My vision is to build a thriving Sharing Economy where we share to live and live to share; where the need to own is transformed into the desire to access. Everyone can be a supplier of goods and services; collective capability meets common interest and we collaborate to protect our planet - creating wealth for common benefit. Preaching environmentalism has failed to engage mainstream audiences; our strategy is building a fun, consumer-facing brand, compareandshare.com - the world’s first aggregator of the Sharing Economy, a one stop comparison marketplace where people can easily save / make money by sharing resources.
Think of CompareandShare.com as "moneysupermarket.com meets The Mesh!"
Via the Global Sharing Day campaign, we reach over 60 million people in 147 countries. Where Global Sharing Day activities occur, sharing increases, community bonds grow, people consume more sustainably (carbon lowered by 10.38 tonnes and 35, 418 items diverted from landfill on Nov 14th 2012)
How do you ensure the quality of your work?
A Sharing Economy is built on trust. By co-creating, crowdsourcing, building networks, partnerships, peer2peer, trust ratings, continually testing, evidencing demand amongst user groups, businesses in the Sharing Economy, we improve the quality of our work, ensuring relevance, social impact, value and that it serves a need. Sharetrade™ is the industry standard in development to ensure quality in this new market. We have built credibility through relationships with organisations including: WWF, SustainAbility, RSA, SEUK, FareShare, M&S, KPMG, UnLtd, Big Society Network, Cabinet Office, NEF, NESTA, Co-operatives UK, the Guardian, Sustainable Brands. Sharing is in our DNA, we challenge ourselves and live by our values. We carry the Social Enterprise badge (SEUK). Our Share-o-Meter (in development) is tracking and measure the impact of sharing. Our newly created investible legal structure (S Corp) takes sharing to its highest standard. Our agile processes mean we continually improve on everything we have done before.
How is this a viable venture?
Through the investment we are raising, we are developing a further 11 categories of compareandshare.com. In-kind support to date includes: services provided by: KPMG, Big Society Network, Little John, NCVO, UnLtd, Microsoft, Thompson Reuters Foundation. Compareandshare.com currently aggregates car and ride sharing services, customer affiliates include: Zipcar, Whipcar, Liftshare and Blablacar. Our revenues are diversified across 3 streams: pay-per-click; corporate licensing and membership. We create value by enabling organisations to do more with less, matching surplus with demand, reshaping the world through sharing.
How do you maximise the use of connections and networkign to work on your purpose?Through networking we champion and embed sharing culture. We partner with aligned organisations, creating shared value, including: ICAEW /WWF (Finance Lab), Nesta, BITC, UnLtd. On Global Sharing Day, we brought together 165 partner organisations, resulting in collaborations, increased levels of resource sharing and carbon reduction. Through our partnership with M&S we bring the Sharing Economy onto the High Street via clothing recycling initiative Shwopping; via Sustainable Brands we communicate the importance of sharing through the supply chain and via business models to large corporations including Coca Cola; with Co-operatives UK, CIVA, NCVO, we participated in collaborative networks, co-creating, innovating, demonstrating the value of sharing; with UnLtd Future we built new, sustainable business models; with students at London Metropolitan University and Brighton University we share opportunities and with FareShare and Tasting the Future we will make a world record for the greatest number of people sharing food in a single day.
More on Benita Matofska & The People Who Share here | @benitamatofska