Purpose in the Pandemic: What Does Being a B Corp Look Like?
How Oliver Russell Advanced Its Social and Environmental Efforts in the Time of COVID-19
The other day I was in a Zoom meeting with a university class studying social enterprise and a student asked, “What does being a B Corp look like at Oliver Russell?”
I had to think about it a moment. At the one-year mark of the pandemic’s onset, there’s a lot of that going on — reflection and contemplation. So I thought a bit and responded that the best way I could answer her question was to talk about the impact our small company (<10 people) had made in the world since the start of the pandemic.
So what does being a Certified B Corporation look like? Here’s what it looks like at Oliver Russell — a monthly list of the impact we created since the start of the pandemic.
March
We launched a social media campaign on our networks to celebrate women of accomplishment (and bring attention to those who are overlooked) for International Women’s Day and National Women’s History Month. #SDG5
April
We helped start and contributed significant startup resources to City of Good, a new nonprofit born of the pandemic here in Boise. City of Good delivers free weekend fuel (food) kits to school children experiencing hunger, and it provides employment for restaurant workers while purchasing food from local farmers and ranchers. It’s what we like to call a threefer! #SDG2, #SDG8, #SDG17
June
We began work on a top-secret, social impact skunkworks project with another B Corp, RoundPeg Benefit. More to come later in the year. #SDG17
July
We made a modest equity investment in fellow B Corp Treefort Music Fest through Wefunder. We’ve found that Wefunder is an excellent way to provide critical funding for social enterprises while also expressing solidarity, building morale, and lifting amplification for their world-changing efforts. By the way, Wefunder is a public benefit corporation. #SDG17
August
Along with SHE (Style Her Empowered), we co-developed and produced branded face masks to benefit the nonprofit City of Good. In this partnership, not only did we raise funds for City of Good, we created employment for refugee women to make the masks and revenue for SHE, a fantastic nonprofit that empowers education for schoolgirls in Togo, West Africa. We also contributed packaging design and promotion to a cause-marketing beer to benefit City of Good. #SDG1 #SDG4 #SDG5, #SDG11, #SDG17
September
Collaborating with RoundPeg Benefit (see June), we enlist another B Corporation, Unity Web Agency, to join our skunkworks project and create “Unit Co.,” a joint venture that is building a platform to help small businesses measure and report their impact. #SDG17
We debut “Inspiration Alley” here at our office building, hiring local artists Sector Seventeen to create giant murals of social justice heroes. First up, Colin Kaepernick and Maya Moore. #SDG10
October
We contribute cash funding and social amplification for Shape Up The Vote, a voter registration project to reach prospective Black male voters through the community of Black barbershops in Atlanta and Milwaukee. Thanks to Malia Jennings of NCompass International and Genevieve Lawrence of fellow B Corp MaCher for bringing us on board.
We add murals of iconic civil rights champion Dolores Huerta and Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai to Inspiration Alley.
We sign on to the Civic Alliance 100% in for Democracy Campaign and advocate for fair and safe elections.
We make another small equity Wefunder investment in fellow B Corp Regrained, a pioneer in the upcycled food movement. This brings to three the number of these investments in B Corps: Regrained, Treefort Music Fest, and Narrative Food (investment 2019). #SDG17
November
We develop and launch “B Corp Basics,” an online learning course to help B Corps engage stakeholders — ranging from employees to suppliers — with a baseline understanding of what it means to be a B Corp. #SDG8, #SDG17
December
The Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial is vandalized with Nazi symbols. We launched “WE are Everywhere — Protect the Anne Frank Memorial,” a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to improve security at the beloved memorial here in Boise. It raises $19,000. #SDG10
January
We fulfilled our annual giving commitment as a member of 1% for the Planet. Our contributions this year are aimed at fighting climate change and racial injustice. We donate 1% of our yearly revenues evenly among the National Black Farmers Association, Soul Trak Outdoors, and Earth Guardians. #SDG2 #SDG10, #SDG13
We make our annual purchase of carbon credits from terrapass to offset the carbon emissions of our business travel. Because there wasn’t very much of that this past year, we expand this to cover the emissions created by our office utilities. #SDG13
Year in Review
As I look in the rearview mirror at one helluva challenging year, in answering the student’s question I’m thinking, “We did all right.” In addition to the calendared impacts I’ve covered, we also helped our purpose-driven clients successfully compete in the marketplace, yet another indirect positive impact we create through our business model. Perhaps our biggest achievement, as I reflect, is that we kept the wheels on the company, and while nearly half our employees contacted COVID-19, everyone on our team made it through safely.
Of course, we didn’t make all our marks during the pandemic. We’re currently going through another B Corp recertification process, and as we’re identifying impact areas we’ve historically incorporated in our workplace, some of these went missing during the fog of the pandemic. Among them is a particularly glaring oversight: One-on-one employee reviews somehow fell by the wayside during the time of COVID-19. That’s a head shaker, and squarely my fault. So there’s always, always room for improvement.
And that, friends, is what being a B Corp looks like at Oliver Russell. Our business found higher purpose by working for gender equality, social justice, and climate action throughout the pandemic, and we acted on it.
Interested in learning more about B Corps? You can do that here. And what are all those #SDG hashtags? The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are “a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” It’s how we focus our impact at Oliver Russell.
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.
