Australian Salesforce Partner Carnac Group is one of the most recent businesses worldwide to join the Pledge 1% movement. We interviewed Carnac Group Managing Director Vincent Motte to find out more about this initiative.
Vincent, could you explain a bit about what Pledge 1% is?
Pledge 1% is a global initiative that encourages and empowers businesses to integrate giving back into their DNA, regardless of their size or industry. The idea is to pledge 1% of your business’ product, profit, equity and/or time to contribute to your local area or community. Supporting the community is not one size fits all, so we love that the structure of the commitment allows companies the freedom to contribute to the causes or projects that matter most to them. The initiative is spearheaded by Salesforce, and, naturally, as a Salesforce partner, we were keen to get involved!
What motivated you to sign up for Pledge 1%?
We didn’t start Carnac Group to simply serve our customers and make money. Sure, we’re motivated by those things, but it’s not enough. For many years, I’ve been admiring business leaders like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes who have made standing up for their communities a business priority. With their organisations, they are making a genuine difference, be that on a local or global scale. But you don’t have to be a global enterprise like Salesforce or Atlassian to be able to make a difference. As we were establishing Carnac Group, we wanted to ensure giving back was part of our DNA. Pledge 1% is a great framework and makes philanthropy accessible to all businesses, regardless of their size or history. Every business has the capacity to make change, and we firmly believe that we should make use of ours.
So, how is Carnac Group approaching Pledge 1%?
We want Pledge 1% to be something that our whole team feels a part of. Since joining in July, we have been working internally to narrow our focus to causes we are most passionate about. We’re still in that process, but one early frontrunner for us all is the environment. That’s a global concern that we can easily work on at a local level. According to WWF, around 130,000 tonnes of plastic make their way into Australia’s waterways each year. Taking hundreds of years to break down, this plastic builds up in our oceans, harming marine life and affecting natural water cycles. As a coastal city, Sydney plays a huge part in this shocking statistic, so we decided to start our clean-up in a section of Sydney Harbour, close to our office in Crows Nest. And that’s what a few of us did last Friday.
What did you discover?
We have team members who come from all over the world and we collectively feel a great sense of pride for the city we have chosen as our home. It was heartbreaking to find so much waste in our waterways, including tree roots growing around plastic and plastic bags disintegrating into even smaller pieces of plastic. Of course, we had anticipated feeling good about collecting rubbish. But it was also so peaceful to get away from the hustle and bustle and into nature. We are so spoilt here to be so close to nature… it was a great reminder to embrace it whenever we can.
That’s fantastic, and what did you collect?
In one morning, we collected an average of one large garbage bag of rubbish per person that otherwise would have stayed or ended up in our waterways. We collected any and every piece of rubbish we could find, from plastic bags and bottles, to whipper-snipper cords, garden pots, a set of venetian blinds, a dish rack and our personal favourite, five bucks!
Nice! So you’d do it again?
Definitely! Although heartbreaking to see the extent of pollution in such a beautiful area, we felt glad that we could make a small difference to the environment. Cleaning up six bags worth of rubbish in just a few hours goes to show how easy it is to make a difference and that every bit counts when helping the community. It was also a great opportunity to get outside on a sunny Sydney morning, and have some valuable team bonding time! We’re looking forward to preparing for our next Pledge 1% activity and planning how we can keep contributing to our community!