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Impact Report May 2020

Published June 16, 2020

We established Tomorrow because we want to play our part in creating a better, more sustainable tomorrow with you. Our Impact Report is a compact monthly update that keeps you up to date on our progress. With the latest figures, insights into how we are committed to the SDGs of the United Nations and the lowdown on additional projects that we want to continue to grow with our positive impact. Let’s get started!

Your money is our capital for change

Your money is our capital. Unlike at many other conventional banks, it is not invested in the arms industry, factory farming or coal-fired power plants. So the more money we take away from these banks, the better. Money, after all, needs to be part of the solution, not the problem.

The more money that is paid into our accounts, the more good we can do.

So in the month of May

Our joint contribution to protecting the climate

Every time you use your Tomorrow card in a store, a small fee is paid to us by the retailer. But instead of pocketing the money for ourselves like other banks do, we are investing it in a forest protection project in Brazil. The more often you pay using your Tomorrow card, the more square metres of rainforest are protected.

The Amazon is the world’s largest intact rainforest and the climate protection contribution is helping to preserve it. The money is being donated to a forest protection project in Portel, Brazil and the area we are protecting is growing every month. In the month of May we protected a total of

Offset your carbon footprint with Zero 

With Zero, our premium account, you can offset as much CO₂ as the average German emits in a year: around 11 tonnes per year. The more of our users who switch to Zero, the more CO₂ will be offset. Together we can make a significant change. 

We are currently funding three climate protection projects for the CO₂ compensation. Read more about how that works here.

Tomorrow and the Sustainable Development Goals 

In 2015 the United Nations defined a set of global goals for sustainable development: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Tomorrow is committed to these SDGs. In each of our Impact Reports we will pick out one of the goals and explain in more detail how we are contributing to fulfilling it.

We ensure that our climate protection projects are not only for the good of the climate, but also the people in the affected region. One example of this is our support for small-scale farmers in Peru, as part of our Zero initiative. These farmers are given the rights to land, which they can use to harvest Brazil nuts on, for example. The trees, which are up to 60 metres tall, have always been a natural part of the rainforest. In addition, the farmers receive micro-loans and support with marketing and processing the nuts. This project therefore not only protects the rainforest in the Amazon, but also enables farmers to become self-sufficient and earn a decent living.

What else?

Every month we try to increase our positive impact further with new projects and initiatives – but also by giving talks, participating in demos or simply by taking a stand. Here’s a current overview:

Donating for a good cause

We are all affected by the repercussions of the coronavirus crisis. And it’s very clear that we can only overcome it together. By now we know that every crisis hits the weakest members of the global community the hardest: those without a strong lobby, such as the refugees stranded at the borders to Europe and on the Greek islands. We see it as our collective mission to ensure that solidarity doesn’t end at national borders. That’s also why, together with you, we have been collecting donations for Doctors Without Borders (Ärzte ohne Grenzen e.V.). Around 800 of you got involved and in next to no time we notched up an impressive total of around 21,000 euros. We also integrated the “Pay Now, Eat Later” initiative into our app so you were able to support your local eateries despite them being closed. And lots of you got involved here too. You’re all fantastic!

A chat with zebras

A lot of start-ups aspire to be unicorns. That is the term given to young companies worth more than a billion dollars. But we don’t believe that profit should be the sole motivation or ambition. That’s why we can really identify with the whole Zebra movement, which originally comes from the USA. Zebras stand for profit AND the common good. And because zebras are herd animals who seek solutions together, we invited another three zebras to our first ever digital Zebra Talk at the end of May: Joana Breidenbach, the co-founder of Betterplace.org, Milena Glimbovski, who established Original Unverpackt and Oguz Yilmaz, who is a digital consultant and set up an agency for sustainable artist management. Plus over 200 participants, who brought their questions to the discussion about new solutions for a better tomorrow. It was a really exciting evening with plenty of inspiration and food for thought. And that was only the beginning… We’ll be keeping you updated about future events on our channels so make sure you stay tuned!

Disclaimer: We updated the Impact Report - deposits in May were about 58 million in contrast to the 51 million that were initially stated.