Be honest - How small businesses can contribute to society

We are people, not just legal entities

Small businesses - especially in the software market - are in a very unique position. You see, while consumers often view us no different to our bigger competitors within the capitalist framework, our close proximity to end-consumers provides us with the mutual understanding of their struggles, needs, and wishes. After all, business owners are also customers - not to mention human beings! You might not realize it yet, but this dual-perspective puts us in the position of powerful agents of change.

How so? First and foremost we are (mostly) not bound to a legacy corporate structure that slows down processes and impact - and instead upholds a status quo. While our resources may be limited in comparison to Big Corpo™, we more often than not have opportunities that allow us to act freely, or have the connections to mobilize. We will go into a deep dive further into this blog post, but to give you a few quick examples:

• Advocate for Social Causes
• Implement Sustainable Practices
• Support Local Community Engagement

Collectively, these actions can contribute to significant societal shifts by bringing movement to new or already existing causes, proving that small businesses - through authentic engagement and responsibility - can indeed change the world.

How to be honest

What do I mean when I talk about honesty and transparency? I mentioned earlier that transparency is already an established marketing practice. Marketing has always been about psychology and influencing consumers: from using specific lights and scents in grocery shops to fake scarcity marketing and no-bullshit-promises. Appearing truthful and transparent builds trust with customers and can differentiate a brand from its competitors. But I want to be clear: this is not a guide on how to grow revenue or establish your brand - tho that’s not mutually exclusive - it’s about civil disobedience and letting go of old habits. I invite you to be open to new communication strategies, to learn and apply, and build upon the resources I gathered.

Where can we be truthful?

To use honesty in our communication, we first need to figure out who we can be honest with. Transparency is a way to connect with people and entities around you - by figuring out the stakeholders you are able to figure out who to prioritize and how to accurately address the group by choosing the right language.

• Business <> Customers The business brand itself has a relationship with its customers. This is also the one relationship businesses focus on most, by using marketing strategies, customer satisfaction researches, and measuring customer loyalty. Besides the fact that this relationship directly correlates with the success of the business, it is also always in the spotlight. Customers increasingly seek out companies that speak out about social justice issues, not only regarding the customers themselves but the employees, too.
• Employer <> Employees To be clear, when I say “be transparent with your employees” I don’t mean open offices and detailed time tracking - these practices can make things even worse. Instead, having a honest relationship between you and your employees starts with caring for each other and treating them with respect, and can end anywhere between actively supporting their mental/physical health and letting them participate in executive business decisions. The important bit here is to understand that your employees are the reason your business works in the first place, so you should show them how valued they are - the first obvious step here is a fair pay. Working towards this understanding will help you keep your precious employees long term! A study made by Homebase in 2022 underlines that small businesses excel at making employees feel valued.
• Employees <> Employees I highly recommend fostering a workplace where your employees feel safe to be transparent with each other. Let’s finally end the era of “not talking about money”. Talking about salary is a way of mutual aid, empowering them to be more confident about their own worth. Employees need to have a self-determined work environment, which empowers them instead of keeping them small. This also means supporting unions, and going beyond what the legal minimum of worker rights are.

How to not be performative and stay accountable

Transparency can manifest in various ways, but it's important to distinguish between performative transparency and transparency by design - and how to act when it matters most.

Performative Transparency:

This approach involves superficial or selective sharing of information, often intended to enhance public image without enacting substantial change. While it may offer short-term benefits, it risks hurting trust if your customers perceive the transparency as insincere or manipulative. It shows itself woven into the capitalistic framework. Prominent examples are:

• Changing social media profile pictures during Pride Month (and not contributing anything else to LGBTQIA+ causes)
• Collecting money for organizations just to write these off
• Donating money to social justice organizations while simultaneously also supporting opposing organizations
• Employing BIPOC, POC, Black, LQBTQIA+, and disabled people without changing or adapting internal processes to accommodate their needs and acknowledging their structural struggles
• Selling items or services that profit off cultural, religious, historical, etc. contexts without respecting them and investing back into these social groups

Transparency by Design:

In contrast, transparency by design integrates openness into the very fabric of your company's operations and culture. It involves proactively sharing information, welcoming scrutiny, and embedding ethical considerations into decision-making processes.

For instance, companies pursuing B Corporation certification commit to rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. This certification requires businesses to consider the impact of their decisions on all stakeholders, ensuring that transparency is not just a policy but a core aspect of their identity. TelemetryDeck’s friends at Peerigon have such a B Corp certification! And we are working on getting the badge in the future, too.

This also includes constantly reflecting on your actions to make sure you’re not using social justice issues for marketing purposes. For example donating money to organizations or movements is a welcoming help, but it doesn’t send the right signal if your company simultaneously supports the aggressor, too, right? So how can small companies avoid being performative?

First we need to see the company as an extension of ourselves. It’s not an arbitrary entity which has nothing to do with us as a person, in fact it is as much a part of society as we as humans are. Just like we unlearn our internalized racism, ableism, and other -isms, our company needs to unlearn these as well - because it is woven into the capitalistic structure. This is especially true since capitalism is even benefiting from social injustice. Hiring specialists and mentors for the respective fields to help eliminate harmful habits and structures inside the company as well as training executives and employees to dismantle their internalized -isms is substantial to the cause. Be comfortable to learn and grow as a team, experience it together, book your annual anti-racism workshop!

Here’s 3 steps you can focus on right now:

• Utilize your platforms to raise awareness about pressing social issues like anti-racism, feminism, LGBTQIA+ and queer topics, anti-fascism, inclusion, war, and so on. These can be local and global.
• Adopt environmentally friendly operations, setting examples for larger corporations.
• Engage directly with your local communities, driving grassroots initiatives that lead to noticeable societal benefits. Offer free workshops, sponsor events/utensils and supplies/etc., make your office space available for group projects/organizations, and so on.

We should start treating our workspaces as places of activism, being one of the very few places where multiple people actively get together - despite being in an environment deeply rooted in capitalistic structures - and especially when work hours are long and there’s no energy or time left for socializing after working hours.

How to stay accountable:

Even while being intentional with how you support social justice issues, we can still act in performative ways. The important bit here is how we react to criticism that is directed towards our doing/the system (and not us as individuals). The most difficult part is to accept to have been wrong, to sit through the shame and embarrassment. We regularly experience companies who - when getting called out - their first reaction is to defend themselves. And you might find this behavior familiar, since we as people tend to do the same when we hurt others around us. To believe it would be scarier to acknowledge ones own fault than working on reparations is foolish, and to unlearn this behavior is the key to good, healthy relationships. Not only in your private life, but also with your business.

How does TelemetryDeck act on this?

TelemetryDeck consists of people from around Europe and the United States. We share similar values, and each and every one is unique in their own way; thus, many contribute to society in one way or another.

As a company, TelemetryDeck is obviously heavily invested in user privacy. We stay up to date with current legislation to make the world’s greatest privacy-focused analytics software! We also share our stance against fascism openly in our bi-annual update blogs, and Lisa and Daniel regularly attend local protests, too! In our weekly team meeting, we offer generous time when everyone can share (voluntarily) how they are feeling and what they’ve been up to. In this way, we acknowledge the fact that our company is made up of people with their own lives and feelings, not just human resources expected to perform their tasks without emotion. Some are more open than other’s - the important part for us: everyone is welcome to share without judgment. The positive effect on our work includes a much better mutual understanding of the workload and deadlines of each person, providing a place with as little pressure as possible and the opportunity to help each other.

There’s still more we want to do. As mentioned earlier, we plan to get a B Corp certification in the future. And as we grow, more opportunities will open up for TelemetryDeck as a legal entity to drive change.

Here’s what some of our team members do individually:

• Lisa, our TelemetryDeck co-founder and privacy specialist, is currently running for local elections in Augsburg (2026). She also visited the European Parliament in Brussels in February 2026 and advocates for the right of privacy and encryption at the EU level.
• Daniel, our TelemetryDeck co founder and CTO, does live translations at various community conferences such as Chaos Communication Congress and Fusion.
• Marina, our technical writer, does sensitivity reading for TelemetryDeck. They do volunteer work for an LGBTQIA+ non-profit organization and also regularly engage in talks with Lisa or Daniel about social justice topics during meetings or in DMs.
• Jaqueline, TelemetryDeck’s marketing manager, is a Scouts member and leads children and youth groups. The scouts team is a safe space that teaches sustainable practices and educates about equality.
• Konstantin, one of TelemetryDeck’s developers, contributes to a local non-profit organization aiming to make citizens less dependent on big tech. He also works with other organizations focusing on tools to improve decision-making on the city level - allowing citizens to be more involved and connected with their communities while implementing core EU privacy and data protection frameworks.

Look into the future

I am hopeful. Because I want to be, and because I need to be. And I want to make you hopeful, too. Our businesses are inside the system and are the system itself that upholds the status quo, and that means we can change it. The steps might seem small and insignificant, but change has never been instant. With current political, social and environmental issues it gains more and more importance each day to act and be involved. When we start seeing our businesses as powerful tools to drive change, we can move the trajectory of the world into a future that everyone can look forward to.

Because, if you think about it - what’s actually the difference between small businesses participating in activism and Big Corpo™ lobbying with politicians?

Thanks for reading, and never stop caring!