Our Methodology

FuturePlus is a comprehensive and accessible ESG impact measurement tool available, designed to be easy to implement for businesses, and informative for finance professionals and the markets.

Meaningful change is required across all industries and will occur when two conditions are met: when customers demand it, and when capital is conditional upon it. 

FuturePlus inspires organisations to recognise that having a positive social and environmental impact rewards everyone. Through the provision of simple yet rigorous indicators and measurements, we will help everyone who works with us to achieve success in a way that customers appreciate, and that markets value. 

We believe that when the incentives to report both impact and ambition are correct, and the rewards are clear, all businesses will change in a way that benefits both the environment and society. 

FuturePlus is a sustainability self-management tool that allows companies of all sizes (but particularly micro, small and medium-sized organisations, that are underserved in this area), to measure, evidence and substantiate their sustainability and social impact, and demonstrate this to investors and customers. 

Our ESG model speaks to both consumer demand, and investment market data requirements in a way that improves marketability, and creates better returns. 

From being able to demonstrate customer appetite, to reducing the cost of borrowing, and improving the value of your organisation, we believe we are able to quantify the returns that can be achieved by being a more sustainable and responsible business.

The measurement tool we have developed has approximately 200 indicators for micro and small businesses (a micro organisation is under 50 employees, and a small under 250 employees), and slightly over 250 indicators for medium to large organisations. 

These are researched and adapted from a variety of best practice sources and industry standards such as recognised certification schemes, ESG indexes, the UN SDGs, UN Global Compact, Governments and NGOs as well as the addition of our own impact-focused metrics. 

The themes are then split across the subcategories of Governance, Leadership, Workforce, Supply Chain, Ecosystem, Carbon Footprint, Manufacturing and Industry and Global Globals. 

These subcategories allow for a weighting of the indicators from Governance at the highest weighting, to Global Goals at the lowest, producing a comprehensive overview of an organisation's social, environmental and ethical policies and the outcomes a company's procedures and products create. Our algorithm is developed to allow for organisations of different sizes and sectors to be compared fairly.

In addition to understanding the current sustainability status and score of an organisation, the FuturePlus platform will allow organisations to create ambitions for the sustainability objectives they are yet to achieve. This allows them to both understand where they are now and where they want to be over the next three years, and track both profitability and impact over the same investment period.

The ability to set targets gives organisations the opportunity to commit to actions within a defined timeframe and forms the basis of an ‘ambition rating’, which bolsters their score and incentivises the organisation to reduce its negative footprint and increase its positive social and environmental impact. 

The ambition rating provides the basis of a sustainability roadmap which can integrate with leading project management platforms and access to specialist advisory services provided by FuturePlus to guide clients along their journey.

As the measurement process requires engaging with the organisations, rather than ‘scraping’ data from external sources, the score is dynamic and can be updated by an organisation on a continuous basis, allowing them to showcase the changes they make and consistently improve their ESG score and positive impact. However, it also allows for scores to be reduced should ambitions and requirements not be met. 

Our ESG model speaks to both consumer demand, and investment market data requirements in a way that improves marketability, and creates better returns. 

From being able to demonstrate customer appetite, to reducing the cost of borrowing, and improving the value of your organisation, we believe we are able to quantify the returns that can be achieved by being a more sustainable and responsible business. 

FuturePlus is also designed to provide portfolio managers, procurement teams and investors with a clear, quantifiable and comparable ESG score for all of their investee companies, portfolios or suppliers. As part of our service, we provide a Portfolio Dashboard, which allows users to group companies into funds and portfolios; to understand the score of each investee or portfolio firm, and to demonstrate in verifiable terms the ESG rating of each investment, fund, product or supply chain.

Our methodology involves working with organisations to gain a baseline understanding of the positive environmental and social impact they are already achieving and to identify how, through the incremental adaptation of their existing business practices, they can make a substantial positive difference, both to the planet and to the communities they operate in, source from, or sell to. 

FuturePlus was created by two senior executives from the commercial sustainability and not-for-profit sectors, passionate about sustainability. We’ve been there and know what works.

Alex Smith is co-founder and partner of The Sustainability Group and leads business development and operations. She is a seasoned business development and operations professional, with a background in developing high-impact partnerships in commercial sport, particularly in the sailing and hospitality industries. Alex creates and develops relationships across businesses and brands to create collaborative, strategic and commercially successful partnerships. With a significant focus on connecting values and purpose, she has led and managed sustainability and social impact projects with sporting brands and commercial organisations that achieve both commercial and environmental outcomes.

Mike Penrose is the co-founder and a partner of The Sustainability Group. Prior to this Mike was Executive Director of Unicef UK, CEO of Action Contre La Faim in Paris and Global Humanitarian Director at Save the Children. As a former advisor to the FTSE on their ESG trading index, he also works with a number of investment firms and family offices on matching social and environmental impact with high-return investment strategies. Mike is also a world-renowned expert on risk, crisis and disaster management and has worked in this field in more than 60 countries. He has also advised many large commercial organisations on how to operate effectively and ethically in fragile environments. A former hostage, having been kidnapped in Chechnya in 1996, Mike also occasionally works as a trauma counsellor for other former hostages and their families.