Celebrating being a Better Business

We just became a certified B-Corporation!! 

Over the last few years, our Commitment at Shine From Within has been to be a ‘Better Business.’ It’s not just about what we do; why and how we do it are just as important.

We believe in a just world for all beings, being good custodians of the planet and shining from within. We believe in the right to an education for all, to feel welcome and included, to be seen and heard. We believe in integrity, transparency, honesty, service, freedom and peace. 

Shine From Within has always had this at its core, based on the personal values of our director, Amanda. These last few years, however, we have taken this in a more official direction, striving to create a more robust way of living up to what we believe in.

Being a ‘Better Business’ means embarking on a journey of improvement to create a better society and planet. To that end, in 2019, we started the journey to become a B-Corporation, and last month we officially became certified!

What is a B-Corp and why does it matter?

Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B-Corps are examples of better businesses, proven by their verified B Corp certification and their commitment to placing all stakeholders at the centre of their decisions.

The application process was rigorous (as it should be) with us having to show complete profit and loss reports, demonstrate how we donate funds, how we give back through our community programs and Pay What You Can places, how we screen our suppliers, how we work with our contractors, how we ensure that we’re being good custodians of the planet, and the nitty gritty details of how we run our business. Each portion of the application process is scored and you must reach a high score to move onto the next phase and have an interview. We’re so proud to have accomplished this and now have the official certification.

You can view us on the B-Corp directory and see our score here.

Becoming a certified B-Corp feels like an extension of the Shine From Within commitments and values. It felt important to go through the process of getting certified to honour our commitment in an official way. 

As you perhaps already know from other parts of our website, ensuring that students of all social, cultural, community and family backgrounds, and of all identities, and all abilities feel welcome is important to us. We’re also dedicated to being as gentle as possible on the planet. Being a Certified B-Corp holds us even more accountable to this. Our underlying purpose is the reason we exist and what drives us to do better every single day so it made sense to solidify this.

We hope that B Corp Certification offers clients, students and our community, a trusted mark showing our commitment beyond simply profit, to include environment, community, and employees all as valued stakeholders. But hey, being a youth-focussed community business you probably new we cared about you long before profit anyway!

Will anything change with how Shine From Within operates?

In many respects, very little will change in the way you interact with us and we’ll continue to honour and expand on the commitments we’ve already made to you with regards to social justice and environmental impact. We just hope that by us becoming certified, it plants a seed within our community, to strive for better, and to be better. We’ll continue to make improvements and do regular audits so we can continue to make you proud. 🙂 

We acknowledge that much of our work and resources have been created through the lens of our Director, Amanda Rootsey, a white, cis-gendered, able-bodied woman and that her experiences and lessons learned may be, and probably will be, very different to many so a part of our work is to continue to invest time, money and energy to ensure we are more aware, more inclusive and are holding a safe space for all. 

Together with the global B-Corp community, we believe in putting people and planet before profit and that business should be a force for good.

If you’re interested in learning more about being a B-Corp, this is a great video explaining how B-Corps are leading the way in using business as a force of good.