Authors: Melin­da Fel­so, David Nicholas Oswald

Busi­ness lead­ers of all sorts are faced with the same ques­tion today: can I run a finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness but also real­ize suc­cess in terms of pos­i­tive social and envi­ron­men­tal out­comes? The answer to this is an emphat­ic YES. The B Corp mod­el is one such way that com­pa­nies are show­ing that we can do well while doing good: https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps (1)

The pub­lic, con­sumers, employ­ees, as well as investors are becom­ing increas­ing­ly aware of the glob­al envi­ron­men­tal and soci­etal chal­lenges we are fac­ing. They want more respon­si­ble prod­ucts, ser­vices and work­places that serve the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment agen­da, but don’t real­ly under­stand what this entails or where to turn for reli­able infor­ma­tion that is devoid of “green­wash­ing” (2)

Green­wash­ing can be exact­ly that — an untrue claim. B-Corp and oth­er stan­dards help to bring rigour and legit­i­ma­cy to ‘green’ state­ments (3)

The DE team had the plea­sure of talk­ing with Craig Ryan of the Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Bank of Canada’s (BDC), where Mr. Ryan is the Direc­tor of Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty. BDC is a gov­ern­ment owned bank ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to small busi­ness entre­pre­neurs, and the first Cana­di­an finan­cial insti­tu­tion to become a B Corp.

Craig Ryan, Direc­tor, Social Entre­pre­neur­ship, BDC

Mr. Ryan argues that the B Corp cer­ti­fi­ca­tion can remove that grey area, and states that because the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion requires a com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of com­pa­nies’ gov­er­nance, social and envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, it ensures that they under­stand such issues and work to ame­lio­rate them. He adds that, as the B Corp cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process is very rig­or­ous, trans­par­ent, and requires bian­nu­al recer­ti­fi­ca­tion, sup­port­ers of B Corps can be assured that these com­pa­nies are very well man­aged, and will like­ly be in busi­ness in the long run (Per­son­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Decem­ber 5, 2016).

Why would a bank want to pro­mote the B Corp move­ment? Mr. Ryan says that in addi­tion to BDC’s ded­i­ca­tion to entre­pre­neurs and its banker’s love of well-man­aged com­pa­nies, BDC applauds the inno­v­a­tive­ness of the peo­ple who use com­pa­nies to cre­ate ben­e­fits for soci­ety as a whole. “We real­ly admire their busi­ness cre­ativ­i­ty and resource­ful­ness. And their suc­cess!” says Ryan.

Some of the sev­er­al out­comes of B-Corp actions: edu­ca­tion, renew­able ener­gy, social­ly equi­table employ­ment (4)

So what con­sti­tutes this new notion of suc­cess? For small busi­ness own­er Anie Rouleau, who owns an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly clean­ing prod­uct com­pa­ny called Bale­co, it is going home every night, sleep­ing with a clear con­science, wak­ing up every morn­ing and going to work ful­filled and hap­py, know­ing that every day she is clos­er to leav­ing a lega­cy to her chil­dren and to the world (Per­son­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Decem­ber 8, 2016).

Anie Rouleau, Founder & CEO of Bale­co, a Mon­tre­al-based com­pa­ny that is a cer­ti­fied B-Corp pro­duc­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly clean­ing prod­ucts. (5)

With her envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ingre­di­ents, refill sta­tions that cut down on plas­tic waste, local sup­pli­ers, and scent­less prod­ucts that pro­mote bet­ter health, she is going in the right direc­tion. Although cer­ti­fied, she laments that she is not yet able to ful­fill the com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment part to her sat­is­fac­tion, as most of her extra prof­it and efforts go into mak­ing her prod­ucts clean­er. Nev­er­the­less, being a B Corp helps her to be trans­par­ent and increas­ing­ly attract more clients.

Baleco’s envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly clean­ing prod­ucts (6)

How does one design a com­pa­ny to become a B Corp? Mr. Ryan, who through BDC helps com­pa­nies obtain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, advis­es that com­pa­nies start­ing out should define their pur­pose, how they can cre­ate tan­gi­ble val­ue, and estab­lish how the own­ers are going to be proud of their com­pa­ny in the future. Even if not intend­ing to be cer­ti­fied right away, com­pa­nies can go through the B Lab’s com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment for guid­ance. Mr. Ryan con­cedes that the main con­straints com­pa­nies may face is that they fall back into con­ven­tion­al busi­ness think­ing of mak­ing mon­ey with­out clear com­mit­ment to oth­er fac­tors, and to stray from the big pic­ture of com­pre­hen­sive­ness, where every­thing, employ­ees, com­mu­ni­ty and the envi­ron­ment are equal­ly impor­tant. Ms. Rouleau shares that her main dif­fi­cul­ty in cer­ti­fy­ing was the exten­sive paper­work, to have all her val­ues and process­es writ­ten down and doc­u­ment­ed, how­ev­er, being a small com­pa­ny with 5 employ­ees, it is easy to make sure that those val­ues and process­es are being adhered to.

B-Corp Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples (7)

In all, B Corps are here to ame­lio­rate soci­etal and envi­ron­men­tal issues at hand, as well as meet­ing a vari­ety of strict stan­dards. Their main goal in the end is to rede­fine busi­ness­es to help and do what’s best for every­one. This is well explained through Craig Ryan’s knowl­edge of what is done at BDC, as well as look­ing at what Anie Rouleau has done for her own per­son­al busi­ness.

Ref­er­ences:
1. What are B-Corps? (2016). Retrieved from https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-B-Corps
2. Gilbert, J. C. (2010 Decem­ber). Jay Coen Gilbert — On bet­ter busi­ness­es [Video file]. Retrieved from https://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxPhilly-Jay-Coen-Gilbert-On
3. Retrieved Jan­u­ary 7, 2017 from https://cdn.bthechange.com/wp-content/uploads/dfs-9.png
4. Image of solar pan­els retrieved Jan­u­ary 7, 2017 from https://cdn.bthechange.com/wp-content/uploads/Gigawatt-Project-Rwanda-Final-1.jpg ; Image of school­child­ren in green uni­form retrieved Jan­u­ary 7, 2017 from: https://cdn.bthechange.com/wp-content/uploads/Bridge-Academy-Web.jpg ; Image of farmer with seedlings retrieved Jan­u­ary 7, 2017 from: https://cdn.bthechange.com/wp-content/uploads/Starbucks-Mexico-Web.jpg.
5. Image of Anie from Bale­co retrieved Jan­u­ary 7, 2017 from: https://www.baleco.ca/sites/default/files/Anie_0.jpg
6. Image of Bale­co bot­tles retrieved Jan­u­ary 7, 2017 from: https://www.baleco.ca/sites/default/files/banner6.jpg
7. Image B-Corp col­lage retrieved Jan­u­ary 7, 2017 from: https://bcorporation.eu/sites/default/files/blog/mountain%20graphic.png