At Following the Footprints, we’re going all in to support the individuals working in consumer goods brands on their mission to reduce their environmental impact. To do this, connecting with them is key.

→ Our ‘Community’ vision for the future:

<aside> 🌱 Brands connecting with each other, facilitated by us.

We want to provide the space for brands to reach to each other and connect around important issues - not only share knowledge & learnings, but also to have fun.

This might take the shape of a forum, a platform or simply a group chat. We don’t know yet, and this is what we want you to help us figure out.

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→ What we’re currently focused on:

• Our annual events calendar, considering:
  • Who are our events targeted at? Just brands or the entire Following the Footprints community?
  • Partnerships and collaborations - how can we profile and collaborate with other businesses on venues, drinks, food and even fundraising for a cause?
  • Sponsorship - who can we work with to make our events accessible to everyone?
  • Getting it into action - venue, invites, comms, dates…
• Meet the Brands series
  • Building a pipeline of FMCG brands we can feature and interview.
  • Setting a timeline > we’re aiming to publish one interview per quarter.
  • Reaching out and building relationships for future conversations.
• Internal events
  • We love getting together and hanging out as a team. More than just a team behind the newsletter, we are all friends IRL and we love to catch up when we can.
  • From dinner parties, pub nights and the world’s best focaccia… Let’s get some dates in the diary for pub quizzes, weekend hikes and even brewery tours of our favourite brands!

→ Just some of what you could be doing:

• Running events to bring the FTF community together. Think mixers, networking, pop-up shops, hikes, gleaning, tree planting, beach cleans & litter picking. Let’s mobilise an already active group to get together and have in-person conversations within interesting spaces. Project manage the event to make it come to life.
• Empower individuals to run these events themselves. Through conversations find others with ideas they want to get off the ground. Provide them with support and a network to make this happen.
• Meet the Brands - get out there talking to the sustainability professionals within the brands themselves. Lead informal conversations to dig into the why and how. Being a sustainability professional can be a pretty isolated so let’s celebrate the amazing work they are doing among a network who understands it and wants to learn!
• Collaborations - see any opportunities to bring the brand stories to life? Utilise different types of comms to tell brand stories E.g in-store activations, QR codes… let’s get out there on the ground!
• Build the network - Have an eye and an ear on the ground for where you can connect individuals to drive engagement and collaboration. The aim, for professionals to build their networks to collaborate and learn from one another to deliver solutions and scale impact.
• Facilitate the community - The community should bring real meaning and benefit for the brands. Help empower them to run their own events and engage the communities within FtF that they can truly learn & collab with. Help us build a platform that will be useful and provide a solution for individuals to work together within the space.

Note: What you focus on will be informed by your ideas and expertise. The above list is simply to give you an sense for what this sub-team will focus on.