"Best For the World:" Thrive Impact Sourcing Honored For Overall Exemplary Business Impact

Thrive Impact Sourcing is honored in the Best For The World Overall list, which includes businesses that earned scores in the top 10 percent of more than 2,400 Certified B Corporations across all categories on the B Impact Assessment. Thrive Impact Sourcing was designated a "Best in the World" honoree, out-performing businesses globally for their business impact in the community of Cincinnati. Thrive was a category winner for "Best Overall" and "Best for Community" based on metrics scored across multiple industries. The results reflect Thrive’s outstanding scores submitted for their Certified B Corp ranking.

This B Corp certification process, which is verified by B Lab, has been attracting broader attention from the business community and Forbes Magazine in particular in 2018. Larger companies including Procter and Gamble, Gap Inc, Unilever, Campbell’s, and Danone now own at least one subsidiary B Corp as part of their company portfolio.

Thrive Impact Sourcing is a Cincinnati-based company proving that business can be a positive force for social change, while turning a profit in the process. Thrive’s Co-Founders Kelly Dolan and Michael Kroeger established Thrive as "an IT talent pipeline" by providing intensive on-the-job training to qualified professionals pivoting to careers in information technology. Thrive’s model empowers individual employees and benefits the Cincinnati business community at large, which is facing an expanding IT talent gap.

In addition to providing new IT talent, Thrive has demonstrated that training new business professionals boosts our local economy. For example, Thrive’s first 35 hires provided an economic benefit of over $400,000 to the city of Cincinnati, by shifting from receiving public assistance funds to becoming fully employed individuals who now contribute to the Cincinnati tax base.

"People are hungry for companies like Thrive Impact Sourcing, who are changing the system by building businesses that seek to create the greatest positive impact," says Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab. "Best For The World is the only list of businesses that uses comprehensive, comparable, third-party-validated data about a company’s social and environmental performance. As consumers, talent and investors increasingly demand transparent, values-aligned businesses to buy from, work at, and invest in, companies will need to not just be the best in the world but the best for the world. Not just to be nice—but to be the most successful."   

Thrive’s proven sourcing model brought recognition from the Global Sourcing Counsel in 2017, where Thrive won 3^rd place among hundreds of global businesses. Dolan and Kroeger were also invited by Google to present Thrive’s business model to Silicon Valley-based businesses as part of a panel at Google’s 2017 "Diverse By Design" event in Mountain View, California.

Additionally, Thrive encourages community involvement by paying their employees to volunteer with the non-profit causes of their choice, creating a charitable culture within work hours. They also received recognition for their internal professional and soft skill growth programs, which include topics like public speaking, office etiquette, best business practice, automated QA testing, and professional development skills.

This push towards knowledge-sharing and doing the right thing in business is a company-driven effort to "Pay it Forward," resulting in high employee engagement. Thrive’s engagement is reflected in their receiving several culture awards, including Top Workplaces, Best Workplaces in Ohio, and winning the Cincinnati Business Courier’s 2016 Best Places to Work award.

The 226 Best For The World Overall honoree companies come from 92 different industries and 30 countries. B Lab simultaneously released separate lists recognizing top-performing B Corporations as Best For Environment, Best For Customers, Best For Governance, Best For Community and Best For Workers, which can be found at bthechange.com/bestfortheworld.

Read the entire Best for the World honoree list: https://bthechange.com/best-for-the-world-2018-all-honorees-f30a880f8ac0

Learn more about the Global Sourcing Counsel: https://www.gsc3sawards.com/

Read the entire Best Places to Work 2017 list: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/best-places-to-work/

B Lab is a nonprofit organization that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good.  Its vision is that one day all companies will compete not only to be the best in the world, but the best for the world and society will enjoy prosperity for all for the long term. 

B Lab drives this systemic change by: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between "good companies" and good marketing; 2) passing benefit corporation legislation to give business leaders the freedom to create value for society as well as shareholders; 3) helping businesses measure, compare and improve their social and environmental performance with the free B Impact Assessment; 4) driving capital to impact investments through use of its B Analytics and GIIRS Ratings platform.

For more information, visit http://www.bcorporation.net.

Read all B the Change stories at http://www.bthechange.com.