In 2018, FundApps has set a goal to become a certified B Corporation.
Why?
Since its humble beginnings, FundApps has been a business aiming for greater impact than simply profit. We are not a large business, but with a strong community, vision, an amazing team of people now spread across the globe and an increasing footprint, the B Corp mission resonates strongly with us.
So, it’s now time for us to step up and commit ourselves to new standards of business success and using business as a force for good. As a company, we’re clear on our ‘why’ -
"We help investment managers harness the power of community & technology to automate regulatory compliance".
We do this by running a business that stands for all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and setting higher standards for ourselves as a business.
What?
If you aren’t familiar with B Corp, it has been best described to me as the ‘Fair Trade’ for socially responsible companies. B Lab puts it better than I can:
“Certified B Corporations are a community of more than 1,200 companies across 121 industries and 41 countries with one unifying goal: to redefine success in business. B Corporations are certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency”.
How?
For each question you receive points based on your level of impact and performance, and once you reach 80 points out of 200 you are eligible to progress through the certification process. There are 150-200 questions that assess the impact of your business activities - everything from governance, ownership and job creation to environmental footprint, community engagement and diversity.
Achieving 80 points is not easy, and rightfully so. It requires commitment from everyone in the organisation, a deep understanding of the requirements and a genuine investment in changing (or setting up) how the business operates in a meaningful way.
Our Journey
At the start of this year we baselined our performance and came up with 59.4.
We’re proud of this result, and it's reflective of some of the awesome things about working at FundApps:
- Regular company volunteering days, individual volunteering leave, and a percentage of our profits donated to charities (which our team select)
- Equal compensation for men and women in comparable roles
- 25% year on year job growth rate
- An average 11% annual wage increase across the company in 2017
- Flexible working and unlimited professional development and sick leave
- Company-wide recycling and chemical reduction programs
- Sponsored health & well-being initiatives
What we also took away from our baseline assessment is just how many areas we can improve for our people, clients, industry and society as a whole. This is the tip of the iceberg for us, and when we sat down to look at how we can push ourselves to keep improving, we discovered that 80 points is well within reach and 100+ points definitely possible. And so begins our 2018 journey to become B Corp certified!
We built the goal into our OKRs as an annual objective and we check in as a company on how we’re tracking every month at our all-hands meeting. We have a lot of exciting things coming in 2018. These things not only help us edge towards 80 points, but also are critical areas as we continue to grow and scale as a company.
For example, we’re on track to redesign our performance, feedback and bonus frameworks, run our first round of diversity & inclusion training, and spend more time out in the community supporting some of the amazing work local NFPs and groups are doing.
We’re also continuing to reduce our environmental footprint through arming everyone with a GiveMeTap bottle, reducing our plastic waste and educating people on recycling and disposal. It’s not uncommon for our CEO to do a quick ‘bin audit’ to keep us on track :)
It Matters
Becoming a certified B Corp is just the icing on the cake for us this year. What we’re REALLY excited about is building our company to do good by our people, our clients and society.
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