A Second Decade with Purpose

Today, I’m delighted to announce the next big step in our journey: we’re joining the Capgemini Group as an independently run Public Benefit Corporation.

Over the past decade, we’ve worked alongside our partners to mobilize tens of millions of people on issues like the climate crisis, refugees, LGBT rights, gun violence, global poverty, and many more. We have grown to a core team of just over 100 people with offices on six continents. Our campaign innovation model, Purpose Labs, is achieving significant impact. We are helping an increasingly diverse range of non-profits and philanthropies to harness new power. We are seeing rising interest in our work defining and activating purpose in the private sector. We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve as a relatively small organization. But we believe the moment we’re in requires an even more ambitious approach to pursuing our own purpose.

In a time where the threats to democracy are multiplying and the forces of nativism, intolerance and denialism are deploying increasingly sophisticated digital tactics, we must step up the scale and depth of our work. That is why, last year, we began searching for a partner who could accelerate our trajectory by supporting and investing in our growth, geographic reach and capabilities, while also valuing and respecting our independence and unique voice.

In Capgemini and its digital innovation, consulting and transformation brand Capgemini Invent, we have found that partner. We will expand our digital capabilities and gain vast new data and analytics capabilities to help us run our campaigns more effectively, reach new audiences, and better measure our impact. We will be able to integrate powerful insights from Capgemini’s work on organizational change. We will take our work on defining and activating purpose in the private sector to a new level by adding an ability to actually shift business models and practices. We will be able to tap into the know-how of more than 200,000 staff across more than 40 countries – with support to expand Purpose’s footprint. 

We’ve also found a partner and parent company that deeply values our strong voice and the distinctive role we play brokering across the sectors on major global issues. Purpose will operate within the Capgemini Group under a policy of Editorial Independence. This principle – borrowed from the media industry – means that Purpose will retain full discretion over the campaigns we create, the delivery of those campaigns, and the clients with whom we do and do not work. Purpose will remain a separate operating entity, independently run and adhering to our Public Benefit Corporation charter. 

I look forward to continuing to serve as CEO and Chairman, and our extraordinary Purpose partners Jessy Tolkan, Anne Keenan, Dan Shannon and Simon Goff, together with our CFO Jon Damon and Chief of Staff Claire Harman, remain at the helm. For our clients and partners, this means the Purpose you know is now backed by truly global infrastructure and reach, along with sophisticated new data and analytics capabilities for even greater impact.

We are so excited for this next big step for Purpose. And I am incredibly grateful for all the wonderful friends, clients, partners, staff and alumni who helped to get us here. This is more than I could have dreamed of when we started Purpose a decade ago, clumsily assembling furniture in a single-room office in New York. Our mission to advance the fight for a more open, just and habitable world has never been more urgently needed than it is now. Together with Capgemini we are ready for a second decade that truly meets the moment.