Dear Readers,  

Following a short pause of comms and events over the summer break, we return with news from across the Future Leap Network of purpose-led organisations.  We very much hope that you have all been able to take time to relax, unwind and reset over the past couple of months, whether that be a holiday or even a long weekend.  

At this time of great unrest and uncertainty surrounding both the economy and the climate emergency, it has never felt more crucial to keep pushing and working towards more sustainable practices. As always, it is encouraging and deeply reassuring to be working alongside an expansive network of inspirational organisations leading the way in innovation and collaboration.  

September brings the return of the Future Leap events programme, and so we hope to see lots of you joining the conversations and engaging with one another.  

As you know, we’re all about collaboration and bringing people together. If you’re reading this as a member of our co-working community, you will already be familiar with our ever-popular monthly evening social.  

Here, we enjoy some food and drinks (on us!) at the end of the day. We’re really excited to be opening these socials up to all Future Leap Network members, so keep an ear to the ground for news of upcoming dates. We hope that this will provide more opportunities for getting to know one another, the work being done within the network, and to simply relax and enjoy one another’s company.  

This month, we are delighted to announce our new chosen charities for the year – Babbassa, DigiLocal and Nature Connection CIC. You can read all about these organisations within our blog. We would also like to thank our outgoing charities, The Converging World, Solutions for the Planet and City to Sea.  

We’d like to take this opportunity to highlight City to Sea’s current Refill campaign, in which they are aiming to bring together change-makers from Bristol’s diverse hospitality community to address the environmental impacts of single-use hot drinks cups, and to make choosing a reusable cup the norm for consumers in the city. They are working hard to develop their Refill app, which will help consumers to locate, borrow and return reusable cups.  

If you’re a hospitality business, you can participate in this award-winning campaign by signing up to the Refill app and putting a sticker in your window – helping your customers to drink, eat and shop with less waste.  

We’re also exited to share with you what we consider to have been the “missing link” of the Future Leap services.  

The Future Leap Consultancy team provide specialist guidance and support surrounding all areas of environmental and social sustainability, from carbon measuring and reduction plans, advice on green tech integration, website and digital optimisation, to workshops and training in all areas of business sustainability.  

We are now able to complete this range of business sustainability services through providing support in financing and affordability through Future Leap Finance, a new and exciting addition to the Future Leap Sustainable Business Network, based in the beautiful Future Leap Clifton hub. 

With a mission to send as many companies as possible on their journey to Net Zero. They do this through the following: 

• Providing ethical lending options to facilitate affordability  
• The implementation of effective sales models to enable green-tech suppliers to support more customers via monthly payment options 
• Measuring the carbon impact of investments over the lifecycle 
• Driving real change in the business lending community surrounding ESG.  

Should these services be of interest, please do contact finance@futureleap.co.uk and one of the team will be in touch as soon as possible.  

As always, please keep sharing your news, stories and exciting updates with us. We want to share your organisation’s achievements with the Future Leap Network and beyond and to communicate solutions to the climate and ecological emergency by working together.  

Keep up the good work.  

Until next month,  

The Future Leap Team.