Joining the B Corp movement

Are you looking for a community partner to help you start an environmentally sustainable business? Bethesda Green has solutions for you! The Be Impact initiative and workshops are designed to give your business the tools to benchmark, express, and improve your triple bottom line impact – a framework with three parts: people, planet, profit.

At Bethesda Green, we have partnered with B Lab – a nonprofit collaborating with for-profit business leaders to drive the global movement of environmental sustainability. Receiving this certification proves your business is meeting the finest level of verified impact performance. It not only illustrates where your company excels now but also commits your organization to consider long-term impacts and build best practices into your company’s structure.

How We Get You There

It all starts with your triple bottom line impact. Using B Lab’s assessments and our workshops, we walk you through benchmarking current impacts, and how to improve and sustain it. The first assessment you will complete is the B Lab Quick Impact Assessment, which directs you through a series of questions that detail what it takes to build a better business for your community, workers, and the environment.

Sample question:“Which is the broadest community with whom your environmental reviews/audits are formally shared?”

Answers:
A) Owners, executives, and board
B) The broader community outside company
C) Employees
D) N/A

Then you pick the answer that best corresponds to your business. After completing this assessment, we compare your answers to thousands of other businesses and see how your organization compares against your industry peers. Once we get a clear idea about where your business’ impact compares, we assist in creating a customized improvement plan. By utilizing our best practice guides and interactive workshop series, you will have the tools to implement the practices in your office setting.

Following the completion of a workshop series, you will complete our B Impact Assessment (BIA), which is the final step to becoming B Corp Certified. This evaluation assesses the impact of both your company’s day-to-day operations and your long-term business model. After completing the BIA, your company will undergo a multi-step verification process to determine if it meets the 80-point bar for certification. To finalize certification, a B Corp Declaration of Interdependence will be signed, and your annual certification fees will be collected. (Note: the fee is established based on your company’s annual sales, with a minimum fee of $500).

Building Better Businesses

Companies like Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Etsy obtained their B Corp Certification. A participant of 2018 Be Impact Initiative, DGrid Energy – a manufacturing company that generates off-grid solar-powered, expandable walk-in refrigeration systems – felt good about their experience with the B Impact Initiative. CEO Eugene Faison said, “Not until we became part of the Bethesda Green Hub did we really understand how important and strategic B Impact is. We aspire to acquire our certification immediately and become a part of the B ecosystem.” The process of participating in the B impact initiative has been a positive experience for many businesses.

The “B” Stands for Beneficial

Once you pass the BIA, you become B Course Certified, meaning that your business is one of the 2,805 companies & industries in the world to have completed this rigorous and engaging program and now stands out amongst industry peers. Being a certified business not only benefits the environment, but your business too, by standing out against your industry peers. When sustainable practices are carefully integrated into business operations, they will:

• Help improve brand recognition. The Natural Marketing Institute surveyed more than 53,000 U.S. customers and discovered that 58 percent of customers consider a company’s impact on the environment when vacillating between where to purchase goods and services. This can bring in new business and revenue for you!
• Reduce costs. While gaining money on a business front, you can also save and reduce costs internally. Most cost reduction comes from energy conservation strategies, such as turning off lights, insulating walls to improve energy efficiency, and installing geothermal heating and cooling systems.
• Increase business compliance with government regulations. It’s not all about the money. You also get the added benefit of meeting or, possibly exceeding, state and federal government regulations.
• Attract well-qualified employees. Regarding employment, the younger generations are concerned about environmental protection. They are familiar with concepts of sustainability and conservation, and they will be attracted to companies that set environmental priorities.

Ready to get started?

Getting started is the easiest part! Just register online for the upcoming Be Impact initiative winter workshop series at bethesdagreen.org. If you are hoping to get involved in our community sooner, please join us at an upcoming event: Bethesda Green 10th Anniversary Gala – October 18, 2018, from 5:30pm-9: 30 pm. Details and tickets are available online. We hope to see you there!

Written by Lucille Filyaw

References:

1. Mark Leibowitz, M.L. (2018). “About B Impact”. Accessed September 18, 2018, from bcorporation.net/about-b-la
2. (2018). The B Impact Assessment, “Measure What Matters Most”. Accessed September 18, 2018, from bimpactassessment.net
3. (2018). B Impact, August 15, 201. Bethesda Green. Accessed September 18, 2018, from bethesdagreen.org
4. (2018). DTS, Administrator. “Sixteenth Annual U.S. Report”. New state of sustainability in America. Accessed September 18, 2018, from http://www.nmisoultions.com
5.  Eugene Faison, E.F. (2018). About Us. Our mission at DGrid Energy. Accessed September 18, 2018, from dgridenergy.com