Carbon Footprinting
Return on Sustainability - the Book
Our Social Impact
Sustainability at SBC | Our Company | Our Workplace | Our Environmental Impact |Our Social Impact
At SBC we believe it’s best to think globally and act locally. With this mantra in mind, we direct our business practices towards curbing climate change and enhancing the Puget Sound area as well. Our staff is committed to the community particularly through our volunteerism and charitable giving. We aim to formulate goals in this arena so we can more actively promote and encourage our employees to make a positive impact on our community.
Community Contributions
In 2010, SBC contributed 5% of its net profits to nonprofit organizations, including Bainbridge Graduate Institute and Climate Solutions.To encourage employees to serve their communities, all full-time employees are given 24 hours of paid time off annually to volunteer in any way they choose.$5,325 - Community Service and Cash Donations
$3,600 - Pro Bono Consulting
$4,200 - Volunteer Speaking Engagements
Although we had only three full-time equivalents, we volunteered 138.75 hours in our Puget Sound communities and contributed over $13,000 of value to causes in line with our mission. Organizations included the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Seattle Good Business Network, the Seattle Climate Partnership, and Common Goods.
Supporting Academic Institutions
Kevin Wilhelm is a professor at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute which is the #1 school in the country for MBA candidates to learn about sustainable business. As a professor for the Foundations of Sustainable Business class, he is working to help educate both the current and next generation of business leaders, ensuring that they have the vocabulary, frameworks and real world understanding for how best to incorporate sustainability in today’s bottom-line-focused business world. He has also been a valuable resource to the school providing support on curriculum integration and advice to students on career development.
SBC staff also delivered numerous presentations, taught classes, and sat on panels at universities around the Puget Sound including University of Washington, Seattle University, Antioch University—Seattle, University of Denver and Macalester College.
Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce
Clean Energy Committee
Climate Solutions
DonorClimate Solutions has been a force for the proposition that clean energy and broadly-shared economic prosperity can go hand-in-hand in the Pacific Northwest. Through their Business Leaders, New Energy Cities, and Harvesting Clean Energy programs, Climate Solutions builds a powerful constituency for local, regional and national action on climate and clean energy. To support their mission, Sustainable Business Consulting reserves 1% of its net profits for Climate Solutions each year.
Stakeholder Engagement
2010 marked a big step forward in stakeholder engagement for Sustainable Business Consulting. After several years of trying to formalize our feedback process, we developed a client engagement survey that was distributed to all current clients.
We were pleased by the results which showed that our clients were very satisfied with our work. SBC received feedback on its messaging, client interaction, service offerings, service pricing, community involvement, and overall impact. Due to this feedback, SBC has become more selective about how we invest our time and with the strategies we pursue. Our stakeholders thought this was important because the way we can make the biggest impact is through our client work and working with large clients. We agreed, which is why we're making this move towards targeting larger, more mainstream companies, and moving away from the sustainability circles that are already familiar with the tenets of green business. This has increased our impact in 2010 and we believe it will continue to help us grow in 2011.
Despite this improvement in our engagement efforts, we realize that our clients are but one of the important stakeholders to our company and we must push harder to include other groups next year. We define our stakeholders as any group upon which our business practices have an impact. In 2011, we plan to expand our shareholder engagement survey to business partners, community groups, academic institutions and our competitors. The input from organizations with different directives and intentions can only improve our ability to serve our clients as well as society as a whole.
Supporting Sustainable Careers
2010 Intern Testimonials
"In SBC's empowering and open work environment, I was given several unique opportunities that interns rarely get." "I worked directly with the SBC team to research, support and help write a complete business plan from start to finish and expanded my experience working with a company trying to unveil a new product. I also worked on revenue analytics projects that led me to my current job at Boeing as a Business Cost Analyst on the P-8 Poseidon navy plane. I have continued to be involved with sustainability efforts by joining a Green Team and have used the knowledge I gained at SBC. I learned that a work environment should foster both personal and professional development. Working hard in the office is just as important as maintaining a healthy balance in your personal life. You should work hard and play hard."
"My internship experience with Sustainable Business Consulting was far from ordinary. During the month-long internship, I compiled a list of actions that businesses and individuals could take to green their lives or their businesses. I also analyzed lists of top rated green, sustainable, and best-to-work-for companies, which were later used in an article written by Kevin Wilhelm. My friendly and slightly crazy (in the best ways) co-workers took me to networking events and business meetings. I learned all about the field of sustainability, particularly as it exists in Seattle. My first taste of the “corporate” world was not as daunting as I had anticipated – in fact, it was fun!”
“My internship at SBC was a great challenge and a lot of fun! I had worked for government and non-profit organizations in the urban planning arena and thought I knew all about sustainability, but my research into market forces and public policies gave me a much deeper understanding of the factors that a business must track if it wants to be good to the environment and its bottom line. It was especially satisfying to learn how complementary these goals can be! Working at SBC was fast-paced and sometimes required wearing many hats, but I left with valuable new skills, knowledge, and friends.”Return to top of page.
