“Sustainability” is a word that is often used in business but is also one of the hardest to pin down.

Does it mean looking after the environment, ending poverty, promoting gender equality or all of these and more? And, even if you think you're doing everything you can, how much is it really worth if your supply chain are not doing the same?

A new Cumbrian consultancy is setting out to work with businesses all over the world to help them adopt practices that are not only sustainable, but profitable as well.

Officially incorporated in February, SDG Changemakers (the SDG stands for sustainable development goals) is run by founders Claire Benson and Felicity Jones.

Claire, who began her career at The Body Shop in the days of activist and environmental and social campaigner Anita Roddick, has worked in economic development, brand and communications in the UK, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, and latterly with Cumbria-based employability skills development organisation Inspira.

As a strategist and coach, Claire is also an entrepreneur-in-residence at Lancaster University.

Felicity, who was head of foundation and corporate partnerships at the London School of Economics (LSE) for more than 10 years, is originally from Lancashire and moved back to live in her home county two years ago.

She has worked in international fundraising for over 20 years, helping to launch a number of important organisations such as the Programme for African Leadership.

Her work at LSE saw her work closely with African universities and she was responsible for LSE’s largest philanthropic award of £65m from Atlantic Philanthropies to launch the International Inequalities Institute.

While Felicity is based in Lancaster, Claire splits her time between Arnside and New Zealand, and the pair are focused on working with clients across the globe.

"We realised there was a real gap in the market for support to SMEs and social enterprises who really want to be purpose-led and be profitable," says Claire.

"I started my career back in 1997 with The Body Shop, in the days of Anita Roddick, so I've always had that sense of looking at things from a social and environmental view, but also being commercial – or economically sustainable as well.

“With the challenges and pressures the world is facing such as loss of biodiversity, climate change and our fight with plastic we have to reengineer how we actually do business. So the premise of SDG Changemakers is to combine the good bits of commercial business, the third sector and the private sector, bring all those positive pieces together and accelerate the movement to be socially, environmentally and economically sustainable now.”

Felicity says one of the drivers behind her move back to the North was to be able to work with smaller organisations which may not usually have access to consultants with her experience.

"I was doing a lot of work on impact investment modelling for income into international development charities, setting up social enterprises to return income, as well as programmatic support into charities," she says

"Our shared vision is to support any organisation who is seeking to deliver that impact and to do that with professionalism.”

However, in order to help businesses be more sustainable, you first have to define what sustainability is. This is a much harder task than it may seem at first glance, incorporating everything from the environment to eliminating poverty.

To bring some clarity, Claire and Felicity focus on working with businesses to deliver the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals.

“The Global Goals are the world’s strategy to sustainability, 193 nations have signed up to them so it makes complete sense to use them as the starting point,” says Claire.

For them number 17, which aims to deliver the goals through partnership working, is particularly important. Their focus is on working with businesses to help them understand how they can achieve the goals, measure their progress and connect them with people who can help.

"Unless you're actually solving the other 16 issues in partnership, we’re not really going to make the inroads that we need to do,” says Claire.

“I think every business can actually contribute to each of these goals, even though sometimes they seem a little bit out there.”

At the same time, they say achieving the goals must be intertwined with creating a long-term, commercially successful business.

“At the end of the day it’s about making sustainability profitable,” says Claire.

Organisations that SDG Changemakers is working with at present include the Kipsaina Crane and Wetlands Conservation Trust in Western Kenya. The founder, Maurice Wanjala, has been a global leader in community-led conservation since the 1990s. He was awarded the United Nations Development Programme Equator Prize and in 2021 was named one of the Disney Global Conservation Heroes of the year. By supporting them to scale their production and planting of indigenous trees on land provided by the Kenyan government, SDG Changemakers have helped the trust to secure the first stage of commercial and impact investment from Ecosia - an online search company that uses ad revenue to plant trees. They are also working on developing models for carbon credits to be allocated to the community.

They are also working with British-Dutch-Ugandan company, IAMNATIV, which connects people with creative talent in Africa with global media productions while also supporting skills development. SDG Changemakers are supporting IAMNATIV to secure investment from the US, UK and Europe.

Back in the UK, SDG Changemakers are working with a local film maker from Sedbergh who is producing a film version of the novel Now and Then by William Corlett – which tackles isolation and discrimination in the LGBTQ+ community. The team are pitching the film to impact investors aligned with reducing inequalities and promoting peace, justice and strong institutions.

In Cumbria the team have worked with the Grange-over-Sands based charity Beyond FGM and sister organisation Centre for Indigenous Child Rights to develop a social enterprise to provide employment for young women and girls at risk of female genital mutilation in Africa.

The pair work with SMEs and social enterprises to help understand, embed, communicate and track the impact they are having, as well as looking for more opportunities to become sustainable, and attract impact investment.

They are also working with Lancaster University on a series of research and development projects looking into the challenges that SMEs face in understanding the sustainability goals, and how to apply them to their business.

Claire and Felicity hope this work will allow them to refine the processes which will ultimately make it much simpler for SMEs to begin understanding how their business can be more sustainable.

They say the importance of this work will only continue to grow in a world where there is more pressure on businesses to show their social value or contribution to achieving net zero.

"Post-Brexit, the EU is actually going to require SMEs in Europe to report on their supply chain and their management of sustainability," says Felicity.

"While the UK won't be within that sphere, it will be competing in the same global market. Without the base of evidence, there is the potential that they will be uncompetitive globally. Which is one of the reasons why we've taken the approach to do this deep research. Businesses know they need to report, but they’re really not sure exactly how to do it.”

Claire adds that feedback illustrates that some businesses can view work around sustainability as an “add on”.

“We are at a stage where SMEs are critical drivers for a sustainable future – they make up over 95 per cent of the businesses globally and here in Cumbria it is no different – they are a large source of employment and roughly contribute 50 per cent of revenue.”

"Everybody talks about innovation, but innovation is about being courageous and it's looking at issues and finding ways to solve them properly. I certainly think that businesses, if they start working together more collaboratively, can make these things happen.”