In the non-profit partnerships team at Yoti, we’re always excited when we are able to see through a really socially impactful use case of our identity checking platform. Occasionally, however, the stars align and through one great partnership, we are able to creatively mobilise our resources to go that bit further.
Social impact through your social life
This happened recently with Steve Rimmer, Co-Founder of the Tickets for Good platform and related non-profit initiatives including the Tickets for Good Foundation and the TicketBank. We first met Steve when he applied for our non-profit hack event in September. He had all the ingredients for a good project – deep understanding of users, a clear problem statement, and – critically – the dedication and enthusiasm to be a great product owner. We jumped at inviting him to participate, and were thrilled when his idea to develop TicketBank, a platform to facilitate the donation of event tickets to charity partners, won a developer team to work on the project for the next few weeks.
Business for good
We quickly discovered that in addition to our shared drive to support non-profit work, we were also keen advocates of the BCorps movement of companies committed to using business as a force for good – we’ve been an accredited member since 2015, and Steve is currently going through the process for TicketsforGood. We therefore had the pleasure of collaborating further on a BCorps project over the next few months.
However, our partnership with Steve didn’t end there.
Joint mission
Steve ‘got’ Yoti – not just the technology, but also our principles. So he started to explore its use case for other projects he’s working on, and has already integrated Yoti to be used to register and login on the TicketsforGood platform. He could also see utility for MyVenue for Clubs application, which enables people to use their Yoti app on their phone to prove their age at bars and clubs. So he kindly made introductions to a number of Sheffield venues.
On our side, we knew a number of charities we thought could benefit from the TicketBank. We introduced Steve to vInspired – and they are planning to partner on this project this year. We’ve also offered him the use of our events space should he ever need it.
It’s been great working with Steve, thinking creatively about how we can help and learn from each other. This is very much the BCorps spirit and something we’d like to apply to our partnerships more generally. If you’re a non-profit or BCorps and would like to talk about how we can work together, please get in touch!