Business

While the internet and other technical tools put the global economy in reach for businesses of all sizes, community connections remain vital for many business leaders, who have long used them to network with others in their industry, expand their professional opportunities, and share best practices or other lessons.

The local community level is where many companies can make the biggest impact, as shown by Certified B Corporations that include community as one of their stakeholders and prioritize local ties and the strength they can provide, especially in times of challenge like they’ve seen in 2020.

While B Corps are now a global network of more than 3,500 companies, they are still a relatively new concept in some regions of the United States and the world where people are less familiar with businesses operating as a force for good. To raise local awareness and build regional business networks, B Corp leaders across the U.S. and Canada are forming B Local organizations that tap into community strengths and establish a foundation for future growth.

As part of my research on purpose-driven business I recently talked with B Corp leaders in the Southeastern U.S., a region where the stakeholder-minded certification remains fairly novel, about their efforts to raise awareness of B Corps and encourage others to learn how business can be a force for good.

Emily Landry who researches B Corps at the University of Tennessee described to me the unique characteristics of the southeast: “I think the entrepreneurial spirit in the region is quite strong. But when I first began researching B Corps it was hard to find anyone in the business community who was familiar with the concept. Lots of entrepreneurs I have talked to want to go in this direction, but they don’t know where to go for help. This is a real opportunity local entrepreneurs and the nascent B Corp community.”

Below are excerpts from interviews with Jared Meyers, Chairman of Legacy Vacation Resorts and Salt Palm Development in Florida and one of the founders of Florida for Good, and Kevin Christopher, Founder and Principal of Rockridge Venture Law in Tennessee and a founder of B Tennessee. Both are champions of the B Corp movement as well as believers in this purpose-driven business community. Later this month I’ll join them and other B Corp leaders for BLD Southeast 2020, an online conference for people from Maryland to Texas, when we’ll discuss further some of the questions they answer here.

How do you spread the word about the B Corp community with other businesses, including your industry, personal, and community connections? 

Jared Meyers: My businesses promote B Corps through their marketing, supply chain management, hiring processes, and guest education, which reaches 300,000 people. To go a step further, I co-founded the For Good Movement to spread the word and grow the B Corp movement within Florida and the global travel and tourism industry through regular communications by email, social media and otherwise. We’ve established relationships with government, economic development, academia, values-aligned business networks, community foundations, and civil society to promote the B Corp way through events and collaboration.

Kevin Christopher: I give a number of corporate social responsibility (CSR) presentations to chambers, universities, and bar associations. For instance, in a recent presentation at Yale, I distinguished between the often confused B Corp business certification and benefit corporation, a legal structure for mission-driven businesses. To further uptake of the B Corp model, I partner locally with sustainability and social impact organizations like B Academics, B Local Georgia, Think Tennessee, Leadership Tennessee, green|spaces, Urban Green Lab, and Vanderbilt’s Turner Family Center for Social Ventures.

As you work to build awareness of B Corps in your communities and state, what activities or programs have been most successful? 

Meyers: Floridians had virtually no knowledge of B Corps when we started our efforts three years ago. There were 16 B Corps, political leaders didn’t know to support them, attorneys and accountants didn’t suggest them, economic development didn’t consider them, and there was no strong statewide push for the movement.

The University of Florida’s Business for Good Lab has been successful in educating students about B Corps and helping businesses improve their impact and become B Corps. We’ve been able to engage additional colleges and universities since to launch their own programs or to provide their students the ability to participate in the Business for Good Lab. I have also become a Founding Director for Climate First Bank (In Organization), which will immediately seek B Corp status, to provide Florida with a full-service community bank on a mission to positively impact the triple bottom line of people, planet and prosperity.

We still have a long way to go, but B Corps are now part of conversations at important levels.

Christopher: Last year I launched an initiative called B Tennessee. Because we have only a handful of B Corps in Tennessee that are fairly dispersed geographically, we aren’t well positioned to establish a B Local (a network of local B Corps like in Boston or Portland, often organized as a nonprofit association). B Tennessee is our placeholder, serving as a community or forum for CSR generally and not just B Corps. Our August 2020 event featured panelists from chemical, industrial, faith, and retail communities that are leading engagement within those communities around B Corp principles, if not necessarily through B Corps. Perhaps the most impressive panelist was Ryan Bailey of The Bailey Company, a zero waste forklift retailer that prioritizes sustainability. We are trying to exhibit broadly how the people, planet and profit ethos might be best achieved through the B Corp framework, but we also want to recognize advancements in CSR by fellow Tennesseans where B Corp might not be a present option.

What resonates most, given you are in a conservative-leaning state, when you talk with other business leaders or the public? 

Meyers: Changing culture and norms takes a long time despite the immediacy of the problems we face. While there is now a better recognition of societal problems due to COVID-19, the virus and resultant economic crisis are also used as reasons that businesses cannot engage in better capitalism now. Words are very important. Business leaders and the general public struggle with understanding that stakeholder orientation does not make capitalism become socialism, and that justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion does not mean that white people are now being treated unfairly. People want things to be as simple as two choices. The reality is that the world is more nuanced.

There is a concern that businesses cannot succeed without shareholder primacy, but B Corps continue to prove that wrong. There is a feeling that societal change is too expensive, but that is only when the business leaders are short-sighted and do not account for the cost of the climate crisis or civic unrest which both will continue until societal and economic systems are changed.

Christopher: Vincent Stanley of Patagonia participated on our last B Tennessee panel. When I first connected with him, he recommended engaging the faith community. I believe the faith community, and I’m one of them, has sort of dropped the ball on this in the past for many reasons, including doctrinal and political, but many young faith leaders want to see more civic, socioeconomic, and CSR participation by members of their respective communities. I’m a tech lawyer transplant from Berkeley, so some audiences I won’t be able to reach. That’s why it’s so meaningful to have people like Jonathan Ingraham from Chattanooga Faith + Works + Culture supporting our events. When speaking to other business leaders, I highlight the workforce benefits to being a B Corp. Studies show that highly creative and productive employees, particularly millennials, increasingly want to work for companies that provide them leadership opportunities and champion environmental and social impact causes. When speaking to investors, I highlight some of the work by Yale’s Center for Business and the Environment and NC State’s Business Sustainability Collaborativeshowing how B Corps outperform their startup peers. As a county and state commissioner, I use political opportunities to educate legislative and executive leaders on social enterprise and how governmental actions, like stronger benefit corporation statutes and increased awareness around them can supplement B Corp growth.

What types of work have you done on policy or awareness among public/elected officials to encourage more businesses to adopt business corporation governance? 

Meyers: As one of the chairpersons for the East Central Florida’s Regional Planning Council’s Resiliency committee, I’m working with others to recommend regional and hopefully statewide principles around which Florida will unite to rebuild post COVID-19. With others, we have started the process of getting Florida to adopt benefit corporation law changes similar to Delaware’s. This may take some time to come to fruition based on early discussions.

Christopher: I recently provided the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative educational material around their recently passed benefit corporation statute. Earlier this year I led a B Academics panel focused on how trustmarks like B Corp, Fair Trade, and others can survive e-commerce bottlenecks like Amazon and Google Shopping that prioritize other metrics like cheap and fast supply chains at the expense of corporate citizenship. We have a great guide surveying southeastern benefit corporation statutes. The B Tennessee initiative is driven by my firm’s impact and innovation fellow Bruce Allen, kind of a rare role for a law firm. We’re currently finalizing a research study showing less than 1% statutory compliance in transparency requirements by Tennessee benefit corporations. We’ll use this research to help influence better state enablement and promotion of benefit corporations. These are essentially pro bono activities that my firm takes on to advocate for the B Corp and benefit corporation models. We are also sponsoring and helping plan the 2020 BLD Back Better Southeastern B Corp conference alongside Jared Myers and our friends from Florida from Good.

In states like yours with fewer B Corps, what is most helpful to raise awareness of this business community and its values? What are some of the obstacles?

Meyers: We need national campaigns and support at every level of society for business to be inclusive, equitable, and regenerative. I am constantly solicited by suppliers and vendors, and I’ve decided that an easy way to reply to them is to tell them that we prioritize B Corps and to send them the link to the B Impact Assessment (BIA), which is an online tool that all businesses can use. If they take the BIA, I am open to talk further.

The largest obstacle is that our economic systems are designed to produce the outcomes that we reliably receive today. Until the system is changed, it will always be an unfair fight.

Christopher: One of my interns developed a simple infographic on benefit corporations and B Corps that I was surprised to learn was circulating in the Missouri Legislature in support of their attempted benefit corp legislation. I think generally simple, easy-to-digest concepts are important. Also, when you start speaking about ROI and some of the data around B Corps as solid investments compared to peer businesses, that sells.

How important is public/customer awareness of B Corp values? What are some of the best ways you’ve found to explain B Corp to the public? 

Meyers: Extremely important; $400 billion is spent on philanthropy each year while $130 trillion is spent on everyday items. We need the everyday spending to go to companies like B Corps if we really want to solve our problems. If customers and the public don’t know they have a better option for where to work, shop, and support, they will never pursue it. The average person simply doesn’t have the time to engage in long research on most of their decisions, so we have to make it easy on them.

Christopher: The B Corp stamp is essentially a trustmark, which has become more important in times when consumer habits are radically shifting toward e-commerce without touchpoints and familiar validating mechanisms. In southern circles I shy away from using aggrandizing words like “movement” to describe B Corp because I think the model speaks for itself. B Corp certification means that a company has undergone a thorough vetting of its employment policies, supply chains, charitable giving, and other triple-bottom-line metrics. It would and should be very difficult to greenwash B Corp, so for companies looking to connect with conscientious consumers, it is in my opinion the best stamp for doing so.