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, Zoe Kalar, 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 as a partner on the app
paid to charities via our WeAre8 app
paid to our Citizens
paid back as part of our commitment to carbon offsetting
tonnes 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 89.8. 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 team, from all walks of life. We pride ourselves on being a living wage employer and make it a priority to compensate our employees fairly. 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 44% 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, Australia and Greece, 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.
And finally, prioritising our employee's health and wellbeing is of the utmost priority, and therefore we provide private health insurance to all our employees globally.
WeAre8 is all about community, which is why our commercial model is so heavily weighted towards people and the planet. For every ad that runs on WeAre8, 50% goes back to people, 4% to a charity of the brand’s choice and 1% to climate solutions. We also put 5% of our ad revenue into a creator fund, aimed to support verified creators on the WeAre8 app.
In 2023, we also ran several campaigns to unite our community around important causes. An example of this was our ‘8 to Plate’ campaign. This campaign was set up to help fight food insecurity and provide 80,000 meals to those in need across the UK. Together with our charity partners, advertisers, and well known changemakers, we were able to mobilise the WeAre8 community and support those in need.
Finally, in February 2023, we had our first premier league football club, Crystal Palace FC, join WeAre8. As there are 5 Billion football fans globally, we wanted to give this massive global community a safe social home, that is free from hate - where both players and fans can unite.
Through our partnership with Ecologi, we share 1% of our revenues to 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.
We then took our sustainability efforts a step further by launching a new Think Carbon programme with Giki Zero - with a focus on individual carbon footprints and how we can keep track of everything we’re doing for the planet. This was a great opportunity for our team to build knowledge across the business and to ‘Think Carbon’ at home and at work.
On WeAre8, people are valued and paid for their time watching ads. By doing so, our citizens are rewarded, able to cash out into PayPal, pay their mobile bill, or pay it forward to one of our charity partners. With our ad model, 50% of our brand advertising revenue goes back to people.
We also 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 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 2023, we were able to offset over 2300 tonnes of carbon emissions via carbon avoidance projects. Some of these projects include deforestation efforts in Colombia, wind powered projects in Mexico, distributing energy efficient cooking stoves in Tanzania, capturing waste biogas in Turkey to turn it into clean energy and much more.
We partnered with EE to enable people to pay earnings (from viewing brand advertisements) towards their EE mobile bills. In 2023, our citizens were able to use £299,026.76 towards paying their mobile bills.
We partnered with Giki to give our team access to tools that allow them to track their individual carbon footprints and keep track of everything they’re doing for the planet. This included:
• Tools to understand their carbon footprint
• Ability to take part in 150 steps to improve their carbon footprint
• Tips and handy to-do list for every step
• Challenges, leaderboards and competitions across regions
• Reporting dashboards to measure impact all in one place
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 2023, 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).
Zoe Kalar, Founder and Global CEO, WeAre8 said: “Our 2023 Impact report reflects 12-months of incredible collective impact from the 8 community. We know a large percentage of people come to WeAre8 every day to make a positive contribution to the world and address big problems through small collective action. These results demonstrate what a social platform, built to redirect billions of dollars back to people and charities, can achieve when you make having a positive impact on the world easy, fun, and rewarding.
By putting people at the economic center of our digital advertising model, we recognise their power to change the world and are mobilising humanity in a way our society needs more than ever before. All while delivering transformational results for brands.
As more and more people join the 8 community, we look forward to growing our collective impact this time next year.
