Why giving back isn’t something we got around to. It’s a foundation.
When I was building Add Then Multiply, I made a decision early on that giving back wasn’t going to be something we got around to eventually.
It was going to be a foundation.
Not a marketing exercise. Not a box to tick on an ESG report. Not something reserved for when the business was big enough to afford it.
A foundation. Built in from the start. Non-negotiable.
That decision led us to B1G1, a global giving platform that connects businesses to high-impact charitable projects around the world. And since joining, we have contributed to initiatives across more than fifteen countries and created over twelve thousand six hundred individual impacts, connected to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for quality education and gender equality.
I want to tell you why. And why I think more founder-led businesses should be having this conversation.
Doing good and doing well aren’t mutually exclusive
For a long time, there was a widely held belief in business that commercial success and social responsibility existed in tension. That you could be profitable or you could be purpose-driven, but holding both at the same time required compromise.
I’ve never believed that.
And after forty years in finance, I’ve seen enough evidence to say with confidence that the businesses that build genuine social purpose into their foundations are not weaker for it. They are stronger.
Not because good intentions generate revenue. They don’t, on their own.
But because the founders and teams who care about more than the bottom line attract people, clients, and partners who share those values. Because the businesses that operate with integrity in every direction, including in the communities they impact, build the kind of trust that sustains growth through difficult periods. And because when you have to make hard decisions, and you will, a clear sense of purpose is an anchor.
The question is whether that belief is reflected in how the business is structured, not just in how it talks about itself.
The values behind Add Then Multiply are in the book as much as the methodology.
Get your copy to read the full story, the real deals, the real numbers, and the principles that sit underneath all of it.
Why we chose B1G1
B1G1, Buy One Give One, was founded on a simple idea. That businesses of any size could embed giving directly into their commercial activity. Not as a donation at the end of the year. Not as a percentage of revenue after costs. But as a structured, habitual part of how the business operates.
We give one percent of Add Then Multiply’s quarterly profits to B1G1.
That decision was made deliberately. Not because one percent is a large number. But because committing to a specific, measurable giving target changes how you think about the business. It connects your commercial success directly to something beyond your own growth. And it makes the giving unconditional, not contingent on a good quarter or a convenient year.
Through B1G1, our giving has supported education initiatives and projects that address gender inequality across more than fifteen countries. Those two causes, UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 for quality education and Goal 5 for gender equality, were not chosen randomly. They sit at the heart of everything we do through Funding Focus, our social enterprise committed to equitable access to capital for underrepresented founders.
The connection is direct. If we believe that funding inequality is a problem worth solving, then we should also be contributing to the upstream conditions that create more capable, confident, educated founders and investors from every background.
What this has to do with your business
You may be reading this and thinking that B1G1 is something for businesses larger than yours, or that structured giving is something to consider once you’ve hit the next milestone.
I want to gently challenge that.
The founders who build the most sustainable, resilient, and ultimately valuable businesses are not the ones who add purpose when they can afford it. They are the ones who build it in from the beginning, when it still costs them something, and let it shape the decisions they make as they grow.
That’s not idealism. That’s strategy.
The businesses between £1m and £10m that I work with are at exactly the right stage to make this decision. Early enough that it becomes genuinely foundational. Large enough that even a modest giving commitment creates real-world impact.
And the commercial logic is real.
Clients choose to work with businesses they trust and admire. The best people choose employers whose values they share. Investors, increasingly, are applying environmental, social, and governance criteria to the businesses they back. And in a crowded market, purpose is one of the clearest differentiators available to a founder-led business.
None of that makes giving a marketing tool. But it does make the absence of genuine purpose a commercial risk as well as a moral one.
Building a business with genuine purpose starts with knowing where your foundations actually stand.
The Growth Readiness Assessment shows you exactly that, across strategic financial planning, operational excellence, people and culture, and technology and innovation.
The twelve thousand six hundred people
I want to be honest about something.
Twelve thousand six hundred individual impacts sounds like a large number. And compared to the resources of a large corporation, what we give is modest.
But B1G1 is built around the idea that aggregated small actions create real change. That a thousand businesses each giving consistently, even at a modest level, collectively move the needle in ways that occasional large donations cannot.
And there is something in the discipline of giving regularly, of knowing that each quarter a portion of what this business earns goes somewhere beyond us, that matters to me personally.
It is a reminder that the business is not an end in itself. It is a vehicle. For the founders we work with, for the mission we are building through Funding Focus, and for the wider world that we are, however modestly, trying to make a little more equitable.
The question worth asking
If your business reflects your values in everything it does, what does it say about giving?
Not what you plan to do eventually. What you are doing now.
That question is worth sitting with honestly. And if the answer feels uncomfortable, that’s not a reason to dismiss it. It’s information about where the next step might be.
The businesses I admire most are the ones where the values on the website match the decisions made in the boardroom. Where the commitment to doing good and doing well isn’t a positioning statement but a practice.
We are not perfect. We are trying. And we are committed to doing more as the business grows.
That is the most honest thing I can say about it.
Know your numbers. Build your foundations. And build something worth building.
What does your business do, beyond its own growth, that you’re genuinely proud of? Drop it in the comments. I’d like to hear it.
Before you go
📖 Get your copy of Add Then Multiply, the full story of the FACE methodology, the deals behind it, and the values that drive it.
⚡ Find out where your business stands across all four foundations with our Growth Readiness Assessment.
✉️ Our weekly newsletter, The Multiplier Effect lands every Wednesday. Practical thinking on funding, scaling, and building a business worth owning.
David B Horne
Founder of Add Then Multiply & Funding Focus
Add Then Multiply is a fractional finance and business scaling consultancy helping founder-led businesses at £1M–£10M+ to Fund, Acquire, Consolidate, and Exit.
