Profit through Purpose — The Cause Effect’s mission — is to make social purpose a vital part of business in Australia and beyond. Offering education resources, workshops, and their signature Path to Purpose Program, The Cause Effect is a social purpose consultancy that helps business leaders define, articulate, and embed meaningful purpose into the heart of their business.
To celebrate their certification, we asked The Cause Effect to share a bit more about how they walk their talk when it comes to social purpose.
Why did you want to become a Certified B Corporation?
From the very first day we started The Cause Effect, we knew we wanted to certify as a B Corp because we want to build an ethical business that we can be proud of. That means being the best kind of business we can and challenging ourselves to improve our ethical standards in areas we might not have considered. Besides, we encourage our clients to become B Corps, so it was important for us to be able to walk the talk and understand what was involved in the process.
What makes The Cause Effect unique? Where are you having the biggest impact, or what are some of the changes you’ve made to make a difference.
We are a niche consultancy specialising in Strategic Purpose Consulting. This means we are purpose-obsessed! We live and breathe it day-in, day-out and we are continually finding ways to help our clients sharpen their purpose and, most importantly, act on their higher purpose so that they can create and be part of movements for change.
Walking the talk is really important to us, so we use our everyday actions to create impact in a way that our clients can see, so it can inspire them to want to do more good in the world.
To date, we have created over 25,000 days of education for girls in vulnerable communities and we have recently set ourselves a huge (and scary) goal to protect 10,000 square metres of threatened rainforest by 2025.
Some of the little changes that we’ve implemented as a result of the B Corp certification journey include formalising a number of policies like employee benefits, ethical marketing, and our Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) statement. Also better environmental practices like switching to a 100% carbon neutral electricity supplier and ensuring that hazardous waste like electronic equipment and batteries are disposed responsibly.
B Corps want to help transform our economy into one that is inclusive, sustainable, and regenerative. What business practice do you want to see become the norm?
We want to help realise a future where every business is driven by a higher purpose that translates into social impact.
Our aspiration is for purposeful business to become the norm here in Australia and around the world because we know that business has such an incredible capacity for innovation and resourcefulness, and the ability to create meaningful and vital change in the world, at scale.
Was there a B Corp that inspired you to certify, or one that you look to for inspiration?
There are so many inspirational B Corps. The ones that stand out for us are Patagonia, Intrepid Travel, Future Super, Outland Denim, and Ben & Jerry’s, but we are looking forward to learning about and from the many other B Corps, many of which aren’t household names.
Do you have any tips for aspiring B Corps about the certification process?
Just start. You will not regret it as it is a process where you will learn that your business has so much more capacity to create impact than you thought possible.
A big congratulations to The Cause Effect for achieving B Corp certification!
