Diary: Our Bcorp Journey Part 3

NUMBER 122!

I’m very pleased to say that last week we heard that we have achieved BcorpTM certification and we’re the 122nd company in the UK to become a BcorpTM.It’s been a short but intense period of activity since we started the journey a couple of months ago.  There was a brief period after the guys in the US had approved us, with a score teetering dangerously close to the pass mark, before we got final confirmation.  Now, with an overall B score of 82 (80 makes you eligible for certification), we can promote ourselves as a BcorpTM and begin the process of improving our score.We’re a small and new company so it’s pleasing to qualify at this stage and there are lots of areas that we can increase our social accountability.  We’re now busy drawing up a plan of improvements that we can start working on for the rest of the year and beyond.The other area that we can now focus on is becoming a part of the BcorpTM community and there are plenty of resources available, including a great online portal where you can connect with other members and share content and ideas.  It’s a bit like Linkedin but where everyone is there for the same reason and so there are no unwanted advances or wasted prospecting.  It feels really good to be part of a community of like-minded people, all wanting to create a better business world and work together.Now that we’ve arrived at this stage it’s good to reflect on why we began this journey.Why did we want to become B Corp certified? At Bubble Chamber, we believe passionately in the opportunity for Social Enterprise to create a unique Fourth Sector of the economy, one that that doesn’t suffocate enterprise, as the public sector so often does, that doesn’t put shareholder value before everything else, as the private sector does, and that doesn’t suffer from the cultural confusion over enterprise that can paralyse so many charities (the last comment not too controversial, I hope, but one of our values is to challenge conventional views).The B Corp assessment has provided a framework for us to measure our success against their own rigorous standards and ensure responsible practices as we grow as a company.  We are beginning a process of embedding social impact into our everyday work, so this feeds very much into that.  The B Corp model is a great one to ensure that we are living up to our own mission and that we are continually improving and being socially accountable.Just a week after we qualified, I find myself signed up for a BcorpTM event taking place in my home city of Bristol this week, where I anticipate meeting the B Corp UK team, other members and people interested in undertaking the same journey.We look forward to experiencing the benefits of being a part of the BcorpTM community over the coming weeks and months and I will report on these in future posts.See our Bcorp profile page here.  For more information on our views on Bcorps click here.