Progress and Promise: Changemakers Take Mission-Driven Steps
B the Change Weekly: September 28, 2018
Delivered on Fridays, B the Change Weekly delivers the most important and most relevant stories about people using business as a force for good. The newsletter features a weekly note from the B the Change team alongside insight and context on the stories we share here on Medium. Below is our latest roundup. To receive these insights directly in your inbox, sign up for B the Change Weekly today. Now onto the good stuff:
Our monthlong celebration of the 2018 Best For The World: Changemakers wraps up with a focus on companies that are locked in on their mission to use business as a force for good. Some of these businesses make their dedication official by taking a legal pledge under state law to become benefit corporations, committing to purpose and transparency.
Whether a benefit corporation by law or a Certified B Corporation by B Impact Assessment, businesses that commit to continuous impact improvement set up themselves — and their customers, employees and partners — for future success.
For the 203 B Corps on this year’s Changemakers list, that future is within reach. This week, we continue to celebrate their progress and their promise.
The Benefits of Becoming a Benefit Corporation
Two of the 2018 Best For The World: Changemaker honorees recently made a legal commitment to business as a force for good by becoming benefit corporations. Through this step, Fetzer Vineyards and EILEEN FISHER are legally bound to ongoing accountability, purpose and transparency.
These values aren’t new to Fetzer Vineyards or EILEEN FISHER, which both became Certified B Corporations in 2015 and have long been committed to the environment, their employees and social good. But becoming a benefit corporation formalized many of their everyday practices and beliefs.
To help your business decide whether it’s ready to take the same step, we talked with officials from Fetzer Vineyards and EILEEN FISHER to learn more about the process of becoming a benefit corporation. Read all about it on B the Change.
How B Lab’s Staff Survey Is Shaping Its Approach to Equity
Through its work for the Inclusive Economy Challenge, B Lab identified its most important project: surveying its full staff on their workplace experiences.
Before conducting its staff survey last year, B Lab planned to use the results for year-over-year benchmarking and identification of opportunities for staff education. Instead, the survey results marked a major milestone in B Lab’s organizational understanding and its diversity and inclusion tactics.
What did the results reveal, and why does B Lab think a staff survey should be on every organization’s to-do list? Get the details on B the Change.
B Corp vs. Benefit Corp — What’s the Diff?
As consumers and employees look to buy from and work for companies that align with their social values, more businesses are seeking a structure that puts stakeholder interests on equal footing with the bottom line in corporate decision-making.
Those businesses have two structural options: the benefit corporation and the Certified B Corporation. Companies can be incorporated as a benefit corporation and certified as a B Corp, or just one or the other. And B Corps must achieve benefit corporation or equivalent status to maintain certification in states where such opportunities are available.
It can be tricky for most people to explain the differences between Certified B Corporations and benefit corporations. For a clear picture of the differences — and similarities — between the two, check out this overview on B the Change.
Book of the Week
If you have a specific suggestion, let us know at info@bthechange.com with the subject line “book recommendation.”
Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good
By Ann Mei Chang
“Lean Impact adapts the best practices from The Lean Startup to a new purpose: radically greater social good. The same principles of being customer-focused, building minimum viable products and driving fast iteration through build-measure-learn feedback cycles apply, but innovation in the social sector is harder and involves some unique challenges.”
Drawing on her experience across Silicon Valley, government and nonprofits, Ann Mei Chang presents practical tools and strategies, illustrated by real stories of nonprofits, social enterprises, companies, government agencies, foundations and philanthropists around the world. Lean Impact serves as a guidebook for anyone seeking to maximize social impact and scale.
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
