Scale Your Impact: Building the Communications Infrastructure Organizations Need to Grow

Welcome. Thanks for joining. My name is Tova Lobats, and I'm the COO and executive director of strategic partnerships at SOCAP Global. SOCAP is excited to host this conversation, as we believe sharing cross-sector insights is essential to accelerating global change. The impact space is at an inflection point, and the work ahead isn't just about scaling entrepreneurs and their solutions. It's about strengthening the entire ecosystem, the funds, funders, and builders of businesses and nonprofits making those solutions possible. We work with Bark Media year-round to share the stories of the SOCAP community, from our event stages to our monthly money and meaning podcast. We brought this webinar together to show how that kind of storytelling can uplift solutions and inspire others to build lasting, meaningful change. I'd like to introduce our moderator, Chris Marquis. Chris is a professor at the University of Cambridge, who has been researching and teaching social impact for over 20 years. Two of his recent books on this topic, Better Business and The Profiteers, are essential reading for anyone in the space. Thanks for leading this conversation, Chris. >> Great. Well, thank you so much, Tova. Now, hopefully folks can hear me. I actually I could not hear Tova, but I saw myself appear on the screen. So, uh very much excited to to be here, and I'm going to be introducing I'm going to be the moderator, but also introducing our uh very esteemed panel. So, first we have James Stuffed. Uh James is co-founder of Bark Media, which is a content marketing agency that serves impact organizations, foundations, and nonprofits. It's both a certified B Corporation and 1% for the Planet member, an increasingly common uh dual listing that I see among organizations. Uh James has more than 20 years of experience in national magazines, media partnership development, and developing impactful impactful communication strategies that move people to action. Next up, we have Kate Williams, who is CEO of 1% for the Planet, which is a global environmental nonprofit that certifies businesses committing 1% of their annual revenues, underline revenues there, to environmental organizations. 1% has been using the stories of its member organizations to inspire not only increase participation, but powerful global impact. And finally, last but not least, we have Charlotte Levy, the global director of marketing communications for B Lab, the global nonprofit behind certified B corporations, a community of businesses that meet verified social, environmental, and governance standards. Charlotte led the creation of B Lab's recent green shouting guide. Love that uh name. Uh which is an impact guide for companies in our current area of green hushing. All right. Uh want to let all our all of our audience members know they can drop their questions in the chat, uh and we'll have a chance to to address um those particularly towards the end of the session. Uh as we as we dive in, want to start with you uh James first. So, my question is just sort of a a sort of open an open question here to begin us. Uh can we level set a bit? Uh why are we having this conversation on scaling impact through communications today? Can you discuss why this is an an issue today? >> Yeah. So, I think a lot of funds, foundations, uh mission-driven organizations, um they're doing extraordinary work, but in many cases, their communication capacity um you know, hasn't scaled along with the work. So, an organization may have great uh uh strong programs, strong investment, strong partnership data, but if people outside um their immediate circle can understand the work, trust it, remember it, or explain it, um the work stays smaller, well, smaller than it should anyway. So, this is where communications or storytelling becomes really important. So, data matters, metric matters, um reporting matters, um but the data by itself doesn't really always move people. So, strong communications help translate impact metrics into stories that can actually, you know, move people or make a difference. I I An example I'd use is we worked with an endowment for a large university. So, it was a fundraising program. They're trying to raise money, they're trying to do things and touch people, reach people, do all that stuff. Um but at the end of the day, in in working with them, we realized most people didn't actually even know what that endowment went to, what did the money actually pay for. So, when they're giving money to this endowment, where's it actually go, what's it actually doing? So, we did a little research, a little work with them, and found out, you know, most of that endowment for the university was going to, say like, cancer research or paying tuition to med students, or they it built a a monarch garden for for research programs, they're doing things like that. And so, when you take those stories and make it relatable to people, then push that out to the community and ask for money, it becomes very easy for someone to say, "I want to give money to cancer research." and not just "I want to give money to the, you know, $2 billion uh endowment." So, you know, the stories help people um know who's benefiting and and why the work matters, but you know, I think in this world, a lot of people for a long time have just relied on relationships and reputation, um and word of mouth. And and while those things are important, in order for this whole world to scale, we have to start reaching out to a deeper community, a bigger community, and actually using our communications to do that. So, you know, for for this group, it's you know, it's it's donors, investors, it's it's founders, uh uh and and they're asking for more clarity, they're asking for proof, accountability. So, the risk really in this whole world right now isn't to be under marketed. Um the bigger risk for organizations is is is limiting its own impact. So, if you're not going out and reaching out beyond your circle and trying to build that, you're missing partnerships, um you know, new funders, activating your group, activating your your advocates, and and really helping the field understand what you're what you're working on. So, I think this is the whole is good, especially for people like 1% and B Lab. Um being that there's a membership group and who they're working with. So, if we're not communicating the impact, and we're not reaching out to all those people that are part of the membership group, um we're not learning from each other, we're not activating things from each other, we're not like learning how to build support from one another, um and things can can stay small, or or that impact stay small, and it doesn't scale along with everything that's going on. So, I guess I'd say uh bottom line is if we want to be serious about scaling impact, um we have to get serious about helping people understand the impact, uh trust it, remember it, and and and and that will help scale it. >> Fantastic. I always uh so appreciate your your wise thoughts. I I'd mentioned in here I I was having problems with my audio, but I've sort of resolved that, so was glad to be able to catch your always uh wise thoughts, James. I always appreciate your comments. Uh so, next really want to actually get a get a sense from Kate and Charlotte. Um can you describe a bit your experiences with communications and uh scaling impact. Um you know, you both represent really important uh uh uh organizations in this broader ecosystem field. So, maybe Kate, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, and I'll just build on um James, what you were saying about, you know, getting serious about scaling impact cuz for us about 10 years ago, we realized that to get serious about scaling impact, we had an important brand role to play, meaning building the 1% for the Planet brand would kind of make the whole system work because we would have the consumer we would build the consumer recognition, which would build the business case, which would build the business awareness, which would build the overall value, which would drive impact. So, we really thought about like, how do we do this? We're a very small nonprofit without, you know, any sizable marketing budget. Um and we realized we have the, you know, kind of gold of a great network of businesses and nonprofit partners. And so, we really tapped into that network and it's, you know, thousands of stakeholders across both of those groups. We are across 65 different industries. We're small businesses. We're multinational businesses. We're in multiple different geographies. So, you know, we really had this great asset. So, our work was to figure out how do we equip those um everyone to have a sort of win-win opportunity to communicate about 1% for the Planet. So, you know, there's really nothing very sexy about any of this. It was pretty brass tacks, like creating really good clear brand guidelines, creating approved copy and templates, um creating marketing guidance so that in our account management work with our businesses in particular, we could, you know, really guide them about the value and opportunity for them to be talking about their 1% as a way that they built their brands and also building the larger 1% for the Planet brand. And then we also excuse me, uh leveraged our own storytelling and and work to um you know, really uh build on that. And over the last decade or so, we've gotten, you know, increasingly sophisticated, but I really think this work of thinking like and operating like a network and then doing whatever we can to provide the tools and resources in really clear actionable ways always with that win-win uh mindset has been very helpful. >> Yeah, plus one to all of the things that Kate said. So, I mean, the the B Corp movement's actually celebrating 20 years this year. So, we've been around for two decades. And you know, really for the first decade plus, there was very kind of um steady growth, but it was like relatively slow. It was a kind of manageable uh slope. And in the last 6 years, uh we've kind of tripled uh the size of the community. We're now over 10,000 companies. Um the number that's more exciting to me though is that uh those 10,000 companies represent a million workers within those businesses who are now part of this network that Kate was talking about. So, it's a lot of people that you can potentially mobilize. Um our teams around the world grew as well. So, our own employees in markets all over the place were um increasing. And where we sit today is that we see in the United States aggregate brand awareness for B Corp is about 40%. Um it's strongest with millennials and Gen Z. So, my expectation is that we'll grow over time as as those generations continue to um come into um leadership roles in business. Uh and I think that the thing that's been really key has been how do you create a brand that's consistent, um but also relevant across different cultures. And so, in this phase of really global growth where now our largest markets are outside the US, um how do you make something that is recognizable, but feels particular to the market in which you're operating. And so, some of that is internal. Um we have this a kind of framework we sometimes use of fixed, flexible, and free. And so, we tell teams, this has to be the same everywhere. That's like basic things like brand guidelines, taglines. Flexible is things where we're giving you some direction, but you can adapt it. And free is areas where you really have a lot of liberty to kind of adapt and make things relevant. And very much like Kate said, we really focus on how do we empower the B Corps, the companies we certify to help us grow through campaigns like we have one that's recurring called B Corp month every March. We get tens of millions of free impressions through that campaign. Um and finally, I think it's also about how do we make the kind of work we do continually relevant to the conversation. So, in the US, we published op-eds on the governance of AI. Um in Brazil, during COP, we published new research on the climate impact um if every company behaved like a B Corp, how would that change global temperatures? Um in Australia, there was like a really clever ad about fat cats. Um Google it. It's really fun. Uh kind of trying to like personify uh our enemy as this cat lolling around on a board table. And so, you're continually having that balance of like, how do you know what has to be fixed, but how do you give people the freedom to really innovate and be relevant? >> Excellent. Well, thank you. Lot lots of lots of great points. I'd like to stay up with you for a bit. Uh Charlotte, you know, as I mentioned in the introduction, you you you did this green shushing guide which I really want to you know, learn more about and get get more into. And I think that is so important now. I mean, I think one of the reasons why we're having you know, so many times so much trouble um engaging on these impact topics is, you know, the trust is declining. We have, you know, issues of misinformation. We have issues with, you know, you know, media, government, etc. Uh so, could you describe a bit the green hushing guide and what you're recommending for companies? >> Yeah. I think it's important when we talk about macro trust declining and skepticism, which I think is true, to differentiate that that's true on the whole, and yet I'm looking at I just got the data back from the US brand awareness study on B Corp trust in certification, our certification specifically, but probably others, is actually rising. So in a low trust environment, people are looking for people that they actually can trust. >> Uh-huh. >> Um so >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean so the the green shouting guide was really um our idea was how do we uh empower and embolden um the people who are doing the work and have the right to talk about sustainability because they have already done a lot of work to earn that. Um make sure they keep talking. Um so I think I have a couple of like examples that I can show that we can pull up. Um and the first is what what is green shouting? So we we decided that we needed a word for what we wanted because we had a word for everything we didn't want, green hushing, green washing, and we needed a word for what we wanted people to do, which we decided was green shouting. Um and this is how we defined it. The practice of communicating sustainability efforts openly, accurately, and courageously, grounding claims in evidence, acknowledging challenges, and strengthening ultimately a transparent information ecosystem. So this is about how what I do for my company to talk about the efforts I've made actually also kind of raises the the tide for everyone in the sector. We genuinely believe that. Um and if we go to the next example, what we what we did was kind of give people a framework of how do I actually talk about sustainability confidently in the current landscape? And so we have these dials. I'm not going to go through absolutely every single dial today. You can um scan that QR code that's on your screen right now and and download this. But we basically looked at hundreds of campaigns from brands that were were shouting um loudly and also clearly and effectively about sustainability action, and we came up with these sort of seven parameters that we think of as like things you can tune in order to get your own kind of unique message that works for you. Um, and so it's everything from uh tone, which I'll give you of an example of uh in just a a second, to abundance, which we do see a lot of in like clean energy kind of messaging, the notion that it's not just that it's um, you know, nice for the planet, it's also that it's cheap, it's available in a power outage, it it feels great um in your home, that kind of thing, um all the way over to humility, which I think um a lot of us in this room really value. How do I acknowledge where I fell short as well as where I succeeded. So to bring this to life, I have a couple examples. The first one I think is from Tony's, if we go to the next, it's tone. Um, this is one I think is really helpful for us who are deep in the space to remember, which is that when we talk about sustainability, it should sound like us. It should sound like the way our brand sounds when we talk about anything. Um, I love this example. They launched this new product that were like these little crunchy chocolate candies uh and the tagline was it takes balls to end exploitation in chocolate. Um, you know, their whole thing is about how do you have a more ethical supply chain, but you can talk about this in a way that's quite um plain but also a little bit cheeky and memorable. Um, if you go to the next, I love this example too. So Valentine's Day this year, they placed these full page personal ads uh in like major business publications because they were targeting business leaders actually. They said they were looking for long-term lovers, which was that they were recruiting for people to use their sustainable supply chain, which is one of the things that's like really unique about Tony's and that we love to see in the space, which is not only do we build something better for our brand, but now we're opening up and sharing it with others and so they have many other companies who can access their cacao supply chain, um but But didn't say it in that jargon, right? They they put it in the in the frame of like a personal ad during um the Valentine's Day. I thought that was super clever example of tone. Uh and the second dial I'll talk about is is disruption, which I think also is something that sometimes feels maybe uncomfortable, maybe it feels like too commercial or like techy uh for for us in the impact space. But the reality is that most of us have designed businesses to disrupt dominant paradigms that are not working. And how do we lean into the reality of actually how radical that is? So, my my last illustration is the next one. This is just one. I don't know if people know the the brand Back Market. I think they're doing an amazing job. Um uh another B Corp from the community. This is just one of many campaigns that they've run um about planned obsolescence in tech. Again, like a kind of boring technical topic um but they turned it into something that felt like really undermining kind of the man and a dominant system that wasn't working. There were basically millions of um computers that were going to be bricked and totally useless. Uh and they said um the way we're going to respond to this is we are going to actually change the operating system on all these computers. And it's actually like a revolutionary idea to resist the the effort to make these computers obsolete. Um so saving usable machines uh from landfill. Um I think that leaning into that notion uh I love this tagline in the upper left. The computer we're not supposed to sell you anymore. Uh it really gets into the sense of like we are doing something um radical and exciting. Uh and I I think we could use a lot more excitement in our space. >> Yeah, fantastic. I and really, you know, one thing I'll take from both those uh examples, but also something you mentioned about, you know, um B Lab itself is that, you know, in these times where there is a lot of misinformation and lack of trust that actually you know organizations have certain like levers of authenticity that they can they can pull that actually could cut through that. So you mentioned certificate that in this high trust and high distrust environment you know having a certification that means something actually you actually you know receive much more you know support and I'd actually like to ask a follow up for Kate actually with respect to 1% um in this in this situation. How have you seen you know your communications shift and in the reception of it as you know more and misinformation is out there? Is this something where having that you know 1% for the planet label is something that companies can say you know you know want to draw on more and and how do you actually communicate with them on that? >> Yeah it's a it's a great question and I think for us the answer is essentially not to shift how we're communicating but to really unders to really scale the how we're equipping our members to communicate because they are hungry for that because I I do think and I love Charlotte hearing that stat that the trust in certifications is strong because I think that you know really reinforces what anecdotally we have been experiencing which is you know a desire to communicate clearly what they what our companies are doing um and maybe I'll just like dive into sharing a building on that a little bit of a how we do that and I love the spirited examples Charlotte that you shared and I think we you know we see a lot of that as well and we absolutely encourage that because I think one of the vibes of 1% for the planet that we found to be really important is, you know, super serious rigorous certification balanced with, you know, this is the the life we're living. This is the world we're living in. Let's Let's be inviting and engaging and like point towards the solution as opposed to, you know, pointing towards the problem. And so, you know, to do that and to sort of build the strategy and scale to enable us to really bring our members into that um opportunity to to communicate that story. We've We've essentially kind of approached it from two broad um angles. One is providing really simple, clear, free, like prepped assets that they can download and use. And then the other is providing the guidelines that enable them to customize. So, very similar Charlotte to your three-part framework. So, I have a few slides on that. If we can um bring those up, I can just walk through those. And Earth Month is a great kind of focal point. And so, I'll just use some examples from Earth Month to to showcase kind of both of these. And you know, again, it's not um it's not rocket science or um you know, super exciting. But I think the results are really effective and exciting. And that's exactly what you want. So, on the back end, um you know, our focus with our amazing team, I will say like building out a team that has the kind of combination of skills and spirit to do this is really really important. And I'm so grateful to our team for like having that in spades. Um but so, Earth Month, um we provided both assets. And if we can go to the next slide, I can just share some examples of how members took the assets and then used them to be very much themselves as the the businesses that they are, but to do it in a way that was very aligned with the shared brand so that we were able to communicate this, you know, pretty big story at scale. And so these are just a few examples which you can peruse and I think this deck will be shared. And then the next slide showcases examples members that did a more used our brand guidelines, used the value of Earth Month and that sort of pop to tell very much their own stories. And I'll just, you know, hover for a minute on the one on lookers right, so the far right on this slide. And that's our member Goodr. They make sunglasses sunglasses and they did a campaign that they started a few years ago maybe in 2020 of around the idea that these shades are trash, meaning they had recycled frames. And then they were super psyched to do a very meta um redux of that by reusing that campaign these shades are still trash. And so everyone had a lot of fun with that, but that's a you know, an analog Charlotte to I think what you were saying of it's serious work to create a way to do recycled plastic for something that is accepting a color dye cuz it doesn't work very well, but it's important to do it. So, you know, all of that, but to engage um consumers in a really joyful fun way. And with all of this just to, you know, share a few results is this year's campaign drove a 200% increase in traffic to our website year-over-year and a 30% increase in engagement on socials. And then what was really interesting to see this year and like 2026 over 2025 is a super interesting comparison given what we all know has been going on in the world over this time, but we additionally saw a 119% increase in total donations to 1% for the planet year over year, '26 to '25. And again, this is the this is the power of equipping and supporting and encouraging and being able to articulate the value to a global network of thousands of stakeholders in telling a story that has a shared core, even if there's a lot of differentiation and we really encourage our members to differentiate and I think, you know, our examples and Charlotte's examples also show that there's this beautiful differentiation, but also the common ground that just has a real pop and I I it would be very interesting to do some like trust testing around those companies that really have that balance of their individual differentiation, but then also the um kind of trusted certification branding um that we're able to bring to it. >> So, thank you. Yeah. The the love love love those examples. It was great great you know, great great great to see those um those slides and I'd like to in a minute hear a bit from Charlotte around results like you had presented and what the feedback has been from the companies, but before before that uh James, one of the things I took from both Charlotte and Kate's uh discussion is, you know, they're really about in some ways creating infrastructure for communication and tools and processes to help the different members. And given your purview at at in some ways in a more sort of umbrella type perspective across many different types of of of partners and organizations you have, uh can you say a bit about communications infrastructure, maybe how you define the term and what you're seeing uh some best practices as far as different organizations engaging their supporters, donors, investors, um whatever. >> Yeah. So, I guess I would say this is this is the really unsexy part of all this. This isn't just the ads, it's not the website, it's not the newsletter, it's not reports, it's not social media. Those things matter, but but they're outputs. And so the communication infrastructure is the system underneath the outputs. So it's the foundations that help the the organization communicate clearly, consistently, and strategically. So it's it's that um you know, ecosystem or like holistic approach to everything. So it's the narrative, it's the core message, it's the audience strategy, the channels, the content rhythm, you know, measurement. I think communication infrastructure or I guess I think of communications infrastructure in sort of four layers. So there's the narrative foundation or really like who are you, what purpose do you serve, why does it matter, what are the what are you trying to change, what are the challenges you're facing, like just as important do you have the stories that reach different audiences. So it's really understanding who your audience is, understanding what you're trying to do, and then building a structure around that. Then the next part of all of that would then be your internal alignment. So like are you all telling the same story internally, right? Do you all have the same message, the same mission, the same values, the same everything. So after whatever it's been 10 years of us doing this and doing consulting, often we'll do these workshops where we help people align on all these things and you'll get six different employees, six different stakeholders, board members, whatever all in the same group, and you say what's your mission statement, and I can't even tell you how many times the mission statement's different by each person that says it, and then at the end of all that they start arguing over what the mission statement should be, right? So like before you can start really effectively communicating with others, you need to be able to effectively communicate within. So you you you need to really like have that internal alignment. And then once you have that, now you're getting to the point where you're doing like stake or stakeholder communication. So, this is where your communication starts to create real relationships. So, for funds and foundations, it's, you know, donor updates, investor reports, board communications, you know, case studies, impact reports, all that kind of stuff. But the goal isn't just just inform people. Um the goal is to keep people connected to the work, confident in the work, and clear on, you know, how how to engage with you and how to actually move forward. And then the next step in all of this is is thought leadership, which is kind of what what uh uh B Lab does so often, but it's it's not just conveying your own work and what you're doing, but talking about what's happening in the field, what's going on, how to build upon it, and how to convey that to others in the field so they can learn, build, grow, do all this stuff together, right? So, in the end, the whole point is, if you're not creating this holistic structure of how you're coming about it and how you're talking to people, then in the end it it ends up feeling disjointed, and then we say this all the time on our team, you can't talk to everybody. If you think you're talking to everybody, you're actually talking to no one. So, defining who your audience is and then engaging with that audience in particular. Another thing I always say is, you know, a 16-year-old in a 16-year-old girl in LA communicates completely different than a 75-year-old woman in Maine, right? They're not not the same channels, they're not talking the same, they're not coming coming from the same place. So, if you're not coming with your communications knowing, "Hey, I'm trying to reach the 75-year-old woman in Maine," but then you're on TikTok and you're doing dances, you're doing whatever it is, you're you're not reaching this person, right? So, coming at it with that holistic approach, all the unsexy stuff that's built underneath, then you're actually reaching your goals, and then you're putting all the measurements in place to where you're now understanding what it is you're doing and why you're doing it and can look back and say was our ad campaign successful or what is our newsletter successful? Are people opening it up? Are we getting more donations? Are we doing whatever you're trying to do? Um, you can go back and and see if it's working. >> Excellent. Yeah, super. >> No, sorry. That that I think Kate both of you actually just really explained all of this so nicely that I feel like I was just repeating uh what you both just said. >> No, I I I didn't sound like repeat to to me actually but I you know I saw I saw really some really great case studies that both B Lab and 1% for the Planet are doing and really appreciate you know sort of you putting it together in a bit more sort of generalizable type fashion. So thank you. Um, thank you James. Uh, Charlotte I mentioned you know after hearing about some of the in some ways positive um I don't know sort of metrics and outcomes that that Kate shared with. I was wondering from the B Lab side, you know, thinking about sort of tracking and and measuring and using that for your own internal um, development of communication programs but also maybe being transparent externally. Can you talk a bit about um, you know, in some way success outcomes and and how you think about that in designing your programs? >> Yeah, definitely. I mean in terms of the external piece I I was mentioning earlier some data from um, our brand awareness study. So we do we do studies of awareness of B Corp certification. Um, we also look at awareness of other certifications and we look at attitudes towards certifications in general because all of those add up to be super relevant to us and all of the companies in our community and we publish all that information. Um, so I think the US is going to be publishing the study for the US in the next coming weeks. Um, we recently did a synthesis actually of like all the studies all around the world which was really interesting to look at what's similar, what's different. Obviously different markets have different levels of of awareness. Um, one of the things that was really a big outcome of that study, well, two. One is that, as I alluded to earlier, younger audiences are generally more aware and more invested in this topic. Um, and that, I think, is an enormously positive sign for for the field going forward. Um, and the second is that the strongest predictor we found of awareness was the size of the community. This touches on what Kate is saying. Really, there's this huge network effect that happens when all of us speak together about these issues. Um, and the more companies there are that are talking about it, the better it is for the whole field. Uh, and we found, particularly, we kind of uh, did all kinds of fancy regressions for nerds out there to say like, how do we disambiguate like which of these factors is driving this? Cuz there's a lot of kind of things that could be explaining it. And you could say that with certainty that the number of companies is more important than, for example, the number of large companies. It's more important than, for example, the kind of market penetration. So, the size of the market relative to the number of certified companies. There's really like a sheer numbers effect of movements. And when we all talk together, we are much more powerful. So, that's kind of the external piece. Internally, in terms of how we manage our efforts and our team, I mean, I think that most organizations on this call will probably identify with the fact that there are more worthwhile things one could do than you possibly can execute on in any given quarter. Um, we tend to try to focus on um, deciding first what actually matters to our goals before we get distracted by all the data that's available. I think that this is a moment in marketing and communications where because you can get numbers on so many things, it's very easy to get distracted by shiny objects and start chasing the latest metric that other people think matters. And so, you have to really start from first principles. What are we trying to do and what matters to us? Um, for us, that tends to be at the focusing on retention and engagement indicators. things like, you know, um, um not how many people are in the email list, but how many people that open an email are actually clicking. Um it's more about how much user-generated content about these topics is happening um than it is just about how many people our posts reach or how many people follow us on a given social channel. Um that tends to be where we look. I think the really big opportunity challenge developing thing in this space is really how GenAI is going to totally upset the apple cart of all of our measurements, um including uh social, including earned media, uh and including all of the website data. So, it was interesting to hear you, Kate, talking earlier about increases in website traffic. Uh I can tell you like we're not necessarily seeing increases in website traffic. True for most businesses right now because people are just asking Claude. And they're not ever coming to your website. They're getting the information they need without ever going there. And so, that's going to be a a huge unprecedented um kind of uh uh rate change in the way that we measure success. It's also a huge opportunity. Like, for example, for our 20th anniversary, we've done a a campaign to ask our community for input on the future of the B Corp movement. We're able to ask tons of very open-ended questions because we know we'll be able to analyze all of that totally unstructured data in a way that before it would have been enormously labor-intensive. So, pluses and minuses. >> Yeah, lots of lots of great points. And you know, the one thing that really stuck out to me having been sort of observing and studying the B Corp movement over all these years, also is just the importance of momentum really and sticking to it. And, you know, it is very easy to get sort of captured by that shiny thing, but I can remember you mentioned that I think in your initial comments that awareness generally of B Corps is 40-some percent, obviously even higher among, you know, in the US. And yeah, you know, when I did a book which is right over here, my little marketing background back back back here in 2020, I think that it was around 7% and actually this was something a lot of B Corps was telling me that this was a problem. They didn't think that that actually the word was getting out as much about what the movement is, what a B Corp is, why it's important. And so I think that sounds like just in a number of years some real real big progress. Um you know, this idea of momentum though also pre-supposes companies might not have, you know, where to where to sort of put those bets, how to get started can be a challenge too. And this is where I think some of your expertise, James, may also come into this. I'm I'm wondering about questions of getting started um in the communications program, things that you want to build up over time, obviously, and particularly for um like capacity constrained organizations. What what your what your recommendations for them? >> So, you know, the the simplest way I could put this would be um don't just jump into tactics. Don't just say I want a newsletter, I want to build more stories, I want more content, I want whatever it is, right? First thing is who is your audience? Um what do you need from them? What do they get from you? Like just define those basic principles right away. And from there, that whole system kind of comes together, right? Again, like I was saying earlier, like if you're trying to talk to a 75-year-old woman in Maine, you start knowing, hey, I I need to reach out to whatever it is, the local Maine magazine or something and get in that. That's how I'm going to communicate with her. I need to go to that event and actually talk to her there. She's not going to be on social media and she's not going to have a LinkedIn presence. She doesn't care about uh generative AI, whatever it is that's going on, right? This is how you're going to be talking to her. Versus if you're trying to reach, you know, again that uh uh young tech person that's in the Bay Area or something, right? Then it makes more sense to have a big LinkedIn presence or do something. So, who you're trying to reach, why you're trying to reach them, what you're trying to say to them is like the first thing I'd say to any organization that gets missed all the time. They're just like it's it's like saying I'm starting a business and what's the purpose of your business? To make money. Well, then you you don't you don't have a business, right? So, what is your communication? My communication is to reach this person to ask them this specific thing to make all those things happen, right? So, whether it's, you know, donations or or you know, selling a product, it doesn't really matter, but you have to get clear on what you're trying to do and what your intentions are. Then you get to build out all the exciting things that, you know, B Lab and 1% do over the years that that make people say, "Oh, I know." cuz it speaks to me, right? That's as as Bart, we're a we're a what do you call it? The the B1, right? Where we're a B Corp and 1%. You you speak to us and who we are, so then we listen and we want to know and we want to learn from you and we want to do that. So, you both have done a wonderful job, which is why you're probably on this uh uh uh this webinar, but nonetheless, and actually understanding who your audience is and then reaching out to that audience who's who's me and Chris, probably too, I'd imagine, and then communicating with us. So, uh uh I'm I mean, you can go down in a bunch of things with all this, but I really think if anybody takes anything from this, it's figure out who your audience is and what you want from them, prioritize that audience, prioritize what you want from that what those people what they need to know, why did what's your impact and how is it going to help for them to know? Then you can scale all that, create your infrastructure like we were talking about earlier, do fun things where you create social media campaigns, you can green shout and tell everybody what you're doing and why your impact's important, but make sure you know who you're shouting to, right? Not just everybody, cuz that doesn't mean anything. No one hears that. It just kind of goes away. So, uh uh that's my my long-winded short answer. >> Yeah. No, no, thank you. Super super helpful uh as always. Okay, we want to remind our our folks that are that are here on the call. If you have questions, please put them in comments. I'm going to ask one final question of of both Charlotte and Kate and then jump over to your questions. I saw a couple in there, but please keep adding them. We're monitoring them and we'll sort of pull them out and ask them at at the very end in our last 10 minutes or so. So So anyway, so I want to turn to you know, the two of you Charlotte and Kate. Maybe we'll start with you Charlotte and Kate would love your thoughts on the same question. So in some ways this is a general communications tip question, but but in particular interested in what you've learned from potential missteps, things that have paid off versus not. We talked a bit about data that that you use, but you know, particularly vis-a-vis this maybe things that didn't work out. You know, type of type of feedback you've gotten that have really helped, you know, push push those programs forward. So Charlotte Charlotte will start with you then Kate the same question. >> Sure. Yeah, I mean I think that one of the most likely challenges which I alluded to earlier is that we need to prioritize what issues we actually want to speak on. We you know, a lot of us who work in this space have a very sophisticated kind of systemic understanding of how so many things are connected. That's like a wonderful way to develop a theory of change and understand the landscape. It also can be challenging from a communication standpoint if you think that you are the authority on everything. To kind of like own an issue becomes pretty tough. So for us, we use kind of our standards for B Corps and the fundamental ask we make of them which is that they change the legal structure of their business to be accountable to more people than just their shareholders Um, to be the North Star for us. I'm like, okay, therefore what should we talk about? Um, and that's how we get to the point of view of saying, okay, there are lots of consequences to AI, for example. There are environmental consequences, there are questions about the use of people's intellectual property. There are many issues that one could talk about and that are relevant to responsible business. Um, but for now, the issue we know that we have some degree of understanding and authority on is the question of like, how should you structure your business if you are either using or building AI such that you have the right people making the right decisions with the right set of considerations to make good choices about how you use this incredibly transformative technology. So, that's code for governance, which is not a word I would ever use in the subject line of a pitch, but that's our turf. Like, that's the place where we have the most authority, the most expertise, the most experience. Um, and so I think the most common misstep that I have come across is just the desire to talk about every issue that matters um, to you, to your leadership, to the people in your organization. It's really tempting to want to talk about everything because we feel strongly about it and we feel we have relevant experience, but we do kind of need to pick in order to actually have an impact. And I think the other, and this is somewhat particular to being like an organization that's growing, an organization that's international, but figuring out how we can invest in connection and relationships between the people in these very diffuse networks for us always pays off. Um, it is not easy to get people in a distributed organization or a distributed movement together in the same place and yet literally every single time we do it, everyone says, that was the best investment we ever made. Um, and so it's it's about your employees, but it's also about your clients, your customers, your community. And then part of that is also about the the that then those people get to have experiences of talking with peers in the ecosystem and and learn from that. So, like relationships are also infrastructure, I think. >> Excellent. Thank you, Charlotte. Great. Kate. >> Yeah, um I think translated we've been talking or I've been talking Charlotte and I have been talking mostly from the standpoint of managing networks. So, I'm going to shift into just like you know, how do you What are some of the things I've learned that I think are translatable to organizations most of which are not operating as networks. I just want to like name that. And so, I think one of the things that is very universal is that stories are the currency and they are everywhere. And so, I think what's been so important for us and that I and again, I think this translates to organizations, entities of all different types is to build the systems, the strategy, the internal processes to get really clear tapping into some of what you're saying, James, about like how are you going to surface the right stories to deliver at the right moment to the right channel um and you know, make sure you've got really good clarity on what's the right audience and all that whole chain of, you know, getting it right, right, right means that there's a lot of things you don't do. And having the system so that it's not a lot of like brain energy every time you're deciding not to do something. Um you know, having the system so you're like, "Okay, we know our lane." And we have processes for when you know, things happen out of the blue that we need to evaluate. Is that in our lane? Is that not in our lane? We don't know. Let's have a conversation about it. But most of the time you're not investing all the energy on determining, you're just telling really good stories and sourcing really good stories. So, I think um that's one thing that I I would really encourage people to think about. And another thing on stories themselves is one of the things that we've learned is you know, people want to trust the stories are true, so they want some data, but they're not compelled by data in and of itself. So, figuring out how you again in the you know, terms of picking the right stories for the right audience, distributing it through the right channels, also understanding for you, your particular enterprise, you know, what is what are the data points that are relevant that you can like lightly use to kind of pinpoint or sort of pin down some credibility. And then how do you surround that with the story that makes it, you know, something that is compelling and that does um reach people. I think really, you know, working on that is important. And then um the last thing that I'd add on that just as the kind of closing the loop is and Charlotte was touching on this a little bit too of really figuring out what data points help you to understand the ROI of those efforts cuz that's that is hard and getting harder. I mean, we had great web traffic in Earth Month, but overall, exactly to your point, it's been down because that's just not as much of a thing anymore. Um but so an example of sort of how we're evolving some of what we're measuring is that in our PR strategy, we've um identified the number of media desk sides. Um so these are, you know, conversations that may or may not result in anything in the short term. They're relationship-building conversations. We've identified that as part of our strategy this year because that deepens these relationships for the long term and helps us to deliver better stories to the audiences that we want to. Like back to the first point. So this year with that focus, we've had some really awesome uh desk sides with Wired, with New York Times, with Wall Street Journal. It's a long-term uncertain outcome investment, but it it aligns with our overall infrastructure around that storytelling chain. >> Great. Lots of super helpful thoughts and ideas there. Thank you. Thank you, Kate. Great. So, I'm going to turn to some of the questions we've got from the audience. Um in the interest of just sort of trying to be a little more concise. So, I apologize. I'm going to paraphrase them if people don't mind. So, the first one I'm going to go from Rita Soni, who has a really great question about impact. And people can read it there, but I'm just going to sort of summarize it. So, you know, the B Corp certification is sort of the gold standard of impact for companies. But companies still sometimes might get criticized, challenged for for a variety of reasons. And as I read this, it's about how how do you help companies with their communications, with their identity and brand to help really reinforce that, you know, if you've passed the B Corp certification, you know, that that actually means something in regards to the impact of the company. >> Yeah. It's a great question. And I think it springs from like a really common conflation that people have, which is if I've earned this certification, then it must mean that my company is perfect and will never do anything wrong. Couldn't be further from the truth. Like, this is not true. You know, in fact, our new standards actually introduced due diligence in a really particular and prominent way. The entire point of doing due diligence on your supply chain is to understand what's happening that is not good. That is actually the first step. And I was at Tony's actually in in the Netherlands not that long ago, and they talked about the fact that the entire founding purpose of the company was to go source cacao in places that were more likely to have forced labor, more likely to have children involved in labor because of the fact that in order to improve something, you have to go to where the problem is. And so I think that's a story that we have to continually get better at being able to tell. Tactically, if I'm a company who's getting attacked for doing something imperfect, always a really good tactic is to acknowledge what you did that was not perfect and to talk about what you're going to do in order to get better. At that moment in time isn't usually the right time to deflect and start talking about everything else you did that's really great. And so we have to hold this tension of being able to say, "Listen, these are all of the criteria we've met. This is all of the work we have done. And also it does not mean that everything we do is in fact perfect. There's a small company that's a brewery that's in the green shouting guide called the Brussels Beer Project. Really small business. When they publish their annual report, they call it what we do good, what we do bad. And that's the whole format of the report. They talk about things they've done that are great and they talk about things they've done that are not there yet. So I think the dial in the green shouting guide that speaks most to this is humility and I think it's super essential. And and you get to talk about both. It's not that you always talk about what you did wrong, but I I think that you have to find a way to be able to hold both of those things. >> Yeah, and and and and I think could I just ask I think it's I agree it's a really great question. Ask Kate you sort of a version of this because you know, you have a certification and you have a brand that companies use. You know, 1% is pretty literal. I mean people can sort of understand it, but but as a third party viewing the brands you know, messaging like helping make sense of why that 1% is is important. You know, curious how you help companies with that. >> Yeah, it's a it is a really important question. Um 1% for the Planet, our certification is we're certifying an activity, an annual activity that businesses do. And we have kind of built the system in which that activity is happening, the business is implementing that 1% of revenues going to nonprofits that we have vetted. Um so what our seal or logo means is this company has done what they said they were going to do, which is, you know, the opposite of greenhushing cuz uh or greenwashing. Greenwashing is, you know, saying you're doing stuff that you're doing more or less of in negative ways. But 1% for the Planet doing exactly what you said you were going to do. And so what that does for us is we we we try to make that really clear in our communications about what 1% is. And we try to be really clear that the the work in our theory of change is that it's not about engaging perfect companies. In fact, we want to have companies at all different stages of their journey using 1% for the Planet as a step in that journey. And so um you know, we can't communicate all of that information to a consumer at point of sale, but I think the the surround of all the stories, of all the like what we've been talking about thus far, you know, we're bringing back into focus why that's so important because we want to be able to have conveyed this is not a mark of perfection. This is not uh um this is not saying that um this company has solved for everything. What it is saying is that they're really good at doing exactly what they said they were going to do and they're part of a community um that is um that is also doing this and that is, you know, kind of annually like raising the bar together. And what we have seen is that we have very strong purchase intent, meaning that the logo influences consumers to purchase and that's at 41% of uh surveyed consumers who see the 1% for the planet logo are influenced to take the step to purchase that product, which is enormous. So, I think again it's like a can't do it instantly. It's a long-term surrounding story building into providing meaning into that logo. >> Yeah, great. Yeah, very long-term and it's great throughout the you know that you're able to actually have all these measures that you're that you're you're bringing forward to that actually help really show show the importance of this. Uh I'm going to move on to another question here, which I'm going to actually direct towards James from Patty Simonton. Um A really thoughtful question about AI. You know, AI obviously is everywhere now. Huge role in communication, of course. You know, there's the term AI slop, which we all sort of know about and you can think about that as it relates to our conversation. You know, James, one of the things I took from you is the importance of being sort of focused, knowing your audience, but actually if you just apply AI, maybe that actually results in much less effective um you know, sort of targeting that a human made or might be the the opposite. I'm not sure, but that's why I'm going to ask an ask expert like you. Um what sort of considerations as you think about AI in communications infrastructure do you recommend that organizations keep in mind as they implement these changes? As you can see here, um the question of Patty Simonton put. >> So, I think there's a couple I mean, there's a ton of things. There's a lot of unknowns with AI of like how is this all going to affect things? And obviously, you know, with Google changing its search and all this stuff, nobody's going to websites anymore. All the all the doomsday stuff that's going on. But but really what I think it's highlighted is that what you've been doing what we've been pushing all along what B Lab's been doing all along what 1% been doing all along becomes more important. So, A, building your own audience and being able to communicate with your own audience is incredibly important. So, actually having like a newsletter list that you've built out your own people that you're talking to is now so much more important than it's ever been, but it's always been important, right? And then also creating content, like real content that isn't AI slop, now AI is going to prioritize that and come back to you and reference your website. So, it may not going to your website, but it's referencing your website. You're now becoming the authority. So, like I was saying earlier of like you know, you want internal buy-in, you want you know, you want your narrative, you want all of that, but a huge part of that was thought leadership. If you're creating high-quality content and then you're putting it up online, you're now part of that thought leadership engine and AI is going to start using your content as a part of thought leadership, and it does point back to you. So, how does this all work? How is it all going to end in the long long run? I mean, I I think some of this is an unknown, but what we've seen, you know, for the 20 years I've been in in in media and in in marketing is the same things always hold true. Tell real stories, tell use real data, use real information, be authentic, tell what you're what's going on, build your actual audience, find out who they are and talk to them, and the results are going to be positive. I mean, it's in Google or whoever is best interest to make that happen, right? It's not in the search engine's best interest to make it to where you get to something that you don't want. The AI works, it becomes exciting to people is if when you type in what's a certification that works for me, it leads them to be a lab or 1%, right? It doesn't want to lead to something else. So, that's how I'm taking it right now and we've had success with that, so I I think that's important. And I also want to just take a second to go back to the the first question is that if you are a 1% or a B corporation, this is the the that's how you're scaling your impact, right? You've made the impact by being a B corp or 1%, it's now your job as an organization to then talk about that, tell people about the fact that you're a B Corp. These two organizations are providing wonderful amounts of resources, tremendous amount of resources, all the things you need. You now need to make that a part of your communications platform. It's sort of like, I would say how we look at it is it's not 1%'s job to make sure everyone knows that we're 1% or what we're doing. It's our job to take the resources they give to us to then increase that and scale that. So, that's like a huge part of scaling the impact. So, then it scales your impact, it scales B Lab's impact, scales 1% impact, and it scales the community's impact as a whole. So, I really wanted to say that. So, sorry to eat up on that, but I just wanted to throw that >> No, no, no. That's great. Good. Good. Glad to get your voice in on that question, too. Good. So, we are we are just about out of time. I apologize. I think we had a question from Melissa, as well. Apologies, Melissa, for not getting getting in there. We're going to be sharing the the contact information, so you can certainly reach out or there could be some other, you know, afterwards communication on that that topic, which is certainly very important. But, just to wrap up, want to say a couple things. First, you know, it's been an amazing to be part of of this discussion with all three of you. Three people that I've known for a long time and have tremendous sort of thought and respect for and really learned a lot. The couple things that I took from the discussion, one is just the importance of being thoughtful in in some ways being focused and picking your lane. You know, this relates to audience, knowing who to speak to and how, you know, James I keep thinking of the 75-year-old woman in Maine you you talked about a number number of times or someone doing TikTok. But, also this idea of focus relates to the audience, too. It's really important, you know, if you want to have this trust and authenticity, actually knowing where to leverage your assets appropriately makes a lot of sense. And then finally, just very quickly, I think this is going to be an amazing resource for people, just the number of different items of infrastructure, tools, uh processes that were listed. I think will be tremendously helpful to the community moving forward. So, thank you all very, very much. You can see here we have all of our contact information. You know, please of course feel free to reach out to any of us. And thank you Socap for hosting this. Thank you Bark for also being part of it. It's really been a fantastic hour.