We re-certified – so what?

In July 2025, three years after we first certified as a B Corp, we received the official thumbs up from our B Corp assessors at B Lab, that we had successfully requalified, with an increased performance score of 94.6.  The median score for ordinary businesses, curious enough to complete the assessment, is 50.9. The ‘pass mark’ to be a B Corp is 80.

Recertification is a three-yearly requirement to stay a B Corporation. This is one of the reasons we choose to invest the considerable time and resources we do in staying certified.  Full credit to Jo Patterson, my fellow Director at Goodsense, for leading the whole recertification process.

But why do we did we re-certify?  Why should you care? And might third party certification be right for your business?

Why does having a third party certification like B Corp matter?

As a marketing and communications company, it’s important we are credible in the eyes of our clients.   One way of helping build credibility, for any business, is having others sing your praises.  We love it when clients endorse our track record. It’s important for us to know they appreciate the quality of our work and our shared values.  It’s helpful and motivating when they kindly share their experience and perceptions of us in action.

Gabrielle, Kath, Lani and Jo – some of our GoodSense marketing team

But customer testimonials only go so far.  Clients only know so much – and they don’t know what they don’t know.  B Corp reveals that information. It shows the strength, relative to others, of our:

• Governance
• Responsibility to workers
• Support of community
• Contribution to the environment
• Treatment of customers

Our Certified B Corp status means you can be confident we meet the rigorous social, environmental and governance standards of your sustainable procurement policies.

It means clients like fellow B Corp, Method Recycling, who needed experienced sustainability marketing support at short notice, could trust we were genuinely aligned before they commissioned marketing work from us. It was a proxy for more formal due diligence in their procurement.

To certify as a B Corp, and recertify, we have to demonstrate what we do, with examples, across the five assessment areas above. We have to exceed minimum performance standards, and our submitted evidence is vetted by an assessor, not known to us.  Our results are published publically.  Any potential customers can see our scores, with breakdowns under each of the five assessment areas, and use that to ask us questions or to compare us to other potential providers.

So reason to certify #1:

#1 Certification builds confidence for customers to buy

Every purchase or procurement process is a complex weave of emotional and functional decisions. If it’s a business procurement process this is multi-dimensional, with several people, often with different roles and priorities, involved in the purchase decision. Third party certification, like B Corp, is particularly important for purchases where:

• The sector may have many potential providers
• Many providers in the industry don’t have aligned values or behaviours
• Sales processes can be slick and compelling on the surface
• Time or resources for due diligence are short
• The risks – to organisational results, reputation and resources – of getting it wrong are high
• Buyers have their own internal procurement standards to honour

The more committed to sustainability your audience, the more likely they are to value Certification.  This is particularly so if your clients have certifications themselves.  In the three years since we first Certified we’ve been fortunate to work with other B Corps, including Method Recycling, NZ Native Honey, Pathfinder, Talent Nation and a few who Certified as B Corps later including Cultivating Leadership and PeopleEx.  As supply chains get more rigorous, certifications help you establish and keep your place in those chains.

If any of this sounds like the market you operate in, certification might be a useful thread to weave into your business and marketing strategy. Get in touch if it’d be helpful to talk any of this through.

#2 Certification places you into a community

As a Certified B Corp, we are part of a strongly growing cohort of certified businesses in Australia, Aotearoa and around the world.  As of this week, more than 1 million people are now employed by Certified B Corporations, across 10,000 B Corps in 160 industries, operating on six continents.

The certification process has a rigor which gives us a mutual respect for each others’ work.  The system isn’t perfect.  There are some certified B Corps with problemmatic business models.  But some of the largest B Corporations, such as Unilever, are using it as a vehicle to drive faster change.  The B Corp standards themselves are being made more rigorous. And the organisation is responsive.  A year ago, four Havas advertising agency offices were stripped of their BCorp status because other Havas agencies had begun promoting Shell.  B Corp said this work for the fossil fuel giant “violated the community’s core values as stated in their Declaration of Interdependence.”

Katherine from GoodSense in the crowd of fellow B Corps, Assembly 2024.

In this Declaration, all B Corps commit to “collective efforts to drive systemic change” and to “advocate for policies that create positive social and environmental outcomes.”  B Corps acknowledge that to create a more just and sustainable world, businesses must think beyond their own operations, as Grace Son, Senior Standards Manager at B Corp explained in April 2025.

This collective purpose gives us a fellowship among other B Corps and a greater power when we advocate together.

And it makes for splendid collaboration opportunities, like the webinar for B Corps we contributed marketing insights to, with GoodSense client Professor Caroline Thalund of S360 alongside Tim Jones, the Grow Good guy and leading B Corp consultant in Aotearoa.

#3 Certification gives direction and focus for improvement

As GoodSense Directors, Jo and I are marking our B Corp recertification with a ‘what next’ planning meeting. Like with any certification, B Corp is partly about what you record or measure, as much as about what you do.

For example, our lowest scoring Assessment areas currently are the Water and Land & Life categories in Environment. Our environmental handprint from the clients we work with is good, though not yet practical to quantify.  We also do nature and water positive at our respective home offices we haven’t reported on – yet.  They aren’t hugely material and, as a network of home-offices, have a tiny impact. As a result, they weren’t a priority for us to capture. But B Corp shows this as one area where we could now bring focus, increase transparency and our performance over time.

So when the world of Environmental, Social and Goverance (ESG) and sustainability can feel daunting, third party certifications can give a framework, clarity and a process for improvement.

Might third party certification be right for your business?

We chose BCorp in part because of its international credibility, when we have an increasingly international team at GoodSense.  While individual markets might falter for a year or two, when political leadership changes, the trajectory to greater sustainability globally remains strong.

We also chose BCorp because it has a holistic focus that integrates the social and environmental aspects of sustainability.  It might not be the right certification for you.

Katherine Dewar and Jo Patterson – Directors at Certified B Corp, GoodSense.

The first decision to make is a strategic one.  How would a third party certification enhance your operations – or make it easier for your target audience to choose you?

Understanding your audience, what drives their purchasing or procurement, is a marketing challenge.

If you’d like our help to tackle it, please get in touch. We’d love to help.

We can also support your decision of which certification to choose.  We’ve worked directly with some of the top certification providers, as clients, well as with consultants who can support you getting Certified should you decide to go ahead.  Let us know if you’d like a confidential no obligation call about our BCorp experiences, certifications generally, or any marketing challenges you’re facing. Contact us here.