Saint John B Corp Tour Hopes To Get More Businesses Joining The Movement
SAINT JOHN– Two events this Friday in Saint John are aiming to get more businesses in the city to join the B Corp movement.
B Corporations (commonly referred to as B Corps) are for-profit entities that believe in using business as a force for good.
B Corp is a worldwide certification created by nonprofit organization B Lab. The certification process is rigorous, requiring businesses to meet performance and legal requirements and be re-certified every two years.
The idea to host the events came from the fact that Kasha Huk, country manager of B Lab Canada, was going to be visiting the Maritimes for another B Corp event in Prince Edward Island this weekend.
“In Saint John specifically, we have such a robust community of B-Corps and so based on the time we decided to get everyone together to celebrate their certification and do a public-facing event to show other businesses what it means to be a certifiec B-Crop,” says Huk.
The first event is a B Corp master class place at 2 p.m. at the Wheelhouse. This event is for businesses interested in the B Corp’s certification assessment. It will be a working session who they can go through the certification process, usually done online, with Huk.
“They can come in, sit with me for two or three hours and really dig into the B Corp assessment,” says Huk. “For a lot of folks, it’s really daunting to go through and sit through the assessment on a laptop by themselves. So this is a chance to meet other entrepreneurs and learn from their questions but also have that support from me being there on-hand to help them.”
Following that will be a Saint John B Corp Tour, an event open to anyone generally interested in B Corps and what they are all about. The tour will stop at the Wheelhouse, with several other stops at B Corps in Saint John, including The Chapman Group and Hemmings House.
“Just hearing from them what their experience has been in the community, with the assessment, what B Corp has brought to their business and sort of a celebration of the community that they have created there,” says Huk.
It’s a community that’s close-knit and supportive.
“The community is Saint John is a really close-knit group of entrepreneurs where there is not these sense of if one person wins, everyone else loses. It’s really that mindset of supporting eachother. From day one, working with this community, I felt that everyone’s on the same level of being really ready to roll their sleeves up and help in any way they could.”
Hemmings House became a B Corp almost four years ago. Founder Greg Hemmings says becoming a B Corp isn’t just a piece of paper, it’s joining a global network and position your business for the future.
“There’s a community attached to it. Certifications don’t usually come with global communities that are networked heavily. This is a social movement of entrepreneurs and CEO’s that are using the certification only as a glue to build a new economy. The new economy is being built right now and get on the bus,” he says.
“As millennials are now becoming the leadership and executive positions, there’s a new expectation for how capitalism runs. If you’re still playing in the old space in how you deal with employees and with the environment, your relevance if not going to be very strong anymore.”
With big regional companies like T4G and Assumption Vie becoming B Corps over the last year, Huk says sees the movement gaining more traction in the region.
“As people are understanding that this is something not just for a really niche group of businesses, but they can be applied to anyone who is using their business as a force for good, I think companies are seeing themselves within the movement,” she says. “I think in Atlantic Canada since it’s such a tight-knit community, we’re seeing these connections building between different companies.”