Making for Good

By Rob Isaacs, co-founder and product director, &us

“&us — what’s that? Who are they? What do they do?”

That’s a problem we’re trying to solve. How do we drive awareness, and show people what we’re capable of.

On Monday, we had an idea.

What if we could help charities and social enterprises whilst solving that problem.

Let’s call it “Making for Good” — our way of giving back, and lending our expertise at making products and services.

Wednesday, we jumped into a Google Doc and started to flesh it out. @Oscar had a google moment to find some insight and inspiration before getting out his notepad and sketching. [insert sketches]

Yesterday, he took it from a sketch to a Sketch (check the Miro here) and straight into WordPress. And now less than a day later, it’s live, kind of, with some obvious copy improvements to make.

A few reflections as we get started

As we progress with “Making for Good” we’re going to blog about it and work in public, to share our learnings and give an inside view on how we go about it.

Reflecting on this first couple of days, what really stands out for us so far is:

1. Creative confidence — we started by starting, there’s lots of imperfections in this and reasons to not do it, but that’s completely ok, we prefer the mess of getting going and know we’ll learn more and faster along the way.

2. Flexibility and pragmatism — there was no plan really, just positive intent. We flexed the toolkit as we worked, we kept comms high and chatted only when needed. Maybe we should have scheduled meetings in advance, but the fluidity so far is really paying off.

3. Share wide and don’t worry — we demo-ed this to the whole company 10 mins after finishing the site, and now it’s here on LinkedIn. We want people on the journey, and a bit of social momentum is invaluable.

4. Steal like an artist — not all of this is original, and that’s fine. We’ve pinched templates and designs from our main site, we’ve borrowed ideas and structures from other companies and related worlds to inspire and accelerate what we’re doing.

What’s next for “Making for Good”?

We’re not quite sure.

We need to drum up relevant traffic, so we’re thinking we’ll spin up some ads whilst improving the design… we’d love your thoughts as well.

Then, fingers crossed, we’ll be able to partner with a charity or social enterprise and get to work.

Maybe we’ll help re-create their digital presence, or drive engagement.

Maybe we’ll help support fundraising activities, or crack a fresh challenge wide open.

Maybe we’ll help them launch something new, or figure out how to increase donations to Food Banks or get more support to refugees.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to do some good. Watch this space.

If you’ve got a project you’d like to discuss, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at hello@andus.co // https://andus.co/making-for-good