I am very excited to share an important step on our journey to Zero Impact: MagicLinks is now a certified B Corporation!
What is a B Corp?
Certified B Corps are for-profit companies that use the power of business to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
They meet the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
It is not easy to become a B Corp (more on this later). Today, there are 3,500 certified B Corporations globally, including mission-based brands such as Patagonia, Cotopaxi, AllBirds, Beautycounter, Athleta, and Eileen Fisher. To put this in perspective, there are 1.7 million C Corps and 21 million LLC’s just in the US and MagicLinks is one of the first influencer technology companies to join the B Corp ranks.
The process of becoming B Corp certified included documenting and creating formalized processes for many practices that were already embedded in our operations, including: DEI, Sustainability, Community Service and Philanthropy through MagicLinks For Good. This took our team roughly 300 hours to complete in 2020, which in part is an up front investment for B Corp processes that will scale with our business.
Looking ahead, what’s most important is not the certification itself, but the way we live into the spirit of B Corp moving forward, and how we will play an active role in encouraging others to join. I am a firm believer that B Corp companies are the future, an evolution that Harvard Business Review described as a tectonic shift.
Since receiving certification, my team and I have found ourselves engaged in new and exciting conversations about B Corp with internal and external partners. We are challenging our finance teams to create processes to track B Corp metrics, requiring our legal team to think anew about our Articles of Incorporation, explaining our broader fiduciary responsibilities to current and potential investors, helping our creators to identify and promote fellow B Corp companies, and working with our strategic brand partners to build more sustainable business practices and supply chains.
We are already building products and services within our marketplace to provide benefits to B Corp companies and other like minded businesses who view profit as fuel for purpose.
In addition, recruiting talent has become easier since we started sharing our values and principles more openly and publicly. People rightly want to work for and with companies who define their values within the greater context of people, planet, and purpose and use business success to create a better future for all beings.
We are excited to dive headfirst into this important and broader mission, as codified by our B Corp certification, and I look forward to sharing more as we continue to create what’s possible with MagicLinks’ business as a vehicle for good.
Please reach out on LinkedIn or email hello@magiclinks.com with any questions, and let us know if we can be helpful in your efforts to create a better world, whatever they may be.
Brian Nickerson
Founder and CEO, MagicLinks
