Initiatives
B Lab partners with Social Value International

B Lab partners with Social Value International to help companies measure and improve their impact

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

B Lab partners with Social Value International to help companies measure and improve their impact

Today, B Lab and Social Value International announced a co-ordinated effort to help companies improve how they measure and assess their accountability, transparency and social and environmental performance. This partnership brings together two of the biggest organisations in impact measurement in a joint effort to encourage all companies to measure their impact with as much rigor as they do their profits.

B Lab is the nonprofit serving the B Corp Movement, a global movement of people using business as a force for good so that one day all companies compete not only to be best in the world, but best for the world. The B Corp Movement is creating and spreading tools for all businesses and investors to measure and improve their impact. These tools provide common, comprehensive, and transparent standards that allow for independent verification and external reporting. The B Impact Assessment platform is a free, online, easy-to-use educational and management tool already utilized by 30,000 businesses globally to assess, compare, and improve their impact.

Social Value International is an international membership network that campaigns for change in the way that society accounts for value. Using their Seven Principles of Social Value, they help organisations account for what value is destroyed and created through their activities. Social Value International has over 1000 members in over 40 countries and has produced a Guide to Social Return on Investment, now translated into 8 different languages, to help organizations to apply these Principles.

The affiliation between B Lab and Social Value International will provide a more comprehensive service to companies interested in becoming more accountable and transparent. The B Impact Assessment provides organizations with a standardized, comprehensive, educational tool to measure and manage their company’s social and environmental performance, whilst Social Value International provides organisations with a way to measure how much value they are creating or destroying by valuing and analysing their positive and negative outcomes. This affiliation helps companies gain a complete understanding of their impact both in depth and breadth.

Jeremy Nicholls, CEO of Social Value International says ‘this partnership is a further step towards providing companies with a more coherent and complete offering as to how they can become more accountable and transparent for their activities, whilst maintaining a competitive edge. We hope that this collaboration will make it easier for companies to limit their negative impacts whilst increasing their positive impacts, at a time when the need to do so becomes ever more pressing.’

Bart Houlahan, Co-Founder of B Lab, says “Social Value International is a leader in the impact measurement movement, and we are very excited to be working more closely with them to encourage companies to commit themselves to impact measurement and accountability, inform our own methodology with leading best practices, and expand the scope of the B Impact Assessment and B Corp Certification globally.”

Press contacts Helen Campbell, Communications and Membership Coordinator E: helen.campbell@socialvalueint.org T: +44 (0)151 703 9229

About Social Value International Social Value International is the global network focused on Social Impact and Social Value. Social Value International works with our members to embed core principles for social value measurement and analysis, to refine and share practice, and to build a powerful movement of like-minded people to influence policy. We support, connect, and represent our members through training, knowledge-sharing and networking.

About B Lab B Lab is a nonprofit organization that serves a global movement of People Using Business as a Force for Good. Its vision is that one day all companies will compete to be Best for the World and as a result society enjoys a shared and durable prosperity.

B Lab drives this systemic change through a number of interrelated initiatives:

• 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between “good companies” and good marketing;

• 2) promoting usage of Mission Aligned corporate structures to increase efficacy of social entrepreneurship and impact investing (more than 2,000 benefit corporations have been registered in the 27 states and District of Columbia that have passed benefit corporation laws);

• 3) promoting Measure What Matters campaigns to increase use of free, powerful tools for businesses to measure, compare and improve their social and environmental performance (more than 20,000 businesses use B Lab’s free B Impact Assessment).

• 4) developing B Analytics, a customizable platform to help investors and institutions measure, benchmark, and report on the impact of the businesses with whom they work and in whom they invest.

For more information, visit www.bcorporation.net, www.bimpactassessment.net, www.b-analytics.net and www.benefitcorp.net.