Creating Partnerships between NGOs and Businesses

Project Information

YellowHarbour

Grant agreement ID: 789850

DOI

10.3030/789850

Project closed

EC signature date 25 November 2017

Start date 1 December 2017

End date 30 April 2018

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

YELLOW HARBOUR LIMITED
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - YellowHarbour (Creating Partnerships between NGOs and Businesses)

Reporting period: 2017-12-01 to 2018-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Yellow Harbour has been set up to solve the misalignment between NGOs and the private sector. Our aim is to provide a service to both entities with the aim of creating a more collaborative economy. Yellow Harbour provides a suite of professional & scientific / data driven solutions to identify the needs of Non-profit organisations and companies (skills & services) and match them where both sides clearly understand the benefit and value they get from the relationship . We elevate the
relationship between both sides to establish a business engagement with value to both parties. Our overall goal is to be the leaders in the market and the first to commercialise the novel concept of facilitating co-operation between NGOs and Organizations as a service.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

When we launched Yellow Harbour our work was primarily focused on developing the profiling methods, manually to verify our concept and test the response from our first clients. Today we have NGOs and Organisations paying for our service and we have since automated several parts of our process. We are also in the process of testing several parts of our systems in a real environment with NGOs and Enterprises. Furthermore, as part of the feasibility study we have specified the technological scope of the project and the work required to reach commercialisation of a fully functioning and automated system. The workplan for phase two project has been defined, and all the milestones have been clearly indicated.
We are also undertaking studies of the market from which we will evaluate the complexity of the business scenario and set up a business model to target specific groups of users.
We are working on establishing the USPs of our product which clearly distinguish us from competition, and with which we can obtain competitive advantage.
In addition to the above mentioned activities which are mainly related to the development and commercialisation of the technology we have also carried out internal auditing within our organisation to better understand the required skills for the medium and long term operations of our company as well as the financial forecasts for the running of the new business.
We plan to disseminate the results of our project in conferences and events related to Corporate social responsibility and through the support of key stakeholders such as government entities who are also working to raise awareness on the importance of CSR to the community.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

research so far indicates clearly that there is a clear gap between the needs of NGOs and how CSR is practices by organisations. Both parties understand the importance of CSR but the misalignment inhibits the correct administration. Our solution is split into three phases, Assessment, Implementation and Management for both Companies and NGOs. Through the Assessment phase we identify how a company can create value for the society, through collaboration with the NGOs subscribed with us. We also assess the needs and values of the NGOs to create a domain for the NGO which would later be matched to that of ‘matching’ organization. This assessment is done, online using a ‘survey style’ software tool we have developed, on a regular basis to ensure the data we have is valid for both sides.
When it comes to implementation, we use the data collected to come up with matching ‘entities’. An entity could be a skill (eg. Civil Engineering Skill), a service (eg. Transport), a principle (eg. Reducing Water Consumption) or a resource (eg. Land). This way we develop and cater for CSR initiatives spread across different organisations and aligned with the core business strategies of the organisations and in line with the requirements and aims of the NGOs.
Finally to close the gap, we also provide management services including, most importantly a metrics dashboard whereby we aim to quantify the value of the CSR initiative. This is required, by law, for both the NGO and the Companies (>500 employees) for financial reporting purposes. We also provide management for the CSR initiative itself facilitating the collaboration between the NGOs and the companies.
through our innovative solution, we offer the opportunity of servitisation of CSR (Creation, Design, Implementation and manage within companies and organizations, and aim to increase the benefits to both companies and NGOs,encouraging a more collaborative economy. Companies will greatly benefit from structured CSR programs as CSR emerged as an increasingly important aspect in recruiting Millennial and increasing Employee Engagement.

Yellow Harbour