client briefs.
Determined to keep growing and remain strong through the pandemic, we started the year with the news of more client wins, including a large scale project addressing women’s health in Wales and important educational materials for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In the Spring we were working on more animation briefs and we launched Bloody Brilliant in Wales - the first inclusive campaign of its kind to break the taboo on periods. Before we hit autumn we had successfully won a place on the Behavioural Science Framework for WRAP which means we will be working on some fantastic sustainability programmes over the next three years - including tackling fast fashion, plastic waste and food waste.
We welcomed some new people to our team this year and we finally got back to the office in July but decided that 5 days a week from the office in this new world of work is no longer for us. We adopted a 'hybrid' model of working - some days in the office and some at home. Our four-legged friends are not complaining!
In October we travelled down to BAFTA in London to launch 'Taking Action on Addiction', a campaign the team have been working on with our lovely friends at Action on Addiction and The Forward Trust for some time. It was a highlight to see Ant and Dec, The Duchess of Cambridge and the wonderful Tom Walker who helped launch the campaign.
We have started 2022 with a bang! In March we achieved B Corp status and scored 109 in their assessment of our business. Most businesses score between 40 and 100, with 80 points required to become certified. A score of over 100 is considered outstanding.
We have already gone on a huge recruitment drive, bringing on board another 5 team members to help deliver a growing number of behaviour change and purpose-driven projects.
In April we launched our first podcast 'tea with the changemakers' which celebrates people doing good in the world.
At a societal level, Net-Zero has been achieved and the planet is no longer warming at disastrous rates. We have all fallen out of love with cars and our homes are no longer big polluters. Quite a few more people are going meat-free and we've saved the trees. Poverty is solved and food banks are a thing of the past.
At Social Change, we have helped make the above happen, putting all our skills and talent into solving tough social issues. Another few million (or billion? Let’s be ambitious) has been saved for society and more brands with purpose have been added to our client list, helping to change the world with us. Our team has grown to a strong 30 (at least) and the social change approach has crossed borders and we are working in countries around the world. We've also launched a few new ‘tech for good’ products into the world.
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