StepUp.One Project Synopsis

Research Question 1:

What is required to build a network of student-supporters to work with StepUp.One and scale their reach? How feasible would this be?

This research question helps support StepUp.One’s vision of integrating student volunteers into their ecosystem. StepUp.One believes that student volunteers could have an integral role to play in assisting its beneficiaries with building personalised pitches to their potential clients.

With digital marketing being StepUp.One’s core business, a large part of their model is pitching to executives at firms that stand to benefit from personalised marketing services. This entails a process of researching into the needs and aims of potential clients – this contributes to more tailored pitches.

Currently, StepUp.One has one team call per day where their founder leads this process and has the team come together to research into potential clients. He sees this step in the process as having a great deal of value-add and hopes that bringing in a network of student volunteers to lead these calls could multiply this value-add and significantly improve StepUp.One’s ability to gain traction with clients.

However, to tap into student talent and create such an ecosystem, StepUp.One needs to understand where to start and build the infrastructure to facilitate this. An analysis of existing remote student-volunteer initiatives may be instructive and could inform any proposal about how StepUp.One can embark on its own program.

Questions that may arise include:

• What comparable student-volunteer initiatives exist, and what attracts students to these?

• What level of commitment can StepUp.One expect to find from potential volunteers?

• What is the optimum number of volunteers that would benefit StepUp.One?

• What are the steps to be taken in setting up a student-volunteer program in a new university/ city?

This project could lead to two outcomes.

• First, it would generate more work and increase available revenue for the beneficiaries that they want to reach.

• Second, it could increase awareness of this cause area and be a channel for students to contribute tangibly to supporting it (e.g., Solidari-tee).

Research Question 3:

How can StepUp.One create a fair and sustainable system of rewarding beneficiaries for their contributions through community ownership of the social enterprise?

The income that beneficiaries are able to earn through StepUp.One may be significant in the contexts that most of these beneficiaries find themselves in. However, these earnings are unlikely to be able to provide a long-term safety net for them.

One way that StepUp.One is ideating around better supporting its beneficiaries in the long-term is by rewarding them with equity in the company. This is a practice that has been employed by numerous commercial entities (“equity compensation”) but StepUp.One has the potential to be an industry leader by bringing this to the social enterprise landscape and demonstrating its feasibility.

This project does not need to be concerned with the logistical questions that surround the giving of equity to beneficiaries. Rather, it is to be concerned with creating a system of distributing equity fairly.

• This will require a good understanding of StepUp.One’s model and engagement with beneficiaries.

• It should aim to create a set of guidelines that StepUp.One can use to dictate how equity can be allotted to beneficiaries for contributions, including retrospectively.

Questions that may arise include:

• What metric for ‘contributions’ is suitable?

• How can this be measured without fraud or risk of favouritism?

• How can this metric for ‘contribution’ be linked to equity?

• What are the best practices for equity compensation?

• How can these be adapted for StepUp.One’s purposes?

Helping StepUp.One to reward its beneficiaries with equity may create more sustainable and long-term financial safety nets for beneficiaries, as well as allow StepUp.One to recognise the contributions of its long-term supporters.