What does it mean to be a B Corp?

B Corp is a global movement of people using business as a force for good. 

It’s about meeting the highest standard of social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability, to balance profit and purpose.

For Resonance, we live and breathe that, and continually strive to make a positive impact in all we do. 

At its core, Resonance is a social impact property fund manager. We provide life changing homes and solutions for people and communities facing crisis. We act as a bridge for investors to put their money into funds, working with our expert housing partners to provide housing for those most in need. 

We also connect capital directly with social enterprises – we know having a stable home is not the only aspect of a happy and healthy life, but also the community built around people to strengthen bonds and improve wellbeing.

Resonance gained its first B Corp accreditation score of 115 in 2018. In our reassessment, we improved our score to 128.9. 

We are listed as Best for the World for Governance and Customers and have increased our scores in both of those areas during our reassessment last year. 

Best for the World means we are in the top 5% of companies of our size, worldwide.

As B Corp said: “Being recognised as one of the “Best for the World™” within the global B Corp community is so much more than just a badge of honour. It represents the opportunity to share the knowledge, learnings and best practices that have granted you that top score with the rest of the community, so we can all keep on making progress towards our common goal and vision: to collectively transform the global economic system to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.”

Two key areas of our improvement have been for Workers and the Environment. Resonance has worked hard to consult team members to find out what changes would benefit them, and we have implemented many of the suggestions

As a business we’re just about to move to a permanent nine-day fortnight after a year of trialling the flexible working model, and our staff take advantage of our half day a month paid volunteering, putting their energy into causes they really care about.  

Our score for the environment increased significantly, too - this is us being more aware of our uses of valuable resources such as water and other utilities, improving our reuse and recycling; and our transport policies.

So, what exactly is a B Corp?

B Corp is a community of more than 6,000 businesses across 88 countries and 159 industries, which have been through the B Corp certification process to ensure that they meet the highest standard of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability, to balance profit and purpose.

The process splits businesses into five sections across key areas:

• Governance
• Workers
• Community
• Environment
• Customers

To certify as a B Corp, a company must achieve a minimum verified score of 80 points on the B Impact Assessment. The B Impact Assessment asks around 200 questions about how the day-to-day operations of a company create positive impact for the company’s workers, community, and environment. 

Additionally, companies can gain further points if their overall business model can be shown to create positive social and environmental impact as well. 

We are really proud to be a B Corp member. Resonance’s vision and values are acutely aligned with the B Corp status. 

At its core being a B Corp is about meeting high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. 

These standards have run through our business since we launched back in 2002. They are standards that we continue to commit to, do not let slide and value immensely. 

Part of how we prove this to the world is through our social impact reports that measure how what we do helps to reduce inequality, lower levels of poverty, create healthier environments and grow stronger communities.