Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company is a roaster, wholesaler and retailer of 100% organic, fair trade, specialty coffee, located in Orange, Massachusetts. Dean’s Beans mission has been clear for over 25 years: to use high-quality specialty coffee as a vehicle for progressive change throughout the coffeelands of Asia, Africa and the Americas. This is done through activism, ecological responsibility, and innovative development programs with direct-trade cooperative partners.
Dean’s Beans only sources beans from small-farming communities and coops, largely made up of indigenous peoples working hard to maintain their culture and lifestyles in a hostile world. They have been 100% certified organic since their inception, and are proud members of the Fair Trade Federation.
Dean’s Beans works with every coop to co-create development projects through their award-winning People Centered Development (PCD) program. PCD is an approach to international development that focuses on the real needs of local communities for the necessities of life (clean water, health care, income generation). This is an integral and fundamental part of their business with all their grower partners. Learn more about their social justice model and their delicious, organic, fair trade coffee at www.deansbeans.com.
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 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 earn further points if their overall business model can be shown to create positive social and environmental impact as well, qualifying the company for specific Impact Business Model points.
Scores for Certified B Corporations are verified by the non-profit B Lab.
info_outlineImpact Area Scores
The questions in the B Impact Assessment are organized into five Impact Areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers. Click into a Impact Area to see topics covered in each. Topics in blue are Impact Business Models associated with that Impact Area where the company has earned additional credit. Due to rounding, displayed totals may not add up exactly.
The B Impact Assessment is customized to a company's size, sector, and geographic market. However, within those parameters, there are still questions included in the B Impact Assessment that might not be relevant to a particular company. In cases where a question is not applicable, the potential points available for that question are instead earned based on the performance of the company on the other topics relevant to the stakeholder and summed up as "N/A points." Likewise, a score of N/A for Workers means that the company is a sole proprietor or partnership with no full-time staff, and a score of 0 or N/A for Customers means that the company does not have a specific Customer-focused Impact Business Model.
Each year, B Lab releases lists honoring the top-performing Certified B Corps in each Impact Area and overall, broken down by size, on the annual Best for the World lists.
info_outlineAdditional Documentation
B Lab may determine that a company should make additional material beyond their B Impact Report transparent in order for the public to be able to evaluate the company’s overall impact. This additional transparency may cover participation in a controversial industry, information shared on the company’s Disclosure Questionnaire, or simply a company’s relationship to a larger complex entity. Public companies and wholly-owned subsidiaries are required to make their full B Impact Assessments transparent to achieve B Corp Certification.
