Yesterday was a milestone moment for the Aotearoa B Corp community. B Corps in Auckland came together with 23 businesses to help them celebrate their completion of the ‘Business for Good: Good for Business’ programme pilot.
‘Business for Good’ was developed in partnership with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. Its single objective is to grow and support the community of New Zealand businesses actively improving their impact.
Grace Ashman and Chris Lijzenga, our partners at NZTE, have been invaluable in driving this effort. They are both champions of B Corps within the government and business ecosystem.
Government partnership in Business for Good signals their recognition of the B Impact Assessment and B Corp certification as valuable tools for improving business impact.
We also worked alongside our community of B Consultants, including Tim Jones, Florian Nebel, Lucia Die Gil and Jenny Walke. It’s a priority for us to enable and grow this community of professionals. They are crucial supports to businesses through the certification process. We see this community as a key lever for scaling the movement for better business.
The Business for Good companies represent the next wave of Aotearoa Certified B Corporations.
Artist Matahi Brightwell’s Ngatoroirangi Mine Bay Maori rock carvings on Lake Taupo, Waikato.
By July, more than 40 businesses will have completed the programme. While not all of them will become B Corps, we hope that by accessing the tools and people in the B Corp community, they will be inspired to improve their impact.
Our goal is to change the culture and practices of business in Aotearoa. In keeping with this we are learning continuously about Iwi Māori approaches to business and where these intersect with B Corps’ principles of stakeholder governance. Through Business for Good we have been fortunate to hear from businesses from across Aotearoa New Zealand, with different backgrounds, cultural reference points and ownership models.
We also had tons of support and engagement from B Corps. Thanks again to Roman at Fix and Fogg, Tesh at Raglan Food Co, Laurence at Synlait, Gareth at Eagle Protect.
We look forward to hearing much more from you all. We are planning a series of meetups in coming weeks, so keep an eye on our online community for more announcements.
Together we believe we can achieve our shared vision for an inclusive, sustainable, and regenerative economy.
If you couldn’t make the meetup celebrating the first cohort of businesses completing the Business for Good program, view part of the session to hear from B Lab CEO Andrew Davies and thinkstep-anz CEO Barbara Nebel.
