Each year, Treefort Music Fest strives to “B” better than the year before. We earned B Corp certification in 2015, and on October 26, 2017 we got re-certified as a B Corp!
What are B Corps?
Benefit Corporations (or B Corps) are for-profit companies that decide to go through a certification process by the nonprofit B Lab and set out to meet their scrupulous social and environmental standards.
Treefort’s Journey to B Corp Certification
In the summer of 2014, the Treefort Leadership Team officially formed Treefort, LLC and began seeking B Corp certification to lock in and protect the legacy principles the festival was founded upon. Treefort became a certified B Corp in 2015 with an overall B score of 98 (median score is 55).
To maintain B Corp certification, the company must get recertified every two years and go through the assessment procedure again. A company must meet B Corp’s performance requirements through a series of written assessments and interviews. The assessment is constantly changing and more challenging than the year before.
In preparation, Treefort teamed up with the Responsible Business Initiative (RBI) program at Boise State University. We consulted with RBI students, who analyzed our 2015 score and provided us with feedback that would enable us to improve our score. These students then attended Treefort Music Fest 2017 to observe what we were doing and gave us their final report of our company based upon these categories:
- Environmental impact
- Worker compensation
- Customer products & services
- Community practices
- Accountability
- Transparency
On October 26, 2017 we got recertified as a B Corp with an overall B score of 105 — 7 points better than in 2015! 40% of our points come from the Community category and we doubled our 2015 score in the Customer category.
Why does B Corp certification matter?
Treefort’s goal is to be a “for profit entity ran like a non-profit” because we have always been a values-based project, driven by a purpose much more than the lure of profit. Maintaining B Corp certification holds us accountable to our self-described values and pushes us to “B” better for our company and of course, for our community.
