Elevate Your Impact: Why Reverb is Aspiring to Become a B Corp

What, you might ask, is a B Corp??

B Corps are companies verified by B Lab to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.

I first heard of B Corps when I was in graduate school. The ones I was familiar with were brands I admired like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s. I was fascinated by the idea that businesses could have a double bottom line. That is, they could measure profits but they could place equal importance on having a positive impact on people and on the planet. In the seven years since founding Reverb, giving back and doing the right thing have always been an important part of our culture. Applying to become a B Corp gave us a chance to formalize that.?

Our Greatest Impact Opportunity is People

The B Corp assessment process helped us focus on specific areas of impact that we could address and improve. For instance, a retail or manufacturing company might choose an environmental focus. As a services company, we chose areas that align most closely with the work we do. Those are:?

• Team: I started Reverb in large part to create the kind of culture I want to work in; one that’s known for trusting people and providing flexibility to ensure positive work life balance. I wanted to create a company where people can have challenging, interesting jobs and still have time and energy outside of work for themselves, their families, and their interests. As a services company, we are nothing but our people so creating the best possible work environment is key to our success.?
• Customers: We value respect and kindness, and we expect the same from our customers. We’re fortunate to work every day with mission driven companies who care about their people and we want to do everything possible to support them. Not only do we strive to deliver excellent service, our work goes a long way toward helping others build healthy, inclusive cultures as well.?
• Governance: Running a sustainable business means actively seeking input from our team, customers, and other stakeholders. We do this periodically through everything from our annual employee engagement survey, to customer NPS questions, and by getting input from our advisors. We also strive for transparency and use a series of company checkins, newsletters, and other forms of communication to share business and financial updates with the team.
• Community: One way we support our community is by offering a 10% discount to all nonprofit clients. We’re exploring ways to extend discounts to women owned businesses and for purpose companies too. Every year we donate one percent of profits to a local nonprofit and we make other donations that align with our values. Thanks to B Corp guidance, we’ve started screening our suppliers to make sure their values match ours, and we’ve increased our focus on local hiring when we have new opportunities.?

Given that much of our work is hybrid/remote we’ve even designed an office stewardship policy that includes tips on everything from recycling to ordering sustainable office supplies. People can take advantage of these whether they’re using a home office or coworking space.?

We Changed our Mission

We know that our team and clients already appreciate the fact that we’re mission driven. Becoming a B Corp means even more opportunity to track our progress and measure the impact of what we do - things like supporting local nonprofits through donations and discounts, and providing a flexible, family friendly workplace.?

Until connecting with B Corp, it honestly never occurred to us to talk about our goal of giving back as part of the company’s mission, but when you think about it, if giving back is important to us, then absolutely it should show up alongside the purpose of the work we do every day.?

Original Mission:

Reverb helps growing companies create healthy, inclusive cultures that scale.?

New Addition:?

We donate a portion of our annual profits to ensure a better future for underserved populations.

I’m personally excited that Reverb gets to be part of such an important movement that positively affects our team, clients, and community. It means becoming part of a larger community of businesses with similar values. We’ve already joined an inspiring group of women B Corp CEOs called We The Change who have taught us so much. For some, business is all about the bottom line, but in our case the idea of a double bottom is helping us integrate social impact into how we set goals and measure the success of the business.?