You might know that we applied for and were awarded the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) Certification. The WBENC certification is the most widely recognized and respected certification for women-owned businesses in the US.
Beyond the recognition this certification gets us, it has opened doors for us that may have otherwise remained closed. There is an incredible community of WBENC-certified business leaders which we can now tap, we can use the WBENC logo on our marketing collateral and our website, and we have a foot in the door at the 1000s of corporations and countless local, state, and federal government entities looking for diverse suppliers.
So, should your business seek a similar business certification?
As always, it depends.
You should develop business goals, as well as a branding strategy, and then work out:
i) if a certification will help you achieve those goals; and
ii) whether the certification will strengthen your business brand.
For CGL, seeking the WBENC certification aligned with our goals and strengthened our brand. It improves transparency, increases client trust, and differentiates us from other law firms in a highly competitive environment. It also made sense financially.
But there are other options for embedding positive social change into your business.
- Registering as a B Corp is one option. We wrote about the benefits of b-corporation status last year. You can review the content here.
- Mandate change by embedding certain environmental, social and governance requirements into your supplier contracts. You can read our insight on this topic in the Future of Sourcing article: https://futureofsourcing.com/contract-provisions-for-esg-in-your-supply-chain
- Build a disclosure framework that keeps you accountable to your investors. Read more about that, and the potential future SEC reporting requirements, here.
If you need assistance navigating the legal ins and outs of embedding positive change into your corporate governance, structure, or brand, let us know. We’re here to help!
Disclaimer
The materials available at this website are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Use of and access to this website or any of the e-mail links contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship between CGL and the user or browser. The opinions expressed at or through this site are the opinions of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of the firm or any individual attorney.
