Meet Alexandra Smith, Co-Founder and Partner at FuturePlus & The Sustainability Group

Alex Smith

FuturePlus is a revolutionary platform that allows any organisation, particularly SMEs, to understand, measure, manage, improve and report their sustainability. We work across five sustainability themes: Environment, Climate, Social and Economic Impact and Diversity and Inclusion. This simple tool provides a verified sustainability, or Actual, score showing your current standing and gives an Ambition score based on where you want to be in three years.

Our FuturePlus advisors provide ongoing support to help organisations meet their goals and a bespoke three-year sustainability roadmap is created wholly aligned with your business model.

FuturePlus aims to make sustainability accessible, achievable, affordable, accountable and addressable for everyone.
 
 
FuturePlus Reviews 2022: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2
 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
We both come from sustainability backgrounds. Mike has worked for Not-For-Profit organisations, as an advisor to FTSE4Good, with investment firms, family offices and global conglomerates, and Alex’s background in sustainability, commercial sport and hospitality.

In our paths, we realised that sustainability had become at worst a ‘badge of honour’ for the already super sustainable companies, and at best a world of complex terms, confusing information and expensive to implement. This is why we founded The Sustainability Group with the sole aim to democratise sustainability and address the imbalance.

This is how our ‘take over the world’ plan started. As co-founders, we are passionate about making sustainability accessible, affordable and achievable, and we immediately got to work on developing FuturePlus.

FuturePlus is the answer to the question all businesses have: How do you know if you are sustainable?

But of course, there are more questions: How can businesses prove it? Tell the right people? Showcase all their ambitions to become better and, of course, be held accountable for those goals?

It took 18 months post-launch, but with global clients like DLA Piper and Soho House to incredible and innovative startups such as Oxwash, Handle, Innermost and Sipful we believe we have answered those questions and have developed a whole host of new ones to answer, positively changing how we approach and apply sustainability into business practices. As we grow we are helping to build a more sustainable and equitable future for all – and this is what makes it so exciting!
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
The development of FuturePlus started in April 2020, so we have only known startup life in a pandemic. It has been a strange time with its own challenges and we think maybe even some opportunities. When the world slowed down, we had the chance to build, develop, tear down, interrogate and expand on our initial ideas into a product that we could test, improve and finally release to market as an agile, scalable and easy to use platform.

Our team has grown significantly, we have moved into our office away from the dining room tables, launched and signed up our first 50 clients.

We do believe there was a shift change during the pandemic; the virus and lockdowns highlighted vulnerabilities and exposed the risks all businesses have to global threats.

With this, organisations now want to do better, customers and employees expect more and investment is becoming more conditional on being able to prove you are part of a sustainable and equitable economy.

We want to be in the part of helping to provide the tools to drive positive change and support businesses with ambition to become more sustainable.
 

What can we hope to see from FuturePlus in the future?

 
Firstly, constant development and improving the experience of using the platform. We are also adding ESG and sustainability products to provide the tools and support organisations need to make improving their positive impact and communicating to stakeholders as easy as possible.

And of course, growth. We have always intended to help all companies, no matter the size or sector – and certainly not just those already excelling in sustainable practices. To do this, we have built with scale in mind and accessibility as a core foundation.

FuturePlus will enable companies to benchmark their sustainability to other organisations of similar size, sector, or geography. Providing investors, customers and employees a comparative view of the positive impact and ambition of the organisation.