Impact Reporting is part and parcel of running a purposeful business, it’s an opportunity to measure and share our achievements as we balance people and planet with profit. As well as a celebration of action and progress, it helps us stand out and set an example of what it means to be a better business, including being open about our shortcomings and recognising that business is not perfect.

This year when we compiled and published our annual impact report (our first as a proud B Corp), we took the time to go deeper and incorporate some of the content suggested by B Lab UK in their best practice guidance.  On reflection, our previous reports had been too much of a rear-view mirror, majoring on achievements more than plans so this year working with our critical friend Jason Loomes🙏, we asked ourselves how we could increase our impact and made some bold promises, including a commitment to share the highlights more often during the year.

You can find our full report on our website https://maiagrowth.co.uk/sustainability and the Find a B Corp directory https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/ however here’s a quick summary:

Now we’re part way through the year, it’s time to live up to that promise and look for the opportunities for improvement. Over the past few months, we’ve found some great new food & drink clients, and we always do our best to make a difference for them – and we’ve started follow up surveys to check that we leave a lasting impact. We have begun consulting more stakeholders to understand how Maia can evolve to increase our reach, and this includes being more consistent with our content creation. However, some of our assignment proposals haven’t been taken up and that is slowing down the change we want to be part of.

Of course, our usual answer to this perennial consulting dilemma has been to redouble our business development efforts and get on the phone however this time we are exploring a different and more innovative answer to creating more change in the food system without relying on the next paid project – fostering greater collaboration with like-minded friends to achieve our goals. We have been set a great example by our friends Ali Fisher and Nancy Hynes who have been putting it out there with their workshops “Doughnut Economics for Businesses Who Dare” and for us it’s a development for our own theory of change. Whilst it’s a little early to share the details we have been inspired by our recent visits to farmers and producers and we’re now working on some new content that has the potential to help many more people explore the Next Generation of Food & Farming, starting this autumn.

Please get in contact with us if you’re interested in doing well by doing good and would like to find out more about how we now use Impact Reporting to hold ourselves to account or if you just want to know more about our experience as a Cert B Corp working in Food and Drink.