In this episode of the Getting Down to Business podcast, host Lauren Everett chats with two experts on B Corp certification and recertification at B Lab U.S. and Canada. Zach Fayer is the organization’s recertification manager supporting the community of B Corps in the United States and Canada on their recertifications. And Max Hayes is a community growth manager who helps companies navigate the standards, benchmarking, review process, and other aspects of the certification journey at B Lab.

Value of B Corps certification

Max describes several key benefits to businesses of getting certified. One of the main value adds, he says, is around accountability. “Oftentimes, businesses know they want to do better, but they don't necessarily have the systems or structure to hold themselves accountable,” he tells Lauren. “And so that's really where maintaining your B Corp certification becomes an awesome accountability tool.”

Additionally, he says, the standards become the roadmap: “So not only are we holding you accountable to what you say living up to your values, but then we're also giving you that road to travel down and showing you what is best in practice in market.”

A third benefit is around the branding and the community. “The B Corp logo is a small simple logo, a b with a circle, but it says a lot within that simple logo,” he says. “And then the community is global and diverse and local all at once. And so I think there's just so much power within the B Corp community as well.”

Certification process walk-through

Max and Zach also discuss the stages of the certification process. Zach describes the first stage as the evaluation stage. “A contractor is going to meet with your company, do a very high level overview of how your company answered the assessment, potentially ask for some additional information to make sure that all of the T's are crossed and i's are dotted, but not going to do that super in-depth review that you would expect from the B Corp certification,” he explains.

Next a company is assigned to a verification analyst who takes them through the verification stage. “And at that point, your verification analyst will do the very in-depth review of your company's assessment, will potentially ask for additional documentation and additional information about how your company answered the assessment, and verify that your answers are correct based on your documentation or other information you provide,” Max describes. “And ultimately, at the end of that process, if you're still above 80 points, your company will be awarded B Corp certification.”

The next step is one of the most critical stages, according to Max. “Our team has a great onboarding webinar that we encourage everyone who's recently certified to join,” he says. “ And really what they're doing in that webinar is not just welcoming you into the B Corp community, but getting you to start thinking about the next steps, which is really how are you going to announce your certification, how are you going to get your staff to understand what process you've just went through, what it means and how it's changed your outlook on your business, and then how are you going to get involved in the community?”

Once a business has crossed that line, Max says, it's time to start getting involved. “What B Local can you join? What network is relevant for you when you come into Champion's Retreat?” he asks. “I think the most exciting part is once you're across that line and really integrating into the community and learning how the community can really support you, make feel seen, and help you go even deeper than the standards ever could.”

For more information about B Corp Certification and how to measure your company's impact, visit https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/programs-and-tools/b-impact-assessment/

Getting Down to Business hosts Lauren Everett and Denise Jones welcome Dr. Kimberly McGlonn, founder and CEO of NOOR by Grant Blvd, in the season’s final episode. NOOR by Grant Blvd is a sustainable luxury brand that has been making waves with its ethical production practices, its commitment to intersectional design, and its mission-driven business model.

NOOR has been a B Corp for four years and just went through recertification. Kimberly says that so much of what it means to be a B Corps had been in the DNA of her understanding of what a business could do since she founded her first company. “So B Corp just became a pathway for communicating to other people that I said what I said, and that I was going to do what I was going to do, and that I had receipts to support what we were building together,” she says.

B Corp and intersectionality

As a black woman, Kimberly notes, having “receipts” has been one way of entering into a qualitative conversation with a quantitative track record. And although she consciously built her business around intersectional design, she says that becoming involved in the B Corp movement has broadened her understanding of just how wide the “aspirational push” of a business can be. “I think in the beginning I thought a lot about wages, and how do we think about materiality,” she notes. “And in doing the assessment, my understanding of what I could also consider really opened up.”

In particular, the values of B Corps aligned with her own value of intersectionality. “In the assessment, you're thinking about governance, you’re thinking about what does our energy use look like?” she says. “Those are all considerations that when you weave them together, they become a gumbo. And that is what I mean when I say intersectionality, and that's informed by a real sense of urgency that the problems that we have to figure out how to make some significant progress on, it's going to require that we don't choose one or the other, that we're going to have to pay attention and hold our arms out a little wider in terms of what we hold as central considerations.”

Importance of tangible certification

Kimberly says that attaining the B Corp certification has helped her as a business leader to signal her commitment to doing things ethically and sustainably: “One of the things that emerged over time was that it wasn't so much my own sense of achievement. . .but that I knew that what I was doing would supersede a standard and a wider set of considerations than even my own personal standard.”

The clarification for consumers of the business practices that go along with B Corps certification is also invaluable, she says. “I think in that way it's helpful for really, really discerning consumers that seeing the B Corp certification on a product or a label or a website, that it has value, and I want it to be aligned with that value add.”

Growth throughout her company was another benefit of the certification process. “I think what it created actually were more opportunities for me to work with my team around what we were actually driving,” Kimberly says. “While it was a teaching tool for me as a leader, I also work with our Director of Impact to make sure we have what we needed and that our documentation fit within the standards that were being required of us. The B Corps assessment also offers an opportunity for professional development within the company culture. The people who are submitting that [data] are then empowered to have new language and fresh eyes for thinking about what's happening within the company and the culture and the decision making. And that was really helpful.”

For more information about B Corp Certification and how to measure your company's impact, visit https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/programs-and-tools/b-impact-assessment/

Join Getting Down to Business hosts Lauren Everett and Max Hayes as they sit down with Drew Lavine and Shawn Hogan from Re:Vision Architecture, an architecture and sustainability consulting practice that has been a certified B Corp since 2007 and is deeply committed to re-envisioning and restoring the balance between natural build and social environments.

Drew is a partner at Re:Vision and an expert in designing net zero energy passive house and living building challenge projects. He's also been an integral part of embedding B Corp principles into Re:Vision’s culture and operations. Shawn Hogan is a project manager at Re:Vision’s High Performance Consulting Studio who specializes in fostering collaboration and environmental change within corporate and community spaces.

In their conversation with Lauren and Max, Drew and Shawn focus on one of the most crucial aspects of the B Corp certification process: environmental impact and sustainability. Businesses today are increasingly being held accountable for their environmental footprint, and B Corps are leading the way by measuring, reducing, and mitigating their impact on the planet.

Re:Vision Architecture

Re:Vision, a small Philadelphia-based firm, has two sides: an architecture studio and a consulting studio. The architecture studio is dedicated to a variety of green and sustainable architecture, from new home construction and renovation to commercial projects such as higher education and even manufacturing. “We're unique because we're not stove-piped in a single industry,” Drew says. “We work across sectors with sustainability being the thread that connects them on the other side of the firm.”

On the consulting side, Shawn describes the range of services the High Performance Consulting Studio provides: “We do a lot of LEAD certification—buildings that are in design that want to be more sustainable than code minimum. And then we also do other types of building rating systems, sustainability consulting, so we've had LVC Core Net Zero Energy, net zero Carbon projects as well, or just general sustainability consulting.”

From its founding, Drew says Re:Vision has been a mission-driven practice striving to rebalance the relationship between the built, natural, and social environments. “That's always been our ethos as a company,” he notes. “And so when B Corp began, it just made so much sense for us because it's like all of a sudden this is the position that we’ve been working from. We've just gotten to be more involved with the community and more involved with the evolution of B Corp. It's something that really is a very defining cultural aspect of what we do.”

Measuring environmental impact

Lauren describes the B impact assessment, or BIA, as a comprehensive, free tool for measuring a company's overall social and environmental impact. “Specifically, the environmental section assesses factors such as carbon footprint, waste management, water usage, supply chain sustainability and product lifecycle impact,” she explains. “And companies provide measurable data to earn B Corp certification and demonstrate their commitment to continuous improvement.”

For Drew and Shawn at Re:Vision, some of the biggest challenges around B Corp certification and recertification were around data management. Shawn, who joined the firm right before recertification was due, says that pulling together the necessary data was a huge effort the first time around. But then, she says, she began meeting with project managers at regular intervals to keep everything updated: “So now, when that recertification comes, it's a breeze.”

Drew says having those data-collection and other systems in place has had dual benefits. “One, we knew our work a whole lot better afterwards and we could see that kind of impact across the board of what we were doing,” he notes. “But I think it's also put the framework in place. So now when we start a project, we're thinking about these things all the time and not just in the normal flow of what we might be doing on that project.”

For more information about B Corp Certification and how to measure your company's impact, visit https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/programs-and-tools/b-impact-assessment/