ME to WE named a Certified B Corp: Highlights

After an intensive and rigorous, yearlong process, I’m thrilled to say that ME to WE is now a Certified B Corporation—the 150th Certified B Corp in Canada!

Joyce Sou, Director of B Lab Canada, told us: “We are seeing an unprecedented amount of interest in this movement from Canadian companies as the global community continues to grow.  ME to WE is a great Canadian example of an innovative business model for positive social change.”

Certified B Corporations meet higher standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability than other businesses. So to be at the top of that impressive group is well, humbling.

B Corporation certification is to business what Fair Trade is to coffee or LEED is to a building.

Let’s just say it was an extensive and long process, but we loved the outcome.

Over more than a year, the B Lab, which conducts the certification, required more than 25 documents from us. In some cases, we had to create new processes, tracking systems and templates to fulfill these requests. But we were determined to meet and master their processes.

Our amazing team had to solicit answers and documents from all departments, including human resources, consumer engagement, the leadership team, facilities team, accounting and finance, which had to answer upwards of 50 questions each to complete the B Lab’s application.

It was darn hard and something we should be proud of. In one case, we had to provide a list of suppliers to show how much of our cost of goods (COGS) sold went to artisans versus other suppliers. This was reporting we’d never done before but incredibly fulfilling when we realized the impact our manufacturing standards have.

In the end, we were gratified to find out 76 percent of costs of goods sold (COGS) went to artisans. Seventy-six percent of ME to WE’s Cost of Goods Sold is spent on providing opportunity and paying fair wages to small-scale, independent suppliers in “low-income, poor or very poor markets.”

This is extremely high. It is interesting in that ME to WE donates its profit to Free The Children, but it also makes an impact through its costs and expenses (which are subtracted to determine profit).

Being a B Corp requires a different mindset and process, rigour and discipline and ensuring you are actually doing things better.

I want to highlight some of the areas where ME to WE received a flawless score, meaning 100 percent of available points in a category. B Lab found that ME to WE:

ME to WE is in impressive company. The Canada B Corp community includes companies such as the Vancouver-based tech company HootSuite, Business Development Bank of Canada, and Ontario craft brewery, Beau’s Beer.

We can now compare ourselves to other socially and environmentally impactful organizations—and we compare very well.

– Russ McLeod, Chief Operations Director, ME to WE


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