B Corp Month - Impact Update

It’s been six months since we joined the B Corp family and we’re more committed than ever to exploring new ways to make an impact.

We firmly believe that this is the right time to be part of a movement that endeavours to balance profit with people and planet, and so we were happy to join “B Corp month” throughout March to take part in multiple internal and external activities.

At our last all-staff (virtual) party, the wonderful artist Jenny Leonard ran a mindful drawing class. Afterwards, we asked Jenny to create a visual representation of what Lightful’s plans were for B Corp Month. I’m pleased to share that here and outline a bit more of how we’re integrating business and impact in everything we do.

Lightful’s involvement in B Corp month

Week 1 - Focusing on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)

For the first week of the B Corp month, we focused on DEI and involved everyone in the team in generating ideas of what we can do better.

Having a team with a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences, opinions, and perspectives is core to our culture.

As part of our weekly team meeting, we created a virtual board, asking everyone to share thoughts on what Lightful does well from a diversity and inclusion perspective, but also asking them to answer the question: “What more can we do to promote diversity and to recognise, respect and value the differences between the individuals in our team?”

We’ve had some very insightful discussions that will shape our next steps towards an even more diverse and inclusive environment that respects and values every single individual.

Moreover, our team created a Trello board with reading recommendations for a range of diversity-related themes, as well as a few ideas on movies, films, talks, and podcasts to spark further discussion.

We also announced a new benefit for the team, with a 3-month audiobook subscription to help see them through the remaining months of lockdown. The first recommended read was ‘Invisible Women’ by Caroline Criado Perez.

Week 2 - Celebrating our incredibly talented Lightful women and our inspiring customers
Our start to the second week of B Corp month was somewhat of a continuation from the previous week, and we took the opportunity to celebrate the incredibly talented women in our team, who comprise 54% of the overall team. For International Women’s Day, we created a series of postcards that we shared on our social channels, learning more about them and what inspires them.

We also sent everyone a delivery of brownies from Luminary Bakery to highlight the impressive social mission of this wonderful social enterprise that I know well, which supports women who have faced social or economic disadvantage.

Moving to look from a customer perspective, we reviewed our B Impact Assessment score for Customers from the time we certified, considering where there might be future scope for improvement. We also shared a blog written by my co-founder and Lightful’s Chairman, Carlos Miranda, exploring the question “What is a B Corp? And will it ever matter to consumers?”

We thought about other B Corps we admire, taking an opportunity to spotlight them through our social channels. Internally we championed other B Corps, sharing the We Are B Corps directory with our team and encouraging them to engage with the B Hive, the B Corp community platform.

B Lab encouraged businesses in the community to use B Corp Month to support each other through partnership opportunities. We were happy to get in touch with Semble, a hub that connects community groups and businesses, to provide a free storytelling webinar for their community.

Week 3 - Focusing on sustainability

For the third week of the B Corp month, we focused on sustainability and what it means for us.

Our platform Lead Developer, Joseph Race, wrote a very informative blog on ‘sustainable web design’ and how sustainability has been taken into account for Lightful’s website redesign.

We also shared some resources with the developers and designers across our team, to get some conversations started about the environmental impacts of digital.

Joseph also presented his thoughts on ‘sustainable design’ at our weekly All Staff meeting, which we followed up with a lively, interactive Jamboard and voting session, giving an opportunity to the team to work together on the different ways we can promote sustainability from a tech perspective.

Week 4 - Focusing on community

For community week we took a moment of internal pause and reflection, considering how we had supported B Corps and other purpose-led organisations over the past year and how we could continue to do so in future.

Throughout February Lightful ran a team active challenge, with inclusion and wellbeing at its heart and prizes focused on community.  We took the opportunity in Community week of B Corp Month to make donations to the ten charities chosen by our team, across a spectrum of wonderful causes.  We also took some time to highlight those charities through our social channels.

Week 5 - Focusing on governance

In this final week of B Corp Month, we have decided to harness the better business theme and reflect on our governance score under the B Impact Assessment, exploring where we might have scope for future improvement.

Conclusion

At Lightful, we are working with amazing beyond-profit clients across a whole spectrum of social and environmental cause areas. Our fundamental belief (our ‘why’) is that those doing the greatest good deserve the best technology.

To be able to deliver this to our clients in an authentic way, we need to be open to continuous improvement in how we run our own business, regularly pausing to consider how we balance the interests of people, planet and profit.

B Corp Month has been a great opportunity to reflect on the commitments we made as a B Corp and to involve our team in generating ideas, inspiring us to make Lightful an even better business going forward.