Report #2

Partners

Over the course of 2020, we helped more conscious businesses grow. And that’s really what this is all about for us. To be able to play even a small role in helping ethically minded businesses connect their messages, products and services to more Australians gets us out of bed in the morning (if Margie hasn’t already, that is!).

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Simon at Pause Fest 2020

Our partners in purpose

“There was always a sense of inclusion in all discussions and directives, and a sensitive balance between business needs and moral endeavours.”
- Wells Trenfield, Founder Jasper Coffee

Our partners in purpose

Over the course of 2020, we helped more conscious businesses grow. And that’s really what this is all about for us. To be able to play even a small role in helping ethically minded businesses connect their messages, products and services to more Australians gets us out of bed in the morning (if Margie hasn’t already, that is!).

Our no-fish policy

Our approach to work is unique and totally different to conventional agencies in that we want to train, empower and teach our clients so they can actually reduce their scope of work with us.

You know that old proverb that says: “Give a wo(man) a fish, t(he)y’ll eat for a day. Teach them him how to fish, t(he)y’ll eat for a lifetime.”? Well, we apply that philosophy to our work. And while we know that might be considered counterintuitive to traditional ideas of business ‘success’, we know there will always be plenty of organisations out there that need a hand with their fishing technique!

“The team at Harvey is so diverse and capable for such a small team. It really feels like they're a natural extension of our team and communication is A+. Since we started working with them about a year ago, we've been able to action some big changes in our business which have been crucial for adapting to the challenges of 2020.”
- Fergus Sully, Kester Black

What do our clients think?

We conduct a client feedback survey every year, because it’s important to us that we know the impact we’re having on our clients and their work. Here are a few things we learned from our last round of feedback:

  • All of our clients would recommend us (or already have), with our NPS (Net Promoter Score) sitting at 69.2 (69.2% promoters, 30.8% neutral, 0% detractors).
  • Some of the words our client used to describe us included “diverse skills”, “flexible”, “realistic/workable solutions for every budget”, “empathic”, “understood and listened to us” and “effective/nimble team”.
  • 61.9% of our clients told us we were good value, 38.1% said we could charge more, 0% that we charged too much. We love this feedback, and want to maintain this high value-for-money rating as we move into our next year of business.

Learning together

While many agencies focus on clients and projects that are close to home, most of the essential work when it comes to tackling the climate crisis or helping marginalised communities happens on the front line. Not only that, but many of these organisations and individuals lack digital skills to help them grow their impact.

Traditionally, changing one individual's behaviour in the development sector can take 3-4 months and 30-40 hours of staff time. But thanks to the rapid rise of access to internet and use of Facebook through mobile, innovative social enterprise ATEC* Biodigesters used digital and a call centre to drastically reduce that time to a couple of hours across a few days.

So we partnered with ATEC Biodigesters to share our learnings and insights about how digital marketing can be used to impact positive behaviour change in a one-off webinar. 

The webinar was attended by almost 100 people from around the world (Myanmar, South Korea, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Australia and more besides!) from a range of organisations and social enterprises. Another of our proudest achievements in 2020 was the launch of the Harvey Academy, through which we ran two cohorts for IDE Cambodia and SNV Kenya.

These organisations do brilliant work in their communities, from maternal education, food/nutrition education, testing clean cooking solutions, helping farmers increase their sustainability and so much more besides.

We’re looking forward to growing the Harvey Academy in 2021 and beyond.

"I learnt a lot from the course. It’s testing the waters for me to set up the Facebook page/ads, as well as refining audiences and seeing how people react to different messaging."
- Chivorn, Harvey Academy Student

The six areas of this report

Let’s take a look back at the year that was (before wrapping up with some of our goals and intention-setting for 2021).

This is a pretty long article, so we've created an executive summary version here, including a summary of each section.

To keep things simple, we’ve broken this report up into six parts, that speak to six areas that were particularly important to us this past year:

Part 1: Mission

Part 2: Governance and team

Part 3: Community good

Part 4: Environment

Part 5: Our clients

Part 6: Our goals for 2021

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Maintain current ownership and governance

🟢
  • Harvey is 100% owned by the Smallchua Family Trust. Rebecca Smallchua is our sole Director.

Share templates, documents, insight into business for good

🟢
  • We’ve officially made all our policies and procedures publicly available here along with our past and current impact reports — sharing our lessons, tools, and insights openly. Something we’ve wanted to do properly for years and glad we finally got it sorted.
  • Maintain B Corp score from 134.1 with workers included
🟢
  • No change here. We’re up for recertification next year and looking forward to exploring the new B Corp standards. We shared our experience of recertification from the previous year here.

We’re exploring profit share, and employee ownership models with the team

🟠
  • Team feedback indicates a preference for a profit-share model rather than equity, as it is simpler, clearer and easier to manage. While there is no urgency from the team, there is interest in defining the approach in more detail. Our informal research also shows that many organisations find equity schemes complex and often less motivating in practice. What people value more is being paid properly, doing meaningful work and a healthy, supportive culture.

Be climate positive at work and at home

🟠
  • We don’t track our CO2 emissions, rather we take a much more general and high emissions view. However, this year, we didn’t donate to the environment (see above) so we can’t say we countered our CO2.
  • We continue to choose Hub as our office space for co-working who are Carbon Neutral Certified. Our overall carbon emissions are mostly contributed by our technology usage and we haven’t got a very detailed view on what that is and how to offset it.

To be updated: Donate 5% revenue to the environment

🟢
  • We delivered this as $55k of pro bono service to RIAA who are the leading industry body in Australia and New Zealand dedicated to aligning investment capital with a healthy society, environment and economy. We believe where you invest — and how you choose to use your money — has a powerful impact on people and the planet.
  • Going forward our plan is to commit 50% of profits to invest in clean tech enterprises and/or donations to charitable organisations fighting climate change.

Re-use, recycle and manage dangerous waste

🟢
  • We continue to implement our hazardous waste policy and are on a continuous learning and improvement journey.
  • We repair damaged hardware and minimise purchasing of new equipment.
  • Personally we're all Facebook Marketplace fans.

Advocate for sustainable business

🔴
  • We only did one small action this year supporting Business for 75. A coalition of organisations calling on the Australian Government to commit to at least a 75% emissions reduction target by 2035, because strong climate action is essential for Australia’s future — and good for business.
  • Sarah also personally contributed to B Local Melbourne in various ways running events and engaging the community.

Protest and boycott important issues (Australia Day, Melbourne Cup)

🟢

Buy with intention from local and discriminated groups

🟢

We continue to be intentional about our suppliers as outlined in our policy and report the details in the Community section of the report.

To be confirmed: Invest $20k in impact businesses and $20k of pro bono time

🟠
  • $0 impact investment. Over $55k 100% pro bono time.
  • We did not invest in impact businesses this year as we dedicated significantly more to probono & amazing discounts, and we didn’t have free cash on hand to do the investment.
  • We will be better at managing our impact allocations  — including impact discounts, cross-subsidies, pro bono work, donations, and investments in impact businesses or climate ETFs. 
  • The major pro bono contribution was  $55k of additional free services to RIAA who are the leading industry body in Australia and New Zealand dedicated to aligning investment capital with a healthy society, environment and economy. We believe where you invest — and how you choose to use your money — has a powerful impact on people and the planet.

Begin a Reconciliation Action Plan

🔴
  • We again looked into starting a RAP this year, but with the administrative requirements for a business of our size, we decided to focus our efforts on taking meaningful action instead outlined in our Community chapter here.

All staff spend 75%+ of their time on clients

🟠
  • Spent 66% of our time on clients. 
  • Our forecasting/financials is based on 65%, but our target is obviously higher to give us a buffer. We are happy with 66%, but will continue to aim to increase this.
  • The 34% broken down into 23% operations, 8% business development, 3% learning. Slightly more on ops, less on learning & business development (Sales/Marketing) than FY24.
  • We spent less time on admin, impact reporting, marketing, formal training & recruitment, and more on client admin, team activities, onboarding and self-learning on projects.

Regular, honest check-ins about how we feel

🟢
  • Stand ups, development sessions, watercooler chats, impact updates and more.

Targeted and clear personal growth, if we are better our clients will be

🟢
  • Continued with our personal goal setting questionnaires that ask the big questions of where we want to go and how we’ll get there. Also lots of accountability check-ins. 

Improve and increase capability across team 

🟢
  • Raising our emotional health levels through a leadership development program with Global Leadership Foundation.
  • Expanding output skills: Market research, Web design, content & copywriting, strategy & development and automation strategy.

9 day fortnights, with option for 4 day weeks

🟢
  • 60% work 9 day fortnights, 30% part-time hours, 10% standard working hours.

Gradually grow the team to 7 people

🟢
  • We ended the year getting ready to onboard our 7th team member in July 2025.
  • In FY24/25 Alex joined us as Senior Designer (Brand & Digital) and Simon Hoye came on board as Head of Technology.

No destructive clients. Revenue 10% Good, 65% Great, 25% Amazing

(Here’s what the classifications mean)

🟠
  • No destructive clients. Revenue breakdown: 6.5% Good, 59% Great, 33% Amazing
  • We were well under on Good and over on Amazing which improves impact and puts pressure on us financially. We’re now managing allocation more carefully each month.

Client survey metrics

  • 100% good value for money. (3 / 5 value for money (1 - ‘could charge less’ and 5 - ‘could charge more’)
  • 8 / 10 likely to recommend
🟢
  • All metrics are on or over target
    • 3.5 / 5 value for money
    • 8.5 / 10 likely to recommend
    • 82 NPS

$1.03m revenue (Up by 23% from FY 23/24). Ambitious, we know!

🟠
  • $916,460 - +10% YoY but under our of +23%,
  • The main reasons we didn’t hit target were scope creep and overruns as well as exceeding the Amazing impact discount.
  • Maintain B Corp score from 134.1 with workers included
🟢
  • We officially re-certified in November 2023, and are pleased to report we achieved the same score (to the decimal point). Wild! We shared our experience of recertification here.
  • Share templates, documents, insight into business for good
🟠
  • We haven't done this publicly, but when people have asked, we have shared. And we're sharing a series of things as part of this impact report.
  • Maintain current ownership and governance
🟢
  • Harvey is 100% owned by the Smallchua Family Trust. Rebecca Smallchua is our sole Director.
  • Re-use, recycle and manage dangerous waste
🟢
  • We continue to implement our hazardous waste policy and are on a continuous learning and improvement journey.
  • We repair damaged hardware and minimise purchasing of new equipment.
  • Personally we're all Facebook Marketplace fans.
  • Be climate positive at work and at home
🟠
  • We don't track our CO2 emissions, rather we take a much more general and high emissions view. However, this year, we didn't donate to the environment (see above) so we can't say we countered our CO2.
  • Advocate for climate change / inspire sustainable living
🟢
  • We hosted a panel event on Zero Emissions Day in September 2023, along with our friends at Portable, where we interviewed industry experts on the opportunity to engage with community and work towards a more sustainable future. Recording here.
  • Donate 5% to the environment
🔴
  • We didn't make the donation this year as we're revisiting our impact giving model - more details here
  • Invest $20k in impact businesses plus $20k of pro bono time
🔴
  • We delivered some pro bono time but dropped the ball and had no official measurements in place.
  • We also did not invest $20k in impact businesses, and are reviewing this goal going forward. In the last 12 months, our three Impact Investments all lost their value (Whole Kids, Pronto Bottle & Kester Black). While it's not great, we accept this is part of ambitious investing, and each had their own challenges that they couldn't quite overcome.
  • Buy with intention from local and discriminated groups
🟢
  • We continue to be intentional about our suppliers as outlined in our policy and report the details in the Community chapter of our report.
  • Protest and boycott important issues (Australia Day, Melbourne Cup)
🟢
  • Yes and yes!
  • 9 day fortnights, with option for 4 day weeks
🟢
  • 80% work 9 day fortnights, 40% part-time hours, 10% standard working hours.
  • Improve and increase capability across team
🟢
  • Raising our emotional health levels through a leadership development program with Global Leadership Foundation.
  • Expanding output skills: Market research, Web design, content & copywriting, strategy & development and automation strategy.
  • Targeted and clear personal growth, if we are better our clients will be
🟢
  • A new process for 360 feedback, plus personal goal setting questionnaires that ask the big questions of where we want to go and how we'll get there. Also lots of accountability check-ins.

Client survey metrics

  • 3 / 5 value for money (1 - 'could charge less' and 5 - 'could charge more')
  • 8 / 10 likely to recommend
🟢
  • 3.4 / 5 value for money
  • 9.2 / 10 likely to recommend

No destructive clients. Revenue breakdown: 17% Good, 59% Great, 24% Amazing

🟠
  • No destructive clients.
  • Revenue breakdown: 17% Good, 59% Great, 24% Amazing (A little over on Good and under on Great, but on target for Amazing - which is most important, so we're happy with that)
  • All staff spend 80%+ of their time on clients
🔴
  • Spent 64% of our time on clients (under). Due to team changes (recruitment, onboarding and offboarding) and extra investment in training, personal development and community engagement (e.g. B Local), we did not hit this target. On reflection, we will think 80% is too ambitious and we'll be revising to 70% going forward.
  • Regular, honest check-ins about how we feel
🟢
  • Stand ups, development sessions, watercooler chats, impact updates and more.

$994k revenue (Up $211k on FY2223)

🔴
  • $833,588. Revenue was up 6% YoY. Midway through the year, we adjusted down our target to $879k as team growth / services shifted. The main reasons we didn't hit target were scope creep and overruns, both of which we're trying to manage better with process improvements.
  • Maintain B Corp score from 134.1 with workers included
🟢
  • We applied for our B Corp re-certification at the end of this financial year and are pleased to report we achieved the same score (to the decimal point). Wild!
  • Share templates, documents, insight into business for good
🟠
  • We haven't actively done this publicly, but when people have asked, we have shared. And we're sharing a series of things as part of this impact report.
  • Maintain current ownership and governance
🟢
  • Harvey is 100% owned by the Smallchua Family Trust and Rebecca Smallchua is our sole Director.
  • Re-use, recycle and manage dangerous waste
🟢
  • We continue to implement our hazardous waste policy and are on a continuous learning and improvement journey.
  • We repair damaged hardware and minimise purchasing of new equipment.
  • Personally we're all Facebook Marketplace fans.
  • Donate 5% to the environment
🔴
  • We fell short here, we didn't make the donation. More details here.
  • Advocate for climate change / inspire sustainable living
🟢
  • Be climate positive at work and at home
🟠
  • We don't track our CO2 emissions, rather we take a much more general and high emissions view. However, this year, we didn't donate to the environment (see above) so we can't say we countered our CO2.
  • Protest and boycott important issues (Australia Day, Melbourne Cup)
🟢
  • Have a RAP, engaged stakeholders and implemented more change
🔴
  • Due to competing priorities and limited time (no lack in desire) we de-prioritised our Reconciliation Action Plan as we want to do it meaningfully and have the capacity to follow through. However, we took a few first steps outlined here.
  • Buy with intention from local and discriminated groups
🟢
  • We continue to be intentional about our suppliers as outlined in our policy and report the details in the Community chapter of our report. We took it one step further this year with a public call to pledge to audit suppliers in this campaign www.supplier-impact.com
  • Invest $20k in impact businesses plus $20k of 100% pro bono time
🟠
  • We delivered some pro bono time but dropped the ball and had no official measurements in place. We also did not invest $20k in impact businesses because of the reduced revenue with Becky on maternity leave.
  • Sarah personally donated her photography equipment valued at around $7,500 to empower a content and brand producer in the Solomon Islands.
  • 9 day fortnights, with option for 4 day weeks
🟠
  • 40% work 9 day fortnights, 40% part-time hours, 20% standard working hours.
  • Improve and increase capability across team
🟢
  • Elevated our tool nerd level. See here.
  • Expanding output skills: Market research, Web design, strategy & development, video editing, and automation strategy.
  • Targeted and clear personal growth, if we are better our clients will be
🟢
  • Lots of on-the-tools growth, structured learning through weekly Lunch 'n Learns and Intro to Programming at RMIT.

No destructive clients. Revenue breakdown: 15% Good, 60% Great, 25% Amazing (Here's what the classifications mean)

🟢
  • No destructive clients.
  • Revenue breakdown: 10% Good, 66% Great, 25% Amazing
  • All staff spend 70%+ of their time on clients
🟢
  • Spent 71% of our time on clients (over by only 76 hours).

Client survey metrics

  • 3 /5 value for money
  • 8 / 10 likely to recommend
🟢
  • 3.4 / 5 value for money
  • 8.8 / 10 likely to recommend

Maintain current revenue

🟠
  • Revenue down 16% YoY
  • Regular, honest check-ins about how we feel
🟢
  • Stand ups, development sessions, watercooler chats, impact updates and more.
No items found.
22 Bricks
ABCH
ACSI
ATEC
Abundant Water
Anantaya Jewellery
Artist Engineering
B Lab ANZ
BZE
Bank Australia
CPSN
Campervan Rental Guide
Certification O
Chaulk
Clean Focus
Client Fabric
Clockwork Films
Common Ground
Compass Studio
Curated with Conscience
Cyclion
Dog & Bone
Envirotecture
Evee
Farm My School
Fellten
Firesticks
Fresco Secco
Gewürzhaus
Global Leadership Foundation
Goodtel
Green Collar
Hagens Organics
Hara
Hey Doodle
Interspan
Jasper Coffee
Jaunt
KOSI
KingPump
LVLY
Lee Christison
Love Tribe Yoga
Lumen
MIIROKO
MK Local Foods
Maine Wellness
Marnie Hawson
Merry People
Milkcan
Nexa Advisory
No Lights No Lycra
North West Guadalcanal Association (NWGA)
OBG
One Small Step
Orange Ninja
Parliament of Victoria
Peninsula Hot Springs
Pixii
Portable
Possible
Prisma Legal
ReCo
Responsible Investment Association Australasia
Shadowboxer
Strongim Bisnis
Studio Schools Australia
THL Tourism Holdings Limited
Thankyou
The Next Economy
The Salvage Yard
The Sociable Weaver
Time
WIRE
Whole Kids
Yarrow Build
iDE
No items found.
22 Bricks
ABCH
ACSI
ATEC
Abundant Water
Anantaya Jewellery
Artist Engineering
B Lab ANZ
BZE
Bank Australia
CPSN
Campervan Rental Guide
Certification O
Chaulk
Clean Focus
Client Fabric
Clockwork Films
Common Ground
Compass Studio
Curated with Conscience
Cyclion
Dog & Bone
Envirotecture
Evee
Farm My School
Fellten
Firesticks
Fresco Secco
Gewürzhaus
Global Leadership Foundation
Goodtel
Green Collar
Hagens Organics
Hara
Hey Doodle
Interspan
Jasper Coffee
Jaunt
KOSI
KingPump
LVLY
Lee Christison
Love Tribe Yoga
Lumen
MIIROKO
MK Local Foods
Maine Wellness
Marnie Hawson
Merry People
Milkcan
Nexa Advisory
No Lights No Lycra
North West Guadalcanal Association (NWGA)
OBG
One Small Step
Orange Ninja
Parliament of Victoria
Peninsula Hot Springs
Pixii
Portable
Possible
Prisma Legal
ReCo
Responsible Investment Association Australasia
Shadowboxer
Strongim Bisnis
Studio Schools Australia
THL Tourism Holdings Limited
Thankyou
The Next Economy
The Salvage Yard
The Sociable Weaver
Time
WIRE
Whole Kids
Yarrow Build
iDE

No items found.
No items found.
22 Bricks
ABCH
ACSI
ATEC
Abundant Water
Anantaya Jewellery
Artist Engineering
B Lab ANZ
BZE
Bank Australia
CPSN
Campervan Rental Guide
Certification O
Chaulk
Clean Focus
Client Fabric
Clockwork Films
Common Ground
Compass Studio
Curated with Conscience
Cyclion
Dog & Bone
Envirotecture
Evee
Farm My School
Fellten
Firesticks
Fresco Secco
Gewürzhaus
Global Leadership Foundation
Goodtel
Green Collar
Hagens Organics
Hara
Hey Doodle
Interspan
Jasper Coffee
Jaunt
KOSI
KingPump
LVLY
Lee Christison
Love Tribe Yoga
Lumen
MIIROKO
MK Local Foods
Maine Wellness
Marnie Hawson
Merry People
Milkcan
Nexa Advisory
No Lights No Lycra
North West Guadalcanal Association (NWGA)
OBG
One Small Step
Orange Ninja
Parliament of Victoria
Peninsula Hot Springs
Pixii
Portable
Possible
Prisma Legal
ReCo
Responsible Investment Association Australasia
Shadowboxer
Strongim Bisnis
Studio Schools Australia
THL Tourism Holdings Limited
Thankyou
The Next Economy
The Salvage Yard
The Sociable Weaver
Time
WIRE
Whole Kids
Yarrow Build
iDE
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