Frequently Asked Qs

Short answer: 12-18 months on average Long answer: The time it will take you to certify your business will depend on 3 factors: 1. Your starting score (if your business is designed to solve a social or environmental problem then it will likely have a higher starting score than a business that isn't) 2. The time and resource available and the 'buy-in' to create positive impact within the business as part of your B Corp improvement phase 3. The size and complexity of your business will determine which verification queue you will enter once you submit. The verification process will likely take 5-9 months including the waiting periods.

Short answer: "B Leaders is a training programme designed by B Lab UK that equips sustainability professionals with the tools and knowledge to support businesses through the B Corp certification process." - B Lab UK Long answer: I am lucky enough to be a B Leader and have been involved in a small way in B Leader trainings in other European countries. Unfortunately the B Leaders course in the UK is currently on pause (though I have heard the demand remains very high!). I am deliberating offering an alternative to B Leader training for inhouse sustainability professionals in Spring 2024. Through my role as Lead B Corp Consultant I have advised over 35 companies directly and supported B Leaders on many more B Corp projects (somewhere around the 60 mark, but it's not about your number). Combining all of this experience, the desire to upskill people into sustainable jobs and an aversion to all things boring, I know this would be an informative, practical and fun course! Register your interest at info@lauramatz.co.uk and I will add you to the earlybird list 🐦 One side note: since the course would not be run by B Lab (the organisation behind B Corp), participants will not be able to use the title B Leader. Will you get an even better title, a rosette or even an engraved pen? Time will tell!

Short answer: The annual certification fee is relative to your company's revenue. The list of fees can be found on the homepage of your regional B Lab. UK's fees are listed here. You must also pay a one off submission fee (£300 in the UK). The cost of making positive changes to your business varies massively depending on your sector and starting point. My fees are roughly as follows, though they are affected by the complexity of the business: Listed prices are GBP and include VAT. Prices are indicative only. If you would like to know more about how these prices are calculated and what service level you would expect to get for these prices then please don't hesitate to ask, really comfortable sharing that information 😄 Long answer: In addition to the elements above, please consider the following: In the UK, company's owned by entrepreneurs facing systemic barriers to business ownership can receive a discount on their certification fees. Please note that there are some terms and conditions to this offer which can be frustrating! There are many free resources to help you get started on your journey and you can always supplement that with ad hoc calls to my B Corp Hotline There are some costly elements that most B Corps have invested in during the course of their journey. They are worth considering! - Employee benefits - Carbon accounting support (sorftware or consulting). There are free options available for micro and SME businesses - Diversity and inclusion training - Career development expenses - The cost of paying a fair Living Wage - Investment in decarbonisation and other environmental measures If you want to have an informal chat about my fees or your B Corp journey, book a free 15 min discovery call here

Great question! Short answer: A materiality assessment is an excercise to determine what social, environmental and governance topics are most relavant to your business (and your stakeholders) and helps you prioritise which issues to act on. Long answer: A materiality assessment involves creating a long list of important social, environmental and governance issues for your sector. You then engage your stakeholders to help understand their needs and priorities using a combination of direct and indirect engagement. Using the results of your engagement and sprinkling in a dash of science (aka many many hours of desk research) you then create a shortlist of material issues. To get the most out of this process, it is customary to use a ranking system based on factors such as risk, influence, severity and extent of impact, to prioritise these shortlisted issues on a matrix. I 💙 working on these and I think they are such an important step to help stay focused in your impact strategy and delivery. If you are planning to use tasty reporting frameworks like GRI or ESRS you will need to do one of these.

If B Corp is your first forray into sustainability for your business then for the first year you will be very occuppied with the process. You will make many significant improvements and the current B Impact Assessment system allows some gamification of sustainability. After you become certified, you will really struggle to reach all of the ambitions you set out in your first certification, and B Corp is all about continuous improvement. A sustainability strategy will help you drum up engagement within the company and with your suppliers. It will help you identify what to report in your obligatory annual impact report. Maybe most importantly, it will help you budget and prioritise for the years ahead. Want more good news? This strategy will help your customers understand what your brand is all about and if you implement it well, you might stop harming the environment and might start creating some real change (directly and as a role model) 🏆

Yes! I am here for you (and I live for a quick question) Just book in for a short consultation and we can put the world to rights 🌍 It's listed as a B Corp Consultation but you can reach out about anything...within reason...please stick to sustainability.