Two billion of us are living in a world of social technology that isolates us, exacerbates the mental health crisis, contributes to the climate crisis, undermines democracy and divides us in ways that shock society, humanity and our planet.
For the past eight years, our Founder and Global CEO, Sue Fennessy has been obsessed by this, which inspired the creation of WeAre8. It's an alternative that champions social media for the love of people and our precious planet.
Our unique ability to share the majority of the advertising money with people from watching an ad on WeAre8 is just the mechanism for everyone on the planet to realise that when we stand together, we are more valuable than we imagine.
Our real super power comes from the feeling of being together in a social home that feels full of love and the collective change this money creates for our charity partners and the existence of our citizens.
Social Media for the love of people and planet
Unite 1% of the people on our planet to make positive impact everyday
We value innovative thinking that breaks the status quo and the courage to solve the world’s biggest problems.
We put transparency and trust at the core of everything we do. In a way that people feel valued, respected and rewarded everyday.
We want you to feel valued for being your best authentic self.
charities registered on our platform
donated to charities via our platform
donated to our charity partners for specific B2B initiatives
paid into our 8Citizens wallets for viewing brand advertisements
of carbon emission offset through carbon avoidance projects
of WeAre8’s workforce across the US, UK, Australia and Greece comprised of women
The world’s only certified B Corp social media platform since December 2020.
As a B Corporation, we are assessed and verified independently by B Lab to commit to meeting high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability.
To be a Certified B Corp, a company must score a minimum of 80 out of 200 points on B Lab’s Impact Assessment. The assessment measures an organisation's positive impact on workers, suppliers, community and the environment.
Based on the B Impact assessment, WeAre8 earned an overall score of 90.9. The median score for ordinary businesses who complete the assessment is currently 50.9.
We treat our social and environmental impact as a primary measure of success for our business and prioritise it even in cases where it may not drive profitability. We are committed to ensuring that this performance continues to be a part of our decision-making process over time.
Our highest level of corporate oversight includes the Board of Directors (with at least one member who is not an executive or owner of the company) who meet quarterly. In these meetings we make a point to highlight our social and environmental impact transparently.
As an organisation, we’re passionate about spreading the word and supporting everyone to make more meaningful impact, and what better way to start than by sharing with our valuable employees. We implement regular training on environmental best practices and ensure that all employees are educated in how we can best support the planet.
Following on from last year's Ad Net Zero Essentials training, our employees completed training from the Carbon Literacy Project to support our team and our clients in becoming carbon literate. The power is in sharing knowledge.
Our most valuable asset is our talented people, from all walks of life. We pride ourselves on being a living wage employer for 100% of our employees on an FTE basis. As well as this, all of our employees are granted generous stock options, meaning they benefit from our growth and are a true owner. We are also proud to have achieved a 49% female-based workforce, that translates across all levels of experience.
As an organisation, we work together to understand our employees priorities inside and outside of work to provide flexibility and a productive work environment. We’ve adopted a hybrid working model in our offices across the UK and Australia, which gives our team members the flexibility to work in the office three days a week and remotely twice a week, with the acknowledgement that there may be further flexibility required for any extenuating circumstances.
Prioritising our employees health and wellbeing is of the utmost priority. We provide private health insurance to all our employees globally. As well as this, we have trialled a monthly activity day (“8Day”) in Australia, for employees to participate in fun or educational activities, take time out of their working day to learn more about each other and socialise. We’ve been overwhelmed by the feedback and we’re looking forward to rolling out this initiative globally in 2023!
At the core of WeAre8 is our community, which is why our commercial model is so heavily weighted towards people and the planet. With an intentional impact-led business model, we give 5% of top-line revenue to a charity of the brand's choice. Some of our key charity partners included charity:water, Crisis, Macmillan, Fareshare, WWF and The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
In May 2022, we launched our first crowdfunding campaign with Crowdcube, giving our community the chance to claim their stake in WeAre8. We had a total of 1,293 investors with a minimum investment requirement of £10.
For our day to day operations, we have actively partnered with ethical and sustainable organisations when hosting events, providing catering and attending conferences. In July 2022, we donated one meal to OzHarvest, a food rescue organisation, on behalf of every attendee that attended our session at Mumbrella 360 Conference prior to our WeAre8 launch in Australia. This also included any attendees at client or agency meetings and dinners. In total, we donated 304 meals.
Through our partnership with Ecologi, where we share 1% of our revenues, we support brands in offsetting the carbon of their entire campaign through carbon avoidance projects. We focus on continued action beyond our own operations, and ultimately help make sustainability turnkey for our brand and agency partners.
In preparation for 2023, we have partnered with a specialist third party consultancy called C-Free to calculate our carbon footprint for 2022.
We’ve also started the framework to a broader employee sustainability training plan with Giki, a certified B Corp impact partner, who provides educational resources to improve individual carbon footprints.
On WeAre8, people are valued and paid for their time watching ads. By doing so, our citizens are rewarded, able to pay towards their mobile phone bills or pay it forward to one of our charity partners. We set out with the intention to give at least 50% of our brand advertising revenue back to people. We exceeded this in 2022, giving 53% of our advertising revenue back to people.
We encourage citizens to feel free and be celebrated for being their true self. We spread love, not hate! A zero tolerance for hate is our priority across the platform, which is effectively monitored 24/7 and gives our customers the ability to report any content that does not align with our values. We also focus on our customers' privacy and enable them to stay connected with their friends on their own private feed without any disruption or algorithms. So they never miss a moment.
We have made a conscious effort to partner with organisations across the UK and Australia who live and breathe our value of making an impact on people and the planet. This includes:
Hosting events at Four Pillars Gin Distillery who are certified as being carbon neutral
Utilising Two Good Co for catering services - a company that supports, empowers and employs women with lived experience of homelessness, domestic violence and complex trauma.
We continued our partnership with Ecologi, a platform for real climate action. They facilitate the funding of carbon offset projects and tree planting around the world. Their mission is to reduce 50% of global CO2 emissions by 2040 and responsibly plant billions of trees every year.
WeAre8 and Ecologi are trusted partners, with 1% of every campaign on WeAre8 allocated to Ecologi. Our profile (forest) shows the tangible impact that brands and individuals can make by working with us. This action is significant, as through this, we have been able to identify exactly how much carbon is offset as well as what impact that has in the world. Working with the right partners, such as Ecologi, will guarantee 1000s kgs of CO2e saving per year.
In 2022, we were able to offset 875 tonnes of carbon emissions via carbon avoidance projects.
We partnered with the Carbon Literacy Project to increase awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis. Our exceptional team hosted a one day workshop for our clients utilising Carbon Literacy training material.
We have partnered with EE to enable people to pay earnings (from viewing brand advertisements) towards their EE mobile bills. In 2022, our citizens were able to use over $110,000 towards paying their mobile bills.
By adopting a serverless architecture through AWS, we have been able to minimise execution time and use fewer resources. This approach allows us to use compute power only when needed, avoiding the waste of idle resources. As a result of these efforts, our carbon emissions have decreased significantly over the past years.
In 2021, our carbon emissions were 4.0 MTCO2e. However, in 2022, we managed to reduce our emissions to 0.4 MTCO2e.
Furthermore, it's worth noting that by utilising AWS as our cloud provider, we have saved 29.3 MTCO2e in total emissions (25.1 MTCO2e from AWS's renewable energy purchases and 4.2MTCO2e saved by using AWS computing services).
