TechForGood Case Study: Embedding Purpose with Auditable Carbon Neutrality
TechForGood is redefining IT procurement with its "B-Commerce" model, operating as a B Corp certified social enterprise built on a "purpose before profit" foundation. As a company that donates 50% of its profits to social empowerment initiatives, embedding sustainability and transparency into its operations isn't just a goal, it's a core requirement.
To validate its commitment and scale its impact, TechForGood needed a robust, credible way to measure its complete carbon footprint. NetNada's comprehensive carbon accounting and climate reporting platform proved to be the perfect fit, empowering TechForGood to efficiently achieve an auditable Carbon Neutral certification across Scopes 1, 2, and 3.
From Passionate Purpose to a Data Bottleneck
When Stella Heesom founded TechForGood, she built it from the ground up as a social enterprise, moving away from a purely profit-driven model to one focused on creating meaningful change. This commitment quickly led to B Corp certification and a clear mission to become a Net Positive Technology Supplier by 2030.
Since launching in November 2021, TechForGood has:
- Grown from 2 people to a team of 17.
- A certified social enterprise since June 2021.
- A certified B Corp since February 2024.
- Reached $1.8 million in revenue in 3 years, projected to $8 million in year 4.
- Secured #8 on The Australian Financial Review Fast Starters list.
- Maintained a 95% customer retention rate—growth entirely by word-of-mouth.
However, this mission came with a significant operational challenge. As an IT reseller, TechForGood's environmental impact was dominated by its complex Scope 3 (supply chain) emissions. The team's existing methods for tracking this data were manual, time-consuming, and siloed in spreadsheets. This created a bottleneck, making it difficult to get a timely, comprehensive, and most importantly auditable view of their full footprint. The team's passion for impact was outpacing its tools for measuring it.
Key realisation:
TechForGood needed a carbon accounting solution that mirrored its own core values of transparency and efficiency. It required a platform that could move beyond spreadsheets and provide a single source of truth for its emissions, one that was robust enough for third-party auditing.
The team found its ideal match in NetNada. The platform’s ability to automate data processing and manage all three GHG protocol scopes in one place was the solution they needed.
"We live by our values, but proving our impact with spreadsheets was becoming a nightmare. We were drowning in manual data entry, especially for our complex supply chain. It wasn't scalable, and it wasn't providing the level of integrity we needed." — Stella Heesom, Founder and Head of Impact
From Manual Mess to Automated Measurement
TechForGood’s most significant hurdle was Scope 3. The first step was to get a clear, accurate, and complete picture of its emissions data without spending hundreds of hours on manual data cleaning.
NetNada’s platform was instrumental in solving this. By leveraging NetNada's AI-powered system to automatically clean and process data, the TechForGood team could bypass the endless spreadsheet handling. They used NetNada's flexible data ingestion to:
- Automate calculations for all scopes and categories of the GHG protocol.
- Analyse supply chain emissions, enabling them to see emissions by supplier.
- Centralise all documentation in one place, creating a complete sustainability management system.
This automation immediately freed up the team to focus on strategy rather than data entry. They could now see their full footprint and see hotspots within their supply chain, a critical step toward their net-positive goal.
Achieving Auditable Certification with 100% Confidence
For TechForGood, achieving a "carbon neutral" badge was never the only goal. The goal was to achieve a certification that was completely transparent, credible, and verifiable.
This is where NetNada’s audit-ready reporting became a game-changer. The platform provided TechForGood with downloadable reports complete with a full calculation trail, including the specific emission factors and data sources used for every calculation. This provided an unshakeable foundation of trust and transparency.
Key realisation: With a single, auditable data source, TechForGood could confidently engage with third-party verifiers. The platform's alignment with global standards ensured their data was robust and defensible.
The result was a resounding success. TechForGood not only achieved its Carbon Neutral certification for Scopes 1, 2, and 3 but went a step further, offsetting more than twice its emissions. This powerful, verifiable claim alongside profit donation and B-corp reinforces its 95% customer retention rate, which is built on a clear and trustworthy value proposition.
"NetNada gave us the 'receipts.' Our carbon neutral certification isn't just a claim; it's backed by a completely transparent and auditable data trail. That level of integrity is non-negotiable for us and for our customers, who trust us to be a force for good." — Stella Heesom, Founder and Head of Impact
A Partnership for Purpose
By connecting TechForGood's core mission with NetNada's powerful platform, the team automated its carbon accounting and unlocked a new level of operational efficiency and trust. The flexibility of NetNada's system means that as TechForGood scales its "B-Commerce" model toward its projected $8 million in revenue, its sustainability reporting can scale right along with it.
Because NetNada’s platform functions as an open operating system for sustainability, it has democratised impact data across the TechForGood team. This partnership allows TechForGood to confidently pursue its moonshot vision of one million connections and its 2030 net-positive goal, knowing its impact is measured with integrity.
"NetNada's platform is more than a calculator; it's an operating system for our impact. It allows us to embed sustainability into our DNA and focus on what we do best: creating meaningful human connections and driving real social change." — Stella Heesom, Founder and Head of Impact
