What is BCorp?
BCorp is a global movement for an “inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy”. The all-inclusive assessment framework is designed for businesses and requires:
- Legal commitments,
- Transparency, and
- Demonstration of high levels of pro-social and pro-environmental performance.
You can learn more about the movement on the BCorp Website. 
At the time of our assessment, the average company scored 50 points out of the minimum 80 required to reach the certification, meaning that some never make it and others take several years to get there. Our final score at certification was 122.
The areas where we performed most highly were related to:
- our demonstrated commitment to supporting and growing our team,
- the diversity of our team,
- the ways we partner with our wider community of stakeholders, including our clients and funding partners.
As we worked through the assessment over 12 months, our commitment to showing up differently and working in a way that works for everyone became extremely clear as to what makes our contributions to the world unique and valuable. This image shows the B Corp dashboard which is a breakdown of our final B Corp Score of 122
We were lucky to have support and guidance from Tim Jones at the team at Grow Good, NZ’s most experienced BCorp Consultants.
Why did we do it?
As a purpose-led organisation committed to learning and doing better, we saw the globally recognised BCorp framework as a useful tool (and community) against which to benchmark ourselves. We’re proud of what we do and why, and we believe we are making meaningful contributions to the world, so we see this accreditation process as a bit of a ‘third-party audit’ to help us reflect on where we are at and where we would like to go next.
The B Corp framework aligns in a few ways with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which we were also assessed against. This image shows the 8 SDGs that we are most contributing to.
What did we learn?
We learned a lot through the accreditation process about ourselves and the global conversation.
Firstly, we learned that we are doing very well by global standards and deserve to be very proud of the fantastic work our hyper-diverse team delivers.
More practically, we learned more about what we needed to formalise from our practice, physically documenting much of what we have been informally committed to and practising for a decade plus. We developed a whole stack of resources and policies that helped us solidify and simplify how we work as a company, how we work with and support our team members, and our constitutional commitments and objectives.
We also learned a lot about where the global conversation is at and struggled with aspects of how the BCorp assessment was structured and built. You can read more about this in our Pānui article from June 2024 announcing our accreditation, which also explains why we almost abandoned the process in protest of the assessment framework’s structure and blindspots.
Where to from here?
Our accreditation lasts for three years, and by that time, there will be a new framework and standards that much more closely align with how we see the world. We are new to the BCorp community and conversation, so we are looking forward to slowly connecting with the BCorp community here in Aotearoa and staying connected to the broader global conversation.
It’s clear from our score and success that we have a lot of potential value to add to the BCorp conversation. We are excited about future possibilities for a thriving and equitable society.
We have a lot of internal work to do now as we implement our lessons and continue to refine and develop how we work together as a team and with our clients. Our thinking has gone to a new level, and we are very proud of and excited about what we’re working on next. We are mainly focussed on refining and implementing what we’re currently referring to in draft as our ‘people plan’. This looks at the systems, policies, and practices that help us grow the knowledge, capabilities, and confidence of our people and our partners and how we think about what we do in a way that allows to make equity a little easier. We are pragmatic about the reality that purpose-led work is compelling and can easily lead people down a pathway towards burnout. We all deserve better, so we’re facing squarely into this challenge within our mahi and look forward to unpacking this value with our partners moving forward.
