Insights

In July last year, Think Impact had recently published its first Sustainability Report. When reflecting on our reporting journey, we wrote that ‘our story next year will be a different one.’ At that moment, we were four months into feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, and, here in Melbourne, were one day away from entering what became a 111-day lockdown. So, with the benefit of hindsight, what’s the story?

Despite some seemingly unprecedented challenges, it’s not a new story – we are just evolving how we tell it. Even before the series of shifts and challenges of 2020 – our business was predicated on understanding and measuring global progress in more than financial terms. The challenges of last year served to renew and invigorate our commitment to a new prosperity: where organisations (including our own) create long-term value that benefits all.

In spite or perhaps because of the massive impact of last year on lives, families, communities and organisations, we had the opportunity to evolve our ways of working, our organisational strategy and our approach to reporting.

In 2020, we developed a new five-year strategy that outlines our commitment to developing the capability of our people, operating efficiently and delivering quality, whilst focusing on being a learning organisation, an influencing organisation and thereby growing our impact. Our second Sustainability Report communicates our progress towards delivering on our strategic intent. It is underpinned by our revised theory of change and new value creation model, which articulates how our business responds to external influences and transforms various capitals to produce value in our areas of strategic focus.

Our value creation model

These give us the framework to start telling the story of how we create long-term value for our stakeholders. In developing our report, we wrestled with the complexity of our value creation model and explored ways to visually reflect the role we can play as an individual business in addressing global challenges. We see this as a process of continuous improvement. In the future, we hope to understand and measure the types of value we create – not just positive and intended, but also negative and unintended. This will allow us to understand how the value we create can be leveraged and amplified to produce greater impact.

You can download a copy of our 2020 Sustainability Report here.

If you have any further questions about Think Impact’s Sustainability Report or related topics of sustainability reporting, please contact Amanda Nuttall amanda@thinkimpact.com.au