As a sustainability-focused strategy firm, Veerless knows how important it is for us to walk our talk. We work hard to show our stakeholders – our clients, our employees, our communities – that we are prioritizing ethics and integrity in all we do. All of these commitments are easy to make, but they’re harder to stick with year over year. Every small business owner has stood at the same crossroads I have. A certification renewal is due, the fee feels steep against a lean budget, and the honest question surfaces: does this actually matter, or is it a nice-to-have we can skip this year?
I’ve asked myself that question more than once since founding Veerless. Every time, the answer has been the same. We certify because it matters to our integrity and our foundational beliefs as a company. Our clients, our partners, and our team members deserve to work with the Veerless that does the work, not just the Veerless who talks about it.
The Business Case Small Companies Often Skip
Certification budgets get cut first when times are tight. It’s an easy line item to defer: no client is going to walk away because your B Corp renewal lapsed for a quarter, and no invoice goes unpaid because your Climate Label status expired. That’s exactly why so many small businesses let certifications slide once the initial excitement of earning them fades.
But certifications were never about the badge on our website footer. At Veerless, we make these certifications an accountability structure that is a part of the way we work. When a third-party verifier is checking our labor practices, our carbon footprint, our supply chain, and our governance every single year, we refuse to lower our own bar when a project gets stressful or a budget gets thin. The scrutiny stays constant and doesn’t come up only at recertification time.
For a firm that advises other companies on ESG and sustainability, that consistency isn’t optional. Our clients hire us to help them build credible, defensible sustainability programs. We can’t sell that credibility if we haven’t built our own.
Our Chosen Certifications, and Why Each One Matters
Certified B Corporation. We earned B Corp Certification in November 2021, holding ourselves to the same environmental, social, and governance standards we ask our clients to meet. Our most recent B Impact Score is 110.2, well above the 80 needed to qualify and more than double the median score of 50.9 for ordinary businesses completing the assessment. We started at 100.5 in 2021. Growing our team and scaling our business didn’t shrink that number. It grew alongside us, because we built accountability into how we operate, not just into a one-time application.
1% for the Planet Business Member. We commit 1% of our revenue to environmental causes every year, regardless of how that year has gone financially. It’s a floor, not a ceiling, and it keeps giving from becoming the first thing we cut when a budget tightens.
Climate Neutral Certified. Measuring and offsetting our carbon footprint means putting a number on our own environmental impact and being transparent about it, the same transparency we help clients build into their own reporting.
Certified Women’s Business Enterprise (WBENC). Supplier diversity strengthens communities and creates economic stability for women and minority-owned businesses. Certifying through WBENC tells our clients we take supplier diversity as seriously as we ask them to. It also opens doors: many of the enterprise companies we work with have supplier diversity targets, and our certification lets us be part of meeting those goals rather than standing outside them.
Our Commitment Going Forward
We renew these certifications every year, not because a logo looks good on our website, but because the process of renewing forces us to ask hard questions about our own business that we’d otherwise be tempted to skip. Every client who works with us on ESG strategy, sustainability reporting, or reputation management deserves a partner who has done the harder work first.
That’s the commitment behind every certification badge we post.