Becoming a certified B Corporation has been a good experience as it’s taken already established thinking and caused us to look even deeper at how we can make a greater impact. Having four wonderful children (all under 10) at home makes me a fan of many animated movies; my favorite being Finding Nemo. The scene that resonates with me [when I see it] is when Nemo helps guide a school of fish caught in a fishing net to all swim in the opposite direction as the net is pulled to the surface. In the end, the fish, by working together as a team, break the crane that is hoisting them to their death…how symbolic.
I relate this to my company, Human Investing, and our job to lock arms with other like-minded companies to organize and swim against the crane that is hoisting us to our death. What is neat to see is that we’re not all attempting to CHANGE the world in the same way but we’re all seeking! I’d group all of us in this movement as seeking change because we must; our lives depend on it.
Part of Human Investing’s process is to consistently evaluate our vendors. Recently, we’ve gone through a RFP process (request for proposal) on our technology relationship and had it down to two different companies. In the end, we asked each for their social impact statements and received an amazing response. The vendor we ultimately chose had people in their company who were making a social impact on their own but as a company, had nothing formalized. They came back to us with a list of ways each of them is actively making an impact on the world and stated that our question had caused them to put something more formal into the company’s “way of doing business.” They felt like they could do more together than on their own…
We’re in the process of doing this same thing when we buy our company coffee (we just synced up with another certified B Corp), as well as with our banking relationship. Change is going to happen a lot faster and snowball, in a way that we can’t on our own, if we are willing to connect with other like minded, thought leading companies and encourage by example that there is a better way…
There is a wonderful quote from several thousand years ago that states, “let your light shine so bright before men that they see your good works…” I’d encourage all of us to both tell people about B standards, as well as show them that it can have a multifaceted effect on our companies, communities, and the people we work with.
To learn more about Human Investing, visit them online.
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