The Challenge

Communicating Planeterra’s Commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In the capstone class for my Corporate Ethics and Social Responsibility Certificate, Business Solutions for the Developing World, each group of students was assigned a real company to work alongside to help solve a business problem. Planeterra is an NGO whose mission is to preserve the culture and keep income in the hands of local communities in developing countries. In short, they are a “sustainable tourism” organization. Planeterra connects local tourism businesses with larger players in the tourism sector in order to provide stable livelihoods and grow the economic potential of these developing communities. With over 300 community tourism partners in over 70 countries, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were very relevant to Planeterra.

The UN SDGs are a framework for sustainably conscious organizations to measure their efficacy in social, environmental, and economic impacts. Well-known in the social impact community, many companies are looking to incorporate these goals into their businesses.

My team and I worked alongside Planeterra to outline a strategy to authentically integrate the SDGs into their communications with stakeholders.

The Work

Becoming Planeterra’s Dedicated SDG Experts

During our research and communication with the Planeterra Marketing team, we realized that many organizations are criticized for a performative use of the SDGs in marketing communications. Our main objective became to sincerely present Planettera’s commitment to the SDGs, and back with clear evidence of Planettera’s work with a specific Sustainable Development Goal. To do this, we proceeded with the following:

• Analyze leading sustainable brands to put together guidelines for SDGs Best Reporting Practices
  • Understand the goals and their targets
  • Prioritize which SDGs the organization has greatest impact
  • Measure using key performance indicators

• Determine Planeterra’s alignment with the SDGs by researching Planeterra’s 170+ community partners

1. Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
2. Goal 1: No Poverty
3. Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
4. Goal 11: Sustianable Cities and Communities
5. Goal 5: Gender Equality
6. Goal 12: Peace, Justice and Strong Insitutitions

• Discussion with consultants panel
  • My team had the opportunity to speak with Tifany Boyles of Red Philanthropy Consulting and Street Business School. Tifany has had experience with communicating SDGs to stakeholders and was able to recommend we use a visual chart showing how Planeterra impacts each SDG.

The Results

Turning Values into Visibility

Using the results from our research, I designed an interactive web prototype for Planeterra to use as a template for communicating their involvement with the SDGs. This would serve as a dedicated landing page highlighting each Sustainable Development Goal and the partners that Planeterra supports to reinforce their commitment to each SDG.

Social Media

We conducted a competitor social media analysis and concluded that many organizations in Planeterra’s sphere have little to no mention of the SDGs in their social media. Then, we conducted further analysis of Planeterra competitors’ overall mention of SDGs in their communications and the results were similar to that of social media. The sparse information about SDGs on competitor communications demonstrates an opportunity for Planeterra to be a leader.

With this information, we created social media recommendations for Planeterra.

• Instagram Highlights: A permanent Instagram story found on Planeterra’s Instagram page that discusses the SDGs and Planeterra’s direct contribution
• Verification: Though engagement and verification are not correlated, verified Instagram accounts have more credibility and significantly larger followings.
• Post Reccomendations: My team designed some sample posts for Instagram that Planeterra can use as a template for integrating the SDGs into their social media.

Donor Survey

Planeterra’s main revenue stream comes from donors. With Planeterra’s plans to integrate the SDGs into their business model, we determined that the input of donors would be crucial to Planeterra’s adoption of the SDGs. We created two surveys: one for individual donors, and one for corporate donors, given that their donation patterns and methods are different.

The survey questions are meant to find how familiar donors are with SDGs, if they impact their thoughts and feelings toward an organization, and how they would prefer to see the SDGs implemented in communications.

We recommend that Planeterra uses these results as a feedback loop for their communications.

Indicators of Succes

Finally, we outlined short-term and long-term indicators of success for Planeterra.

Short-term:

• Identify 5 main SDGs and incorperate statistics into website
• Gain greater insight of what motivates consumers (donors)
• Increased trust between Planeterra and stakeholders
• 20% increase in donor engagement on website and social media
• 15% increase in donations to Planeterra via website
• 10% increase in donation to Planeterra via social media
• 70% response rate for donor surveys

Long-term:

• 20% increase in customers for tourism enterprises
• Add 5-10 community partners
• Increase partner revenue
• Establish more engaged and inspired community

See our final deliverables: