WipeOutLoneliness

Andrew is one of Australia's foremost social entrepreneurs. He wrote his Master's thesis on social enterprise a decade ago -- long before most people had even heard of the concept -- and has spent the last ten years building businesses designed to have a social impact. Andrew's passion is building sustainable communities and helping disadvantaged groups overcome social barriers. 

Andrew is Founder and CEO of the not-for-profit WipeOutLoneliness.org and the social enterprise Stitch.net. Both organizations are at the forefront of solving not just social isolation and loneliness, but also helping address some of the most challenging social issues of our time: opportunities for all; respectful engagement across communities; increased understanding; mobilizing community action as a force for good. 

Andrew's work has been featured in some of the world's leading publications, including TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Forbes, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Bloomberg TV. 

WipeOutLoneliness is solving social isolation, loneliness, and social disconnectedness on a global scale. We have built a solution to improve the lives of not only the most vulnerable members of the population, but also for society more generally overall. 

Social isolation has a greater health impact than obesity, alcohol, poor diet, or lack of exercise, and has approximately the same negative impact as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 

Our project combines a non-profit charity (WipeOutLoneliness.org) with a  social enterprise (Stitch.net) and uses innovative technology and social engineering to not only address the primary issue of social isolation, but secondary issues such as:

• Increased opportunities for disadvantaged members
• Increasing respect & understanding across communities
• Mobilizing members around positive social change

We already have a global community and have demonstrated an incredible impact. We are now working to reach the next level of scale to elevate humanity as a whole.

We are tackling one of the most under-recognized issues in modern society: loneliness, social isolation, and social disconnectedness. 

Social isolation has a greater health impact than obesity, alcohol, poor diet, or lack of exercise, and has approximately the same negative impact as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 

We have initially focused on disadvantaged members of society who face identifiable barriers to social connection -- the elderly, those with disabilities, or who are financially disadvantaged -- but our broader goal is to improve the lives of everyone, no matter who they are.

The issue is huge and global: 20% of Americans describe themselves as socially isolated; 25% of Australians are lonely each week; 30% of people in the UK say they don't belong to a friendship group. Social disadvantage increases the impact even further.

Recent research into the health impact of isolation and loneliness suggests that up to 7 million people per year may die from factors attributable to loneliness, with a corresponding impact on the health system from correlated factors like heart disease and diabetes creating a health care burden over $6.7Bn in the US alone.

Few issues are so huge without having any meaningful, recognisable and scalable solutions.

Our project combines a non-profit charity (WipeOutLoneliness.org) with a technology-based social enterprise (Stitch.net) to create a new type of social community which targets isolation and loneliness on a global scale.

In contrast to today's misleadingly-named "social network" technologies such as Facebook and Twitter, which have been proven to increase isolation and division in society, we leverage the work of our research partners at Swinburne, UNSW & MIT to activate, nurture, and grow positive new social connections. 

Our technology platform, in the form of the Stitch web site and mobile app, helps Stitch members create and establish social connections through shared activities, interest groups, discussions, and one-on-one connections. 

It is not the features of the technology that makes the solution truly innovative, however, but the way they have been designed to promote positive social change that subsequently translates to the real world. 

This solution has created a community of over 100,000 members in 3 continents and over 50 cities worldwide, which has mobilized its members to create positive change in each others' lives and "stitch" the fabric of society back together. Clinical measurement of our impact has been compelling, reducing loneliness & isolation by 54%.

Currently Stitch & WipeOutLoneliness targets loneliness & social isolation for anyone over 50. We chose that age group as a starting point for several reasons: 

• the negative health impact from loneliness on older adults is more pronounced; 
• shrinking social circles is an inevitable part of aging, driven by factors like relocation, health, divorce & death; and 
• today's aging population means the issue is escalating every year.

Within our population, we provide explicit assistance to those facing the most significant barriers (disabilities, financial stress, minorities, etc), but the overall solution is provided by the whole community, regardless of social status. 

The reason for this is that social isolation is a unique challenge to solve. Not only does the social stigma around loneliness make it self-defeating to create a community "for lonely people", but the issue requires that the people we are helping need to be actively involved in the solution itself.

That's why we involve thousands of member volunteers in the creation of the Stitch community. In the 6 years since we started, I have had direct personal contact with over 15,000 Stitch members, and in the last month alone ran workshops for over 300 members to give us their input. 

Stitch addresses aspects of all three Elevate dimensions. Our behavioral design, for example, is unique for an online platform in promoting understanding between members through changed behaviors, and we have a mission to elevate awareness about the impact of isolation and loneliness through WipeOutLoneliness.org.

It is the opportunities we provide for our members, however, that stands out as our strongest dimension. Almost every Stitch member will tell you that they feel left behind in some way. We are providing them not only with a community, but new opportunities to make a difference and a renewed sense of purpose. 

In 2008 I was living in India while working for a large multinational after a long career in technology, and searching to do something more meaningful with my life. I started studying an executive MBA at INSEAD, which was where I stumbled across the field of social enterprise while studying my MBA at INSEAD. My life changed overnight. The idea of creating sustainable businesses specifically designed to make a social impact was the best thing I had ever heard. 

I promptly set about writing my Master's thesis, which was on a practical theory of sustainable social enterprise. After I finished my MBA, I did the only thing that made sense: start a social enterprise so I could put my ideas in practice. 

It was called Tapestry, and was a simple tablet computer designed to help seniors who had been left behind by technology stay connected to their families and access the services they need.

Tapestry made an impact, but 4 years working in large active adult communities taught me that the issue of social isolation was far bigger than we realised, and was not just limited to seniors. I sold Tapestry and used the proceeds to create Stitch.

I've been fortunate enough to experience the importance of Stitch on my own mental health and wellbeing. Soon after we launched our first community, my teenage son encountered a severe period of depression, which he hid from me and my wife up until the point he tried to commit suicide. 

He came very close to succeeding, and we then spent the next 18 months trying to piece his life and ours back together. 

It was toughest on him, but it also had a profound impact on my own mental health, and I struggled to cope. To my surprise, it was the Stitch Community that helped me get through. The support and sense of connectedness I received from members of the community helped me cope better than my wife did. I found myself re-evaluating my own relationship with social connections, with the power of community, and how those things relate to my health and wellbeing.

Thousands of members have told me about the positive impact Stitch has had on their lives, but I don't need them to tell me, I've experienced it myself. When something has had such a profound impact on you, it's impossible not to be passionate about it. 

My career has covered so many different disciplines that I used to wonder if I would ever be suited to a "normal" job. But it's been clear as I've built Stitch that I wouldn't have been able to succeed if I hadn't first taken such a multifaceted journey to get here.

I spent a large part of my career working for a large multinational, starting in software development and ending up as Director of Technology for Honeywell. Software, leadership, analytics, planning, and innovation strategy have all been vital for Stitch. I led Employee Development across Asia-Pacific, giving me a strong grounding in human development

I am a published author of multiple books. My second book -- published by National Geographic prior to 9/11 -- was on Islam and attempted to promote better understanding of a religion that few outsiders understood. My travels, including 4 years living in India, gave me a profound appreciation for and understanding of other cultures, which has been important for engaging diverse backgrounds on Stitch.

I have already covered my background in social enterprise, but I studied my MBA in Singapore and China, and won the Dean's Award for topping my year at both INSEAD and Tsinghua University. Many of the skills I learned -- negotiation, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing -- were indispensable to Stitch, particularly when we raised capital. 

I even spent two years as a film director & designer, which gave me the skills to do all the visual design and film work for Stitch.

The best example is how we have responded to the crisis caused by COVID-19. 

As you'll read in the later questions, we had built a business model based on generating revenue based on the impact we create, effectively receiving funding from the major US health plans for our impact on loneliness & social isolation for their members.

At the start of 2020 we were celebrating a hugely significant milestone, reaching financial breakeven for the first time.

And then COVID-19 struck.

In a single week in April we lost 90% of all our funding. The business model we had spent the last several years building was gone overnight, and not coming back. 

We spent the next 3 months reinventing the community to include not just in-person interaction, but a range of virtual and online components to help our members cope with lockdown. 

The results have been astonishing. We have tripled our member subscriptions in three months, our member engagement is now 4x higher than it was before COVID, and we are now reaching more remote and disadvantaged members than ever before. 

We turned the biggest challenge we ever faced into opportunity. 

We've done that many times over the last 6 years.

Everything I do at Stitch involves leading and inspiring a very large and diverse community of individuals to effect positive change in the lives of others, and no single example stands out more than any other.

Some recent instances may however give an indication of what leading the WipeOutLoneliness movement means.

In May I created and led an event to connect and mobilize Stitch's many African-American members, who unfortunately face particular barriers in most online communities. 

For Stitch the solution is to foster role models who help lead the way. My goal was to cultivate a number of African-American volunteers who could be those role models.

The event had its challenges, as I faced abuse from right-wing trolls, criticism from well-meaning members who felt excluded, and understandable questions about why a white Australian would be the one to lead an initiative for a large group of African Americans. 

I was able to use my position as an outsider as a strength and generate a fantastic outcome. 70% of attendees volunteered to become Community Champions and are now actively leading our African-American community. In the past 2 weeks alone I have led similar initiatives with blind members and other minority groups.

When most people talk about what makes Stitch unique and disruptive, they often point to our technological innovation, as that's most easily observable.

It's true, building Stitch has involved a lot of technological innovation. We use unique machine-learning algorithms to keep our members safe from scammers and fakes, and we are unmatched by any comparable web site when it comes to safety and authenticity. We have built incredibly complex algorithms to match people to activities they enjoy in a way that will enrich their lives. And of course we rely heavily on technological innovation to create an enriching experience for virtual and in-person engagement for members on Stitch.

All of those things are innovative and unique to Stitch, but we think what makes Stitch stand out as truly unique and innovative is the way we use advanced research into human behavior and combine it with social engineering to create a positive impact.

Companies like Facebook leverage behavioural engineering and dopamine triggers to cultivate addictive behavior and generate clicks, traffic, and profit, but we know this creates a fragmented, lonely and divisive society.

Stitch & WipeOutLoneliness, on the other hand, uses the work of our research partners at Swinburne, MIT and UNSW on social connectedness and socialization to drive behavior that optimizes for positive behavior and social impact, not profit.

Nobody else is doing what we do. The result is a more welcoming, just, inclusive, and equitable community than society more generally, and a model for how to elevate humanity.

Stitch & Wipeoutloneliness make an impact by creating real and measurable life improvements for people who are lonely or socially isolated. We do this through a whole-of-community approach in conjunction with our innovative technology platform, through events and activities, outreach initiatives, interest groups, one-on-one connections, discussions, and individual interventions. 

To build our partnerships in the US health industry, we needed more than just a "theory" of change: we needed to demonstrably identify and measure all the components of our impact chain in order to prove our impact not only on the health and wellbeing of the people we serve, but its secondary impact on aspects as diverse as healthcare costs, employment, and community engagement. 

When it comes to social isolation, loneliness and mental health, the impact chain is large and complex. Beyond the primary beneficiary (the Stitch member), secondary beneficiaries include:

• Health insurers
• Public health providers
• Local, regional and federal government
• Family members 
• Carers
• Employers
• Local community groups

We measure impact through a series of surveys to provide a snapshot of the member's social and mental state at baseline, 60 day, and 120 day intervals. We rely on academically-proven methodologies to capture measures of:

• Loneliness
• Social isolation
• Physical health
• Mental health
• Physical and social activity

We then use these measures to quantify our impact on the wellbeing of our members. 

With our healthcare partners in the US, for example, we demonstrated a 54% reduction in loneliness, and quantifiable improvements to both physical and mental health which could be mapped back to healthcare cost savings, demonstrating a long-term healthcare cost saving of $387 per member per year.  

Similar impact chain measures exist for other beneficiaries: the link between loneliness and mental health, for example, highlights an impact on employee productivity and employment, which means improvements in mental health have benefits not only for the individual, but to employers, government, and the community more broadly.

This question's word limit means we can't cover every element of our impact chain in detail, but the above examples of the most important components demonstrate our approach to how we create and measure our impact.

Stitch currently has approximately 150,000 registered members, with around 20% of these active on a regular basis. 

This is because the majority of our members live in areas where we have not yet activated the community; in our actived community areas, active member engagement is around 45%.

After overcoming the setback of COVID-19, the community is now growing faster than ever before, with member engagement and activity growing 50% month-on-month since May. 

Over the next 12 months we will be expanding the community footprint to all the countries where we already have some level of community participation. This primarily includes major English-speaking communities in countries such as the UK, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

We anticipate our community growth to expand our impact footprint in the next 12 months to 400,000 members with a regularly active membership of over 100,000 members.

Over the next 12 months we will also be working on expanding Stitch to support multiple languages. We already have active community members in countries like Brazil, Singapore, India and Argentina, for example, and expanding our community to multiple languages will allow us to dramatically expand the community. 

Through our growth in both existing countries and the new territories we will serve over the next five years, we anticipate that in five years' time we will be improving the lives of over 2 million people worldwide, with over 500,000 of them active on a regular basis.  

Our goals for the next five years can be characterized into two broad areas: 

• increasing the breadth of the community, and 
• increasing the depth of the impact we make. 

Increased breadth for WipeOutLoneliness is based on continued and accelerated membership growth. As outlined in the questions on partnerships and our plans for growth, WipeOutLoneliness will be leveraging a combination of strategic partnerships and investment to dramatically grow the size of the community.

Over the next 12 months most of this growth will come from countries where the community is already established, but over the 5 year horizon we will be supporting countries and communities all over the world after completing our plans for community globalization and localization.

It is the depth of our solution, however, that we believe can make an even bigger impact, as we are doing far more than simply addressing loneliness. 

Stitch has built a unique platform which rewards members who make positive change in the community. This includes driving positive social change, promoting understanding between disparate membership groups, and acting as agents for social good. Our social design system is unique to Stitch but already has demonstrated its ability to achieve outcomes such as unlocking the potential for disadvantaged and minority members of the community to drive change, such as our initiatives for African-American members, blind members, political understanding, and more. 

We will continue our relentless focus on driving our members to create positive social good, in the process elevating and inspiring humanity across the globe.

Any organization that needs to generate enough funding in order to maximize its social impact faces financial, cultural & market barriers, and Stitch is no exception. Building a solution to address social isolation, however, creates a set of barriers that are unique to us.

Loneliness is not like most conditions. It cannot be solved in isolation. You can't deliver a "solution" to loneliness to a single person at a time.

Research tells us that directed intervention for social isolation -- such as "befriending" programs in which a volunteer spends time with an isolated person -- show short-term benefit but limited long-term impact.

The only long-term solution to loneliness and isolation comes from the generation of real and genuine new social connections. 

In practical terms, that means the only way to successfully deliver a solution comes with scale. Our experience building Stitch has shown us that a community needs to reach critical mass before it starts meeting its potential to generate impact. 

When we started the organization, this meant critical mass at a single location. But we've learned that to truly make a difference at scale, it means critical mass across a large number of dimensions. Of people with different cultural backgrounds. Of people with specific interests. With certain disabilities. Different ages. Languages. Needs. 

That means that raising awareness of the community at scale, and working with partners to do so, is more critical for WipeOutLoneliness & Stitch than almost any other impact-based organisation.

For the biggest barrier we face -- raising awareness -- the strategy that has worked most successfully for Stitch has been to work with partners in government, the healthcare industry, and other non-profits, to build and grow our community.

As you'll read in the next question, we've had proven success building partnerships in the US healthcare industry, for example. These partnerships have been challenged by the COVID-19 crisis, but over the long term they still remain our surest path to sustainable impact. 

We have rebuilt our partnership outreach program over the past four months and now have support from NSW Health. Our strategy will be to replicate these same partnerships through government and the health industry in the US, Australia and the UK initially, before taking the same approach to all our other territories.

One of the main reasons I am applying for the Elevate Prize is the opportunity that it provides to raise awareness of Stitch & WipeOutLoneliness and to increase our partnership opportunities as a result.

Beyond awareness, we face a long list of barriers, including:

• Financial - like most impact organizations we face significant financial challenges. We have demonstrated the ability to create financial self-sustaining impact, however, and will be continuing to work with our health partners to overcome these barriers
• Legal - Stitch needs to be fully HIPAA-compliant to make full use of our partnerships in the US. We have started this process but will need some support & advice from partners to be fully successful

In the 2 years prior to 2020, we had been building partnerships which would generate revenue for Stitch based on the impact we created.

We had formed a close partnership with the health and wellness provider Tivity Health, and through them to the major health plans in the US (Humana, CIGNA, etc). As we rolled out the community to new locations across the US we formed partnerships with the local county, city and state health departments. In February we were preparing our launch in Houston, in partnership with the Houston Health Department.

I had created similar partnerships in our other territories. These differed in structure to reflect local conditions, but the overall goals are always the same: to work with organisations which care about the health and wellbeing of older adults and vulnerable members of the population. In Australia we formed partnerships with local councils in various municipal districts, as well as NSW Health.

Many of these partnerships have been devastated by the pandemic. Tivity Health, for example, was forced to terminate all its social programs as a result of the financial crisis triggered by the pandemic.

The good news, however, is that our response to the pandemic has demonstrated we can still improve lives while keeping people safe, so those same organizations are now engaging with us again. 

The NSW Minister for Mental Health will be helping us roll our programs out across the state. The Elevate Prize would help us build similar partnerships across the world.

My first exposure to social enterprise was my Master's thesis back in 2008, which focused on the construction of sustainable business models for social enterprises that align incentives with impact, and I've been focused on this issue in all the social enterprise work I've done since.

For Stitch, we've been able to successfully demonstrate the viability of a hybrid business model which combines elements of for-profit, social enterprise and non-profit in order to deliver maximum benefit equitably to the greatest number of people. 

Our model consists of three components:

1. Impact-based revenue;
2. Member subscriptions for those who can afford it; and
3. Charitable donations to allow us to reach those who fall through the gaps.

Our impact-based revenue has been generated through our partnerships via health insurers in the US. We serve Medicare- and Medicaid-Advantage members (typically 65+) with our programs. By clinically demonstrating the impact we have on the physical and mental health of our members, including reductions in loneliness & isolation, we have demonstrated improvements in health resulting in long-term benefits to both the health insurer and the member. In other territories we are working to replicate this model with relevant partners, for example through the public health system in Australia and the NHS in the UK.

For members under 65 who are not financially disadvantaged, our model is based on member subscriptions to the community.

And for those who are financially disadvantaged, we deliver change based on charitable donations from our broader membership base and other donors.

This question isn't 100% relevant to us, as we have already achieved financial sustainability. The combination of our three revenue streams has allowed us to build, grow, and sustain the business to the point it is at today.

Our challenge is not how to reach financial sustainability, but how to amplify and accelerate our impact and to grow. 

Our entire strategic focus is therefore on building the right partnerships to allow us to do that. 

We need to dramatically expand the number of healthcare partners who support us so we can reach a sustainably-large audience and expand our impact-based revenue. We are doing this today but partnering in the health industry for a social service can be extremely slow, and we would benefit greatly from assistance to help us to accelerate this process.

We also need to scale our member acquisition in order to amplify our subscription revenue. We anticipate raising impact capital to allow us to do so.

And finally, we need to dramatically increase our donor base for the charitable donor-based programs we run for our most disadvantaged members.

Raising the profile of WipeOutLoneliness.org and Stitch through the Elevate prize would greatly assist all three of these goals. 

Over the last 12 months we have generated US$579k in revenue. This consisted of:

• $152k member subscriptions
• $427k impact-based revenue via healthcare partners

The charitable arm of the organization was only approved for tax-deductible donations in June 2020 so we are only commencing our donor-based fundraising now.

We anticipate raising impact capital in order to accelerate our impact but are likely to wait until the situation with COVID-19 has stabilized (at least to some degree) before doing so. This will be a mix of:

• Impact investment in our social enterprise Stitch.net, and
• Philanthropic contributions to our non-profit charity WipeOutLoneliness.org

The figures below are based on detailed actuals over the past 12 months, factoring in anticipated growth:

• Wages & salaries - $387k
• Travel - $24k
• Office / G&A - $25k
• Insurance - $13k
• Bank charges & merchant fees - $2.6k
• IT infrastructure - $37k
• Contract staff - $29k
• Accounting & legal - $15k
• Advertising, marketing & promotion - $130k
• Rent - $52k

As outlined earlier, the largest barrier we face is in scaling the community enough for it to make an impact for every single person who joins. When someone joins Stitch in an isolated area, we can't help them until we activate the community in their area to make an impact. We have hundreds of thousands of members across the world who are waiting for that to happen.

Unfortunately there is no single solution to this barrier. We are growing steadily, but some communities will never be established without the right partnerships, along with the resources, funding, advice and assistance required to make them happen.

That is why we are applying for the Elevate Prize.

MIT Solve provides a unique platform to give exposure to impact projects like WipeOutLoneliness to the kinds of partners that are essential for a project like ours to succeed. 

Building those partnerships from overseas, without the visibility that a prize like Elevate provides, is very, very difficult. (Trust me, I've spent the last 6 years developing partnerships with US health care partners, local government, investors, & the media to build Stitch & WipeOutLoneliness to where it is today while being based on another continent, and know from experience how difficult it is to do.) 

The Elevate Prize provides a singular opportunity for WipeOutLoneliness to  raise the profile of WipeOutLoneliness & Stitch with exactly the audience we need to grow our community to the next level and make an impact on a global scale.

Important needs for Stitch & WipeOutLoneliness include:

• Marketing & exposure: the networked nature of a social community means we rely on reaching critical mass in every single local community in order to deliver impact.
• Funding: we need the support of donors to enable our outreach programs to the most vulnerable and needy, and impact investors for our social enterprise.
• Monitoring & evaluation: proving evidence of our impact to health plans has been key to our success to date, but we need to take this much further to enable partnerships at the scale the solution requires.
• Board / advisors: we are establishing our non-profit in the US and the UK and will need key board advisors in both locations

The evidence around social isolation and loneliness is that there are so many barriers for disadvantaged groups -- including financial barriers, transport challenges, disabilities, access to technology & more -- that no single organization can provide the entire solution for all of society. That means that partnership and collaboration is critically important.

In our case, the primary partnerships we need to develop are with the organizations that have a vested interest in the long-term health and wellbeing of their constituents. 

In the US, this includes health plan partners (United, Kaiser, Anthem, etc) as well as government at the municipal, state, and federal level. In Australia it includes various state & federal departments including Health, Mental Health, Aging & Resilience. In the UK it includes the NHS and various governmental ministries (including the Minister for Loneliness).

To help us develop the resources to build these relationships, however, we need to build a number of supporting partnerships, many of which are members of MIT Solve. This includes:

• Funding from foundations which focus on the health of disadvantaged groups or building resilient communities, such as the Novartis Foundation or The American Family Institute;
• Impact investment from funds focusing on social impact, such as DBS Foundation & KSF Impact
• Advice and assistance to help us overcome a range of challenges, such as legal assistance from the Lex Mundi Foundation
• Collaboration with existing non-profits who work with disadvantaged communities, such as United Way, Mather Lifeways, etc