Industry Professionals Kick Off Impact Reporting Season with Online Event
Learn Best Practices and Trends in the Business of Creating and Reporting Social and Environmental Impact
It’s impact reporting season, and impact professionals from around the world recently gathered online for a LinkedIn Live event to discuss best practices and trends in the business of creating and reporting social and environmental impact.
The session, “Learn How to Create Impact Reports from Industry Professionals,” was led by Certified B Corporation veterans Polina Pinchevsky of Roundpeg, Alisa Herr of Unity Web Agency, and Russ Stoddard of Oliver Russell. The three came together over the past two years to give birth to a pandemic business baby, Unit of Impact, a SaaS platform designed to help small businesses measure, manage, and report their impact.
Keep reading for excerpts from the conversation or watch the recording online.
The event drew a mix of founders, business strategists, and executive directors of B Corps, public benefit corporations, nonprofits, and socially responsible small businesses.
“We didn’t know what to expect as it was our first LinkedIn Live. We were honestly blown away by the interest in the event, the passion of the attendees, and the number and diversity of thoughtful questions that were put forth,” Pinchevsky said.
The event started with an insight from Tamara Bergkamp, a sustainability consultant and former senior manager for the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), to position impact reporting as a strategic business imperative. “People starting this journey should be aware that the reporting process is much more than preparing information for readers, it is a key source for sustainable business management: Identifying, measuring, and defining goals and actions taken,” she said.
Best Practices to Make the Most of Your Impact Report
The hourlong conversation covered best practices, with specific advice to help businesses get the most from their impact reports:
• Don’t try to tell everything. People’s attention spans are limited, so don’t overwhelm them with too much information; give them the highlights with a way to learn more if they’d like.
• Don’t forget your suppliers. Don’t just look downstream at the impact you’ve created; consider the upstream impact you’ve created by strategically working with aligned suppliers.
• It’s never too early to start. You might only be measuring two or three impact areas on a regular basis, but that’s a good prompt to start reporting and improve your future performance. And don’t forget — many businesses don’t measure or report any impact!
• Transparency is rewarded. Be sure to report the good with the bad; your transparency will be rewarded with the trust of stakeholders who will value your honesty.
• Repurpose content. Your impact report is a significant investment of time and resources. It’s a tremendous content resource and you should make the most of it throughout the year by slicing and dicing it into assets you can use in your marketing and advocacy.
• Meet requirements for public benefit corporations. Depending upon your state of incorporation, this legal framework has its own regulatory requirements for impact reporting. Don’t forget to include them in your annual impact report. (Unit of Impact also provides a state-by-state database for benefit corporation reporting requirements.)
8-Point Framework to Create a Content Outline
The presentation also outlined an eight-point framework to help social entrepreneurs create a content outline for their impact reports.
1. Brand foundation: Your purpose, values, and the impact you seek to create.
2. Products and services: Don’t forget to include as their revenues drive your ability to create impact
3. Stakeholder letter: A way for your leader(s) to personalize your impact for all stakeholders, including successes, areas for improvement, and goals for the future
4. Impact reporting: Provide proof of your impact — by the numbers
5. Storytelling: Projects that give a narrative accounting of your impact with a human face
6. Certifications: Independent street cred of your business model, from B Corp to Fair Trade
7. Testimonials: Highlight and acknowledge stakeholders who can testify to your positive impact
8. Engagement: Don’t forget to provide on-ramps for people to follow your company and its work all year long: newsletter signups, social media, etc.
“I was inspired as I was learning more about how others define ‘impact’ as we dig in and build our Rise Impact Program and learn to better communicate the outputs, outcomes, and impacts of the work we are directly and indirectly involved with as we advance Truth and Reconciliation across Turtle Island,” said event attendee Annie Korver, founder and principal, Rise Consulting Ltd., a B Corp and Indigenous-owned national management consultancy supporting Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.
In addition to covering impact reporting best practices and advice, Unit of Impact’s three founders gave a brief demo of their SaaS platform, which provides small businesses with a system to efficiently organize and centralize their impact data; a dashboard for measuring performance and improvement over time; and an impact-report generator that gives entrepreneurs an efficient and economical way to create a professionally designed impact report, using the impact report created on its platform by B Corp Rivanna Natural Designs as an example.
“In a world where we have a ways to go when it comes to standardization across impact reporting and ESG sustainability reporting, the Unit of Impact tool seemed very easy to use and it leverages a clear and simple framework,” said event attendee Shilpa Gadhok, founder and CEO, See Good Strategy Group. “I believe this tool will be a game-changer for companies and organizations who are resource-constrained or are looking for assistance on where or how to begin the process on reporting their progress.”
Watch the recording: Learn How to Create Impact Reports.
B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
