Our 2016 B Corp Score: 120!

Being a B Corp is something that we are proud of and have written about here, here, and here. To remain a B Corp, organizations need to successfully pass the B Corp Impact Assessment every other year. The last time we completed our B Corp Reassessment was way back in 2014; Barack Obama was President, LeBron James was arguably the greatest active basketball player, and I had an obsession with Sour Patch Kid Cherries rivaled by none. Well, not everything is different from 2014; we continued to evaluate how we could improve on using our business as a force for good. With each decision, we strived to make the good choice, which compiled over two years led to an improvement in our score and a greater societal impact. By focusing on how we could better impact our community, the environment, our customers, and our team, it was easy to have fun on the way to elevating our scores and raising our standards. I’m proud to announce that this year we scored 120, our highest score yet. Today, we’ll review how we beat our score, are building a better business, and shared the score with our team over beers.

 

Beating Our Score

This year we scored nine points higher (120) than we did last assessment (111). When filling out the assessment, the magic number to become a Certified B Corp is to tally 80 out of 200 points. The median (a fancy term people in analytics, like Victoria, use to point to the midpoint of a distribution) of organizations that complete the assessment is a 55. With our new score of 120 points, we scored 40 points higher than the amount it takes to become a B Corp (I guess you could start to call us an A Corp).

Building a Better Business

Our updated score further cements our place as a business that is a force for good as we continue to rack up accolades that include being honored for Best for NYC and reaching Platinum Status via BizRate for our outstanding customer service. As a founding B Corp in 2007 (so long ago Barack Obama wasn’t president, but the other 2014 facts still hold up), we continue to lead the way for how B Corps can continually improve as a part of this community. This year alone, we added a deeper commitment to our Better to Give Partners, reduced our cardboard use per package, achieved a goal of paying all year-round team members over a living wage, and advocated for paid family leave. We’ve loved hosting prospective B Corps, arranging meet and greets with students, and had ice cream served to our team by our founders from the back of a Mister Softee Truck.

 

Breaking Out Beers

The assessment process requires a little bit of work to pull data and write our traditional practices into process documentation. In doing so, members of our team needed to take a moment away from their traditional roles in order to compile the necessary data. As a thank you to our team members who worked on the assessment directly and indirectly, we threw a party at The Landing here in Brooklyn to unveil our score. The party was a blast and included beer, bocce, and other things that did not begin with a “B.” This felt like a perfect end to this year’s assessment process. Things are bound to change come 2018, Barack Obama will no longer be President, LeBron James will likely begin to decline, and I might even grow out of my love for Sour Patch Kid Cherries, but one thing that will not change is our commitment to focusing each day on how we can improve on using our business as a force for good.