Me and B

After a year of back-and-forth silly bureaucratic nonsense, I have re-certified the Fair Game Beverage Company as a B Corporation. Call me "happily certified" since May 2016.

To celebrate, I have decided to throw a party. It's what we do best. Time to book a band. Time to invite all my B Corp friends to a blow-out party. It will be held at the Plant in Pittsboro on September 16, 2022.

I was lured into the B Corporation movement in its early days by mission driven buddies that were ahead of me. Companies like T.S. Designs. Southern Energy Management. Larry’s Beans. Those wonderful sorts of folks.

The concept of B Corporation is that there could be a “fourth sector” of the economy.

Everyone knows about the “private sector.”

The private sector could best be characterized as “make as much money as I can for me.”

Which is different from the “public sector.” That’s government. Working for the public good.

Also working for good is the “non-profit sector.” That would be the “constant begging” crowd. Churches and charities and the like.

Certified B Corporations are mission driven private sector companies that strive to make money, and do good at the same time by staying true to their mission.

There is a non-profit called B Labs that has an assessment tool that certifies those companies that are attempting to play in the fourth sector space. B Labs is sort of like the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,” that consumer brands to try to achieve. They don't make it easy. It is exasperatingly hard.

I certified Piedmont Biofuels as a B Corporation in the early days. At the time I voiced objections to their assessment tool. They did not take liquid fuels for process heat into account.

B Labs listened. They figured out what a boiler was and modified their certification process.

I was impressed by their responsiveness.

I wrote about this in the first edition of Ryan Honeyman’s B Corporation Handbook. My contribution was about the importance of calculating the energy balance of renewable fuels—which was a thing Piedmont Biofuels took to heart.

I believed in the B Corporation movement. And I re-certified Piedmont Biofuels. To me it was a big deal.

Along with their assessment tool, B Labs bestows certified companies “Best for the World” awards. If you score enough points, you can win a Best for the World Award for “Community.” Or “Environment.” Or “Governance.” Etc.

Piedmont Biofuels won a bunch of “Best for the World” awards.

As the years wore on, I became disillusioned with the movement. Certifying and re-certifying is expensive, and tiresome, and I didn’t see it making any difference. When it can time to recertify Piedmont, I quit. Maybe it was because Piedmont Biofuels was broke. Or maybe it was because I was tired. Whatever the reason, I decided to abandon my “seal of approval.”

Even after I was no longer a certified B Corporation, Piedmont kept winning “Best for the World Awards." My disillusionment with B Labs, and the movement, deepened.

As a B Corporation drop out, I taught a class on Social Enterprise at our local Community College. I was all about mission driven enterprise, and I was evangelical about the potential of the “fourth sector” of the economy, but B Labs, and their assessment tool could go jump in the lake.

My friend Bob Armantrout finished teaching the class when I lost my father mid semester.

One day President Obama came to town and his people invited me to a dialog on fourth sector development strategies. That was cool. I got to meet the man himself when he gave a speech at CREE—a big maker of LED light bulbs in the Research Triangle Park.

That made me glad that I had spent so much time hanging around the B Corp drugstore.

When B Labs launched their glossy magazine, they hired my friend Bryan Welch as the publisher. My feelings were hurt when they failed to ask me to invest. When their publishing endeavor folded, I was relieved to have not been on their shareholder list.

My long and complicated relationship with certifying as a B Corporation was rekindled by Kevin Bobal. He left Larry’s Beans and joined me at The Fair Game Beverage Company. We certified Fair Game together, and I have re-certified it twice since then.

One time I produced a non-alcoholic honeysuckle sweet tea, and I decided to do a “B Corp Stress Test,” to see if B Corps buy from B Corps.

That turned out to be true. I sold through all the tea I could make. It would have been brilliant, except the honeysuckle season came to an end.

My relationship to B Corporation is chronically on the fence. I want to live in a mission driven world where business is a force for good. I genuinely believe in the urgent need for a “fourth sector” of the economy. No telling if certifying as a B Corporation is the way to make that come true.

But I just re-certified the Fair Game Beverage Company. Which means it is time to party.