Social Stories Club – Spreading joy and impact one social enterprise gift box at a time

Posted: 10 November 2020, in News

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Based in Edinburgh, Social Stories Club is a social enterprise gifting company shining a light on social ventures and their stories of impact across the UK. Each product inside the hampers supports communities and details a fascinating story of impact in a dedicated booklet. To date we have invested £40,000 in the social enterprise economy, introducing over 2,000 people to social enterprise, and supported nine of the sustainable development goals from the United Nations.  

When I, Karis Gill (24 years old), and my co-founder Aayush Goyal (23 years old), first discovered social enterprises we felt immediately inspired by the potential. If all businesses had a social mission, wouldn’t the world be such a wonderful place? Introducing the UK to social ventures everyday through gifts is such a joy, it’s a really nice feeling to be able to spread positivity and help deliver impact.

We were running Social Stories Club by ourselves at the beginning of lockdown. Being such a small team we were used to working on all areas of the company. We are always collecting market research and adapting our strategy accordingly. We were already very quick to adapt to change, so when the pandemic came along our first thoughts were how can we serve both our customers and the social enterprises we support.

We spoke to lots of social enterprises to find out their struggles in this new reality. Many had taken a hit and were struggling with drops in sales and difficulties with supply. We found out that it was some of the smallest social enterprises who were the most affected by the pandemic and we knew we had to do something to help. 

So we launched a crowdfunding campaign with gift boxes full of products from the smallest social enterprises as a direct response to the situation. The idea was to give these social enterprises a boost in the run up to Christmas. The campaign was a success and we raised over £4,000. These will be Christmas gifts that will be delivered in December.

We also wanted to serve our wonderful customers as we found that with lockdown comes disconnection and they were looking for ways to connect with their family and friends when they couldn’t meet in person. There was nothing we wanted to do more than give our family a hug so we came up with a way people can do this from afar by introducing our Hug-in-a-Box hampers. These included warming treats to emulate a warm hug. 

We have also recently hired our first employee, Natalie, who has taken over our marketing and is running our social media channels. This allows us more time to find new ways to serve our community. This Christmas we will be providing quality employment for individuals with barriers to join the operations team. This has been something we have wanted to do from the start and we are grateful that we can provide these employment opportunities when they will be needed the most. 

We are looking forward to Christmas and to be able to help create joy in such uncertain times. It is a privilege to support our social enterprises and to continue to share their positive stories of impact, because the world needs a lot more positive stories this Christmas!

Aayush Goyal and Karis Gill
Founders
Social Stories Club