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Plant with Purpose Case Study

Plant With Purpose is an international non-profit that works with rural farmers experiencing poverty. The organization takes a holistic approach to aiding farmers, focusing on economic empowerment, environmental restoration, and spiritual renewal.

The Challenge

When Alphabet announced that they were sunsetting Google Sites, Plant With Purpose needed a new platform. Their main criteria was a solution that integrated with Google Drive and allowed them to store and share documents with employees across the United States and Canada.

However they were also hoping to find a platform that could go above and beyond and help strengthen relationships and build a sense of community among employees as they scaled their organization.

Katherine Padgett, marketing manager at Plant With Purpose, and her team were drawn in by Jostle’s simple interface and its people-first approach to communication. Katherine compared it to the intranet at a previous job, and felt that Jostle offered the best parts of an intranet and kept everyone connected and informed.

The Strategy

Building ‘The Shed’

Though their main criteria was a knowledge center to replace Google Sites, Plant With Purpose also hoped their new solution would offer some social features. Their organization was growing rapidly and they wanted a way to keep employees connected to each other.

Not long after using Jostle, they saw the potential to create a central space where employees could engage with one another in a more personal way.

The Shed, their Jostle platform, quickly became their virtual gathering place where employees go to share both work updates and personal moments—like celebrating birthdays or sharing new recipes they discovered.

It’s become their go-to way for employees to chat and share updates about their life unrelated to work, replacing the old, impersonal all-staff emails used previously.

“One of our values as an organization is upholding relationships, even as we scale,” Cal Roa, People Experience Specialist at Plant With Purpose, explains. “The Shed has been a great space for us to do that.”

Library

The Shed is also where all the official copies of files are stored. Their library stores a variety of resources ranging from compliance posters to annual reports and everything in between. Whenever an employee is looking for a document or file, they know they can visit The Shed to find what they’re looking for.

To ensure the most current documents are in the library, each department has an assigned ‘librarian’ responsible for maintaining and updating their team’s content.

This is especially important as a non-profit since they have a lot of data to manage and donors to speak with, so everyone needs to be up-to-date with what’s going on and be able to quickly find reports and materials.

Thanks to their commitment to keeping the library up-to-date with the latest information, they’ve created a single source of truth that’s been much easier to navigate than shared Google Drives or combing through old email chains.

Nurturing Employee Experience

Transition to a new platform takes time, so Plant With Purpose has run a number of games and competitions to encourage adoption.

Their most successful initiative was the fall photo challenge. Each week, new photo categories (like your halloween costume that year) were added to Jostle and employees added their submissions, which were voted on. The challenge was so popular that discussions spilled out of Jostle, with people complimenting each other’s photos in meetings and other gatherings.

On a more regular basis, they do initiatives such as ‘Wellness Wednesday’ where they share strategies to take a moment to relax during the workday, whether it's stretches or meditation or interesting articles focused on wellbeing.

Buy-in from senior leadership has also helped Plant With Purpose drive adoption. Their CEO, Scott Sabin, regularly writes articles and encourages employees to engage with news shared to The Shed, which Cal says has meaningfully helped drive engagement.

Results

Since building The Shed, Plant With Purpose has found it much easier to manage their documents and find information fast. Their dedication to ensuring all documents are up-to-date and relevant means that employees can grab what they need and trust that it’s the current copy.

Furthermore, The Shed has fostered a stronger sense of community among employees, enabling them to connect on a personal level and share their experiences.

With executive buy-in as well as weekly initiatives, Plant With Purpose has turned The Shed into a place where employees go on a regular basis to connect with each other, hear the latest news, and find the information they need to do work that matters.