We spoke to the purpose-driven social impact leaders of our partner companies during the COVID-19 pandemic to find out the challenges they faced, how they resolved to overcome them, and their thoughts on accelerating Shared Impact.
In this series, we will continue the session with Karola Horvath, Co-founder of Twopresents. 
Twopresents is a Hong Kong-based social enterprise that provides a unique party invitation service with a charitable twist. We send party invitations and raise funds for a charity and gift of our donor’s choice. Our mission is to make a difference through sharing and celebration.
With physical distancing in place during the pandemic, fewer people would organize birthday parties or large-scale celebration events. How has this affected Twopresents? What are the other unique challenges faced by Twopresents and how are you trying to overcome them? What are the major lessons you have learnt that would go into building resilience in your organization, and/or further your impact going forward?
Twopresents, along with other social ventures, have been negatively impacted as people stopped organizing birthday parties, venues and schools closed, and people stayed home. The core of our business is based on people being invited to a significant occasion that involves celebrating birthdays, leaving parties, anniversaries and weddings. Even though some events went virtual, the gifting part of the event somehow was left out.
In terms of lessons learnt, we recognize the need to diversify our service and business model. However, it is easier said than done. Given the extremely tight resources we and many social ventures face, it is not easy to implement diversification even though we have a few plans that would help us. Also, social ventures did not receive any COVID aid from the government, and since the existing funders haven’t offered any relief packages, we are left on our own. We must minimize costs to function at the bare minimum capacity.
How would you describe the social impact space in Hong Kong? What are its strengths and weaknesses as an ecosystem for social impact leaders? What are the changes needed to make Hong Kong a more favorable place for the creation of sustained social impact?
The social impact space in Hong Kong has been gradually developing over the last few years. I still feel that resources are scattered so it is hard to gain access to useful information, especially for non-Cantonese speakers. There should be more organized sharing of resources. Funders who have supported organizations should remain engaged with them.
Though I don’t have concrete data, I understand that quite a few of the SIE Fund-funded projects have gone under. So the SIE Fund should extend its support to those who they supported in the past and are still around. Support must focus not only on new ideas but also those who are still around, providing valuable service to the community.
In addition, there is a need to create more channels of cooperation and exchange among foundations, sharing corporate philanthropic resources and assistance in areas of law, finance, accounting, advertising, HR, etc.
Lastly, where do you see Twopresents five years from now?
We would like to expand internationally assuming we can get additional resources.
