Coralus 2023 Impact

Right now: There are people, young and old, cleaning up garbage on beaches so that our oceans can thrive. People you haven't met yet have created chemical free, package free products that are diverting plastic from arriving on those beaches.

People are reimagining care for the sick and elderly. People are inventing ways to preserve our water, our wild lands and rivers. People near and far are repurposing castoffs from coffee byproducts to construction materials to reduce waste of all kinds. Someone is creating a biological alternative to petroleum.

People are reimagining access to important news stories told by those who are living them. People are offering job opportunities to the disenfranchised. People are creating ways to test drugs without using animals.

People are testing a new way of leading so that you can learn from them. People are earning a fair wage in a safe workplace that allows them to show up as they are each day. People are dedicating their time to protecting your fundamental rights and your access to nature. People are regaining their connection to their ancestors and their heritage. People are teaching those traditions to the rest of us.

Someone is genuinely moving at the speed of trust, embracing seasons of growth and rest.

Someone is reaching out for support when they feel shame, fear, despair. Someone who is lonely wished for connection–and found it.

Someone wants to invite you into a conversation on a walk or over a meal. Someone is willing to listen to your story, wants to know who you are at your core. Someone in your orbit has exactly the skills, connections, insights, or experiences that you need and wants to share them with you.

People are joining together to create the new world today.

YOU. ME. US. CORALUS

Coralus collectively practices different ways of doing things for a better now and a better inheritance. Nine years into our collective journey, we’re continuing to learn from each other about what we’re creating and making space for. We’re sunsetting, releasing, and growing beyond a model that centres finances and moving to center community, relationships, and sharing knowledge and wisdom. We’re not here to go “against the flow;” we’re looking for where the flow needs to go, making space for ancient ways of coming together in new contexts. We’re making space for our collective to be brave and take a chance on a big idea, knowing that we are with them.

We’re also finding the truth and beauty in the process of undoing and unlearning together. We’re revelling in the awe of things outside of our individual "selves" and the witnessing of the strength, courage, gifts, and moral beauty of others. Looking back on 2023, we stand in awe and deep respect for our community members. The grit, generosity, integrity, and humanity that we saw is heartening.

This report will share some data and some of those stories. While we’ve tried to include a wide range of stories here, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of stories that are shared in smaller circles of trust, moments that are preciously held between a few members of our community.

We honour those stories and connections, the ones that aren’t ours to talk about. Those sacred confidences and personal connections are the most important outcome of our collective work.

This report includes data and stories from across our global community, a window into our collective journey over the course of 2023. This is going to be a lot of information, so we encourage you to dig into the sections that you feel called to learn more about.

We’re sharing with you what we’ve been noticing and what we’ve been collecting and we hope that you’ll stay curious about what you’re seeing.

We invite you to reflect on what you're reading and we would love to hear more about what this brings up for you.

Members of the Coralus community are engaged, generative participants in creating a better world. The leaders of our Ventures are often following their life’s work, sensing what is needed in their communities and the world at large.

The impact of this work can be hard to measure, but using a combination of external impact measurement tools and internal tracking, Coralus Ventures are able to show some of the outcomes of their work over a year. Many of these outcomes are told as stories in the context of broad categories. Comparing the work of one venture to another doesn’t make sense in most cases; it’s not even apples to oranges, it’s more like apples to salmon. That said, our combined efforts in similar spaces can be inspiring and motivating as we look for more ways to collaborate and grow.

Many Coralus Ventures could (and do) show up in several sections of the impact report below. They may be creatively building inclusive work environments, creating plastic free products, supporting communities in times of crisis, and doing programming to educate young people all in the same year! In an effort to include stories and data from as wide a range of Ventures as possible without making this a book-length publication, we haven’t included all of the stories and data that we received or found for every category.

There’s having carbon neutral operations, and then there’s being climate positive. Better Packaging Co (NZ 2018) did a full audit of their carbon emissions in 2020 and now

offsets their already low emissions by 120%!

Also in New Zealand, Chia Sisters (NZ 2018) has been certified Zero Carbon and Climate Positive by Ekos since 2019. They’ve had solar power on their factory roof since 2018, when they became New Zealand’s first solar powered juicery, and frequently generate more power than they need to operate. They now offer refilling of their glass bottles, and are working to have 50% of their sales come from customers refilling their bottles by 2025. They also send the backing from their paper labels to be used as tissue paper for shoe boxes and other packaging, which saves 0.82 tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere!

Other ventures are following in their footsteps! 10,000 Beekeepers (CA 2023) is working to become carbon neutral, moving to plastic free packaging in 2023 and installing solar panels on their production facility to become more energy efficient.

Toni Desrosiers of Abeego (CA 2015) invented the beeswax wrap as a sustainable (and more functional) alternative to plastic wrap and plastic bags. In 2023, they launched Abeego Mini Campfires as a way to use every last leftover scrap of fabric and beeswax to make adorable portable mini campfires, making their production process zero waste.

Gotcare (CA 2019) has expanded their care network, reaching over 100 rural and remote communities across Canada. Their focus on matching patients with caregivers who both meet their needs and share their identities is unique, something that is made possible by their extensive network of frontline workers. Gotcare provides their workers with scheduling flexibility and a true living wage, helping them to thrive in their roles and beyond.

In 2023, Gotcare provided care and support to over 750 patients and family caregivers. They also continue to offer upskilling opportunities for their home-based healthcare workers to enhance their wages by 20%.

Bellevie (UK 2022) ran a campaign in collaboration with local businesses to spread joy to some of the people that receive care at home from the award-winning Bellevie team. Bellevie’s mission to help people stay connected to their communities and continue to do things that they enjoy, even as their support needs change. Whether they were delivering bouquets of flowers, craft kits, fish and chip meals, or a special dance performance, Bellevie team members were able to share moments of delight and connection with the people they support.

BelleVie was recognized at the 2024 Home Care Awards with a total of four wins and one high commendation. Judges said: “BelleVie Care has proved itself to be a force for excellence and innovation in the home care sector."

In Nanaimo, British Columbia, Ay Lelum The Good House of Design (CA 2022) was selected to design and create site-specific areas into the design of the brand new Courtyard by Marriott hotel. The Snuneymuxw First Nation is the majority owner of the hotel, which is located on culturally significant land where the Snuneymuxw cared for the now extinct wool dogs.

The City of Nanaimo is collaborating with Ay Lelum to honour Snuneymuxw First Nation culture with three new utility covers, which “serve as a unique canvas for Snuneymuxw art”.

In October 2023, Australians voted on a constitutional referendum which proposed the creation of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to their federal government. In a significant setback to reconciliation, the country voted against the referendum, refusing to formally recognize the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in parliament. The results of this vote were announced the day before the Coralus Australia (un)Summit.

As we grieved, the Coralus community in Australia made a commitment to stand in solidarity with our Indigenous siblings and decided to select an all-Indigenous cohort of Ventures from Australia in 2024.

Food insecurity is a rising problem in Atlantic Canada, with 22.5% of households in Newfoundland and Labrador being food insecure. While the growing season outdoors can be short, SucSeed (CA 2017) is working with schools and community groups to get vegetables growing indoors.

In 2023, SucSeed and the Ulnooweg Indigenous Communities Foundation provided hydroponic kits to all Newfoundland and Labrador English School District Schools in Labrador. These students join over 35,000 other students and 1,500 educators growing lettuce, peppers, kale and more!

CPA Moms (US 2023) continues to train and support family-oriented CPAs, helping more parents to achieve financial success while prioritizing their families. They had 7 women practice owners (all mothers) open in 2023, who hired a total of 19 women accounting professionals (most mothers). The focus CPA Moms places on work life harmony and family in their training and mentorship has allowed all of these women an opportunity to work a flexible, well-paying, work from home job, where they can serve entrepreneurs while raising their children.

Chooice (NZ 2022) has become the largest community of Kiwi entrepreneurs. They support over 3000 businesses selling over 300,000 products and 90% of their platform users are women. Their platform has helped these small businesses generate over 7 million NZD in revenue, reinforcing their belief that “the best way to build a sustainable community is to support the businesses that are already there.” In December they announced a massive update to their platform for 2024, designed to make it better for shoppers and businesses alike.

Coralus collectively practices different ways of doing things for a better now and a new inheritance. Members offer and access resources at their own pace, creating a self-regenerating, pay-it-forward pool of skills, connections, funds, and support then used to advance ventures and the collective doing world changing work.

Coralus has circulated nearly $19M to 190+ women- and non-binary-led ventures by distributing capital via collective decision-making. 45% of those founders are from chronically excluded racial and ethnic groups. The payback rate on its unsecured 0% interest loans is 95%. Founded in Canada in 2015, Coralus' current footprint includes the US, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.