ArcStone’s First Impact Report!
In 2024, ArcStone celebrated the achievement of becoming a Certified B Corporation™. It took time, effort, patience, policy changes, and overall dedication to the highest social and environmental standards. It’s something we’re proud to be and represent, but certification was just beginning.
One of the requirements of becoming a B Corp™ is to make a legal commitment. ArcStone met this requirement by amending its articles to become a general benefit corporation. Minnesota Statutes state, “‘General benefit corporation’ means a public benefit corporation that elects in its articles to pursue general public benefit and that may state in its articles a specific public benefit purpose it elects to pursue.” Ultimately, we’ve put in legal writing that our corporation is committed to providing public benefit.
B Lab (the organization who issues B Corp™ certifications) does not currently require Certified B Corporations™ in the U.S. and Canada to file an annual impact report. However, the State of Minnesota (where we are incorporated) does require an annual benefit report be filed by all public benefit corporations, which includes general benefit corporations. The state doesn’t require the report to be fancy or showy, but it was important to us that we presented our work in a thoughtful and engaging format. We partner with incredible organizations and people that we want to highlight and uplift when sharing our impact. It’s our hope that by putting in a little extra effort to ensure the data is approachable and making the report readily available on our site, our visitors will understand our purpose and observe the actionable steps we are taking to initiate positive change for our community and our planet.
So, how did we actually write the report? Where did we start? Great questions that we had to learn along the way.
To get started, we needed some context. Is the report supposed to be one page or fifty? Stats-stacked or photo-flooded? We checked out past reports from various B Corps™ of all sizes and industries. Quite honestly, the published reports range heavily. It became pretty clear that with a good designer and actually having done the work to report about, we could make it our own.
At first, we worried that we might not have much content to use in our report from our first year as a Certified B Corporation™. After all, much of our tracking and reporting systems were newly implemented, and we’d only been officially certified for 4 months! Though, as we began compiling our data and stories from the last 12 months, we realized just how much we’d accomplished and impacted our community. We included a letter from our founders, a brief summary of our journey to becoming a B Corp™, a feature of the nonprofits we serve, our volunteer and service projects, and our goals for the upcoming period. By the end, our report was robust and glowing, and our purpose was clearer than when we first set out on our B Corp™ journey.
The report and its sections didn’t just appear in a bubble out of thin air, however. Our lead designer, Michael Sasorith, created a beautiful, branded project document for us to fill with our stories and impact data. Bria Sundton and Lisa Hirst Carnes gathered the statistics to report and wrote the body of each section. Our talented designer, Haley Harms, inserted and formatted all of our content into the report, polishing everything up to be presented. It was truly a team effort, and we’re proud to have such capable and caring hands assembling the first of many ArcStone benefit reports.
So, what did we do with it? First and foremost, we submitted it to the Minnesota Secretary of State to fulfill our legal requirement. There’s a smidge of paperwork to include with the report, along with a small filing fee––all which have to be submitted by March 31st. Once that was taken care of, we put it up on our website for our community to view and engage.
By sharing our impact report on our own site, we aim to show our visitors, our clients, and our community who we are and that there is action behind our mission. We want the impact we have to be transparent, easily accessible, and available for observation and feedback. Additionally, we want the public to know where we’re headed, what’s next for us, and what we’re prioritizing. Sharing this information with our community, our clients, and the general public keeps us accountable to our purpose and our core values, and tangibly shows that we prioritize our social and environmental responsibility.
We’re incredibly excited to share our 2025 Impact Report with you, and to continue sharing new projects and improvements each year going forward. Together, we can each make our corner of the world brighter, more equitable, and more impactful.
Read more about our journey to becoming a Certified B Corporation™ here.