our story

The inspiration:

In 2009 Hermione figured it was time she went on an adventure, so she and Sara decided to cycle from London to Morocco. Yes, that’s quite a long way, and quite a silly thing to do. Especially for Hermione who was an unfit amateur cyclist with a metal femur and an electronic pancreas. It was clearly going to be quite tough and both women wanted to use the challenge to raise sponsorship for a cause they were passionate about: the environment.

But they didn’t like the idea of asking their friends for money, as would have been traditional, and felt that the environment needed people’s action more than it needed their money anyway. So they decided to ask their friends to sponsor them by doing simple green actions instead.

A good friend, Hayley Hunter, developed a simple website to collect sponsorship for their ride. At this stage it was called JustSaving and they offered their sponsors the choice of ten different actions (DoActions #1-10). It was a real hit, they raised sponsorship from 216 people and saved over 16 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of 84 flights from London to Morocco!

The reaction they got was mind-blowing, from friends and strangers alike. And so on their return Hermione decided that the concept couldn’t just lie and gather dust and she would have to do something with it. Here was an incredible opportunity to create a nation of doers. And so The DoNation was born.

Throughout 2010 Hermione worked on developing the concept, raising funds, building a fantastic support network, and growing the team.

Here is the result.

It’s come a long way, but we hope it’s still got a lot further to go.

Our mission:

Our mission is to inspire wide scale, positive and sustainable action by enabling people to donate by doing.

We want to motivate people to do fantastic and inspiring challenges, and to help them raise sponsorship without emptying their friend’s wallets. But most of all, we want to encourage everyone in the nation to do simple, meaningful things in their day-to-day lives to help protect our planet.

The need for change

A staggering 42% of the UK’s carbon emissions are a result of our individual daily actions. That means half our country’s footprint is in our control. So surely we should stop waiting for government and big business to change things, and start doing green stuff ourselves? If only it were that easy…

We realise most people don't wake up in the morning and think “Hey, today I’m going to cycle to work to help fight climate change!”. We humans don’t work like that. We all have more pressing priorities to deal with than ‘saving the planet’.

Like supporting our friends.

And that’s exactly what The DoNation thrives on-friendship.

For us doing green stuff is about supporting friends, helping to push them through their challenge – it’s not about saving the planet single-handedly.

And who knows, maybe it will help people realise that doing green stuff isn’t about hugging trees and wearing hair shirts, it’s just a pretty fun, healthy way of living?

A Social Enterprise:

The DoNation is a social enterprise – that means we work like any normal business but with a stronger focus on our social and environmental aims.  We want to grow and develop over the coming years without having to continually beg for financial donations, but we want to ensure that our environmental and social aims remain as important as our financial ones. So that’s why we're a 'not for dividend' company and at least 50% of our profit has to be reinvested into achieving our mission.