About Useful Inc.

We are a nonprofit based in Perth, Western Australia

We exist to make doing good as mainstream as cheeseburgers and breathing.

We are a not-for-profit, non-religious, non-political, non-sense, non sequitur organisation of volunteers and some paid staff mostly aged 16 to 30, but we’re not that into age limits.

Our 3 Corest Values

Unconditional Love: To us, unconditional love is where thinking bigger than ourselves, standing up for justice, being kind, generous and compassionate all stem from. We try to make sure everything we do starts with this sort of love. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Humility: We always try and leave our egos outside in the rain, ask to be shown where we need to improve, and don’t pretend to know all the answers.

Commitment to Truth: We try to always question our assumptions, search earnestly for the facts and tell ourselves and each other the truth, even when it’s really hard to.

Our 10 Core Values

Growing what’s Good - We don’t ‘fix what sucks’. We take what’s working well and build on that, both in our day-to-day problems and in our approach to making change in the world.

Questioning Why? - We always ask ourselves why we do things the way we do, because there’s probably a better way, or perhaps we don’t even need to be scheduling that 4-hour meeting in first place. Sometimes you need to ask “but why?” about 5 times in a row before you realise something is a dumb idea. Four-year-olds know this. We try and be like 4-year-olds.

Creativity - We give people the space to come up with different approaches to things. We think everyone is creative, not just “creatives”, and we love it when creativity bursts out of people in unexpected ways (like using a game of “pass the parcel” to share impact statistics).

Environmental Sustainability - Whenever we buy or do anything we make choices that support companies and individuals who are trying to get us closer to a sustainable existence on the planet.

Fun - We try to balance our love of doing excellent work and getting the details right with our love of childish stupidity (e.g. building cubbies, running handstand contests at formal events and playing Pictionary in the middle of serious board meetings).

Wisdom - We trust that people will find the solution when given the freedom to use their own judgement rather than smacking people with rule books.

Openness by Default - So often we think things need to be secret that really don’t need to be, like what your manager’s salary is, or what happened at the last board meeting. Unless someone is going to be hurt by information being shared, we always make it freely available.

Business Mindedness - We think it’s important that everyone in our organisation is conscious of efficiency, scale, financial sustainability and evaluation processes, not just a few special “Senior Managers”.

Inclusion - We try to make decisions and say things that are not unconsciously excluding people who are “different” from us.

Entrepreneurialism - If one of us has an idea, we encourage them to go and do it, then we’ll all believe it’s possible. We really value people who walk their talk. And on that note we’ll shut up and go do some work right now.

The Be Nice, Be Friends Revolution

Using a combination of personal stories, hard statistics and childish illustrations, Founder and Childlike Enthusiasm Officer [CEO] of Useful Inc., Tim Kenworthy unravels the ideas driving Useful Inc.’s work. Don’t look too closely, this presentation isn’t wearing any undies.