Committing to 100% impact

At Quest, our mission is to make a truly meaningful impact for people, our community, and most importantly, our planet. No BS. No greenwashing, just actionable change. But as a service provider, we asked ourselves how can we make more of an impact through our work? The answer? Our clients.

If you know anything about us, is that we’re known to proudly boast about our sole commitment to purpose-driven clients. We have aimed to stay true to this commitment by having clear criteria and a selection process.

Yes, this means we have made it more difficult for ourselves. There are plenty of difficult decisions that occasionally turn into moral conversations on profitability in business. In our early years, we refused more revenue than we earned. The reason? These projects didn’t align with our vision and we continue to believe this was the right thing to do.

In short: we believe in the balance of people, planet, and profit, and supporting a company that will not tackle real chance won’t help this balance.

So what are our criteria?

Our Criteria

For the most part, our clients have a clear purpose integrated into their business model, impact is an essential part of their DNA, such as volunteer platforms, and climate tech solutions.

We give priority, though not limited to, the following industries:

Climate Tech
Ethical & Sustainable Fashion
Systems Change
Sustainable Food Systems
Happy & Healthy People

Aside from these impact-driven spaces we also look for verified purpose in other ways. As an example, we trust the thoroughness of the B Corp certification process.
We will not work with the following organizations.

It’s a positive impact project used to greenwash the negative impact of a company, and that company has no intention at all to make a positive change.
When we believe the project or organization will have a negative impact, causing harm to people and/or planet.

This includes troubling industries:

Oil and gas
Arms, ammunition, and conflict
Tobacco & Gambling
That market to children
That have controversial or discriminatory stances and/or initiatives.
Loan sharks

Our Alignment Process

Though most of our clients have an obvious positive impact, we also often get requests from organizations where its impact focus is less clear. For these cases, we do an internal scan, which includes answering some of the following questions:

Do they have leadership buy-in? How do management and the board look at impact? Are they willing to make a – sometimes radical – change?
Do they have a significant say-do gap? Basically: do they say they (want to) do more than they actually do?
Do they want us to work on their branding, website, customer experience …? They have to showcase a clear impact strategy. Don’t have an authentic one, or agree for us to co-create one?

Lastly, are they a fit for our team? All our team members are trained impact-warriors and wouldn’t accept it if we’d work for a company that doesn’t align with our vision. So if there’s even the slightest doubt, we take a vote.