Benefits

B Impact Teams are self-organized teams of college/university students that assist businesses to measure and manage their impact. These student-led consulting teams serve their local community by assessing social and environmental metrics of community businesses using the B Impact Assessment (BIA).

Schools around the country have formed B Impact Teams on their campuses to serve their local business community. NC State’s B Impact Team, the B Corp Clinic, has connected students to companies around the world to make more than 2,300 points of impact on the BIA.

NC State’s B Impact Team Planning, Implementation, & Execution Workshop will provide you with a working outline of how the B Corp clinic can be adapted to work within your institution and a massive compilation of resources developed by the NC State Business Sustainability Collaborative to manage your B Impact Team.

• Provide a real-world experiential learning opportunity for students

Opportunities for students to learn management and leadership capabilities such as project management skills, remote work and collaboration skills, and effective communication with disparate actors.

• Build your academic reputation

Recognize the incredible value-add for your department or on-campus organization through the successful implementation of a B Impact Team. Low-cost professional development + opportunities for research abound with the clinic!

• Engage your local business community

The B Corp clinic is an excellent opportunity to improve town-gown relationships, network within the local business community, and to explore sustainable practices with partner companies. It gives the community exposure to students outside of a formal academic setting and gives access to the broader (both national and international) B Corp/ B Labs community.

• Generate revenue to sustain your program

Develop a financial model for a clinic, giving it the ability to not only cover its own costs, but to potentially supplement peripheral B Corp Clinic activities and other departmental initiatives.

“We were thrilled and grateful to go through the 1-day workshop with Jessica Thomas to learn best practices for launching and running a B Impact Team. As a result of our time with Jessica, we were able to launch our own program following a tested template and benefiting greatly from lessons learned from others. The workshop helped us accelerate our time to implementation and helped us be successful out of the gate. Jessica and her team at NC State University have built an exceptional model for hands-on learning for students, while also providing tangible and significant benefit to local companies. The workshop is a great pathway for this excellent and innovative learning and community engagement program to be replicated. I hope many of my university colleagues around the country and world will take advantage of this opportunity!”

– Fiona S. Wilson, Clinical Associate Professor, Social Innovation, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, and Executive Director, Center for Social Innovation and Enterprise, Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire.

Structure

The workshop will be offered in either a half-day or full-day workshop, either virtually or in-person. Here’s an example of a full-day workshop schedule

Session 1: Value Proposition

Discuss and form the exact VP for the department or community. Identify exact opportunities for student growth, departmental reputation building, community building/ networking, and revenue generation.

Session 2: Overview

Program structure/ timeline, clinic administration, clinic team structure, and clinic partner organization. Development and identification of specific clinic roles within the client’s department/ organization.

Session 3: Planning

Develop a timeline to execution, creation of potential partner lists, identification of key stakeholders that need buy-in of the clinic, and modeling of the financial outlook of the clinic.

Session 4: Administration

Deep dive into the minutia of running a clinic; event planning timelines and expectations (kick off, interim, final presentations and peripheral events), development of the applications for company participation and student participation. Developmental process for creating, utilizing, and organizing the library of resources for use during the B Corp clinic. Introduction to communication methods and procedures during the clinic.

Session 5: Review and Improvement

Establish survey and feedback mechanisms to determine what went well/ what didn’t go well (How was the timing? Did the clinic fulfill everyone’s expectations? Was the clinic financially viable?)

“Jessica and the team at NC State’s Business Sustainability Collaborative were extremely generous in providing Lenoir-Rhyne University with the tools to bind our operation to Asheville’s growing B Corp ethos. Jessica’s in-depth “know how” related to social entrepreneurship has given us the confidence to create a program that will, hopefully, be an engine for Asheville’s shifting business culture.”

– Michael M. Dempsey, Ed.D., Dean and Director, Center for Graduate Studies of Asheville, Lenoir-Rhyne University

Format

The B Corp Clinic Workshop will be offered in several different formats to best accommodate the needs of individual programs. Options include:

• Full-day in-person workshop that walks participants through three sessions covering the Clinic’s value proposition, recommended structure/organization, and planning phases, providing ample opportunity for Q&A as well as being adaptable to each program’s needs.
• Half-day in-person workshop to discuss what the essential components are that make for a successful B Corp Clinic.
• Virtual half-day workshop that allows for self-paced guidance and implementation.

Any combination of the above formats may also be requested to further expand on any area of the workshop. For more information, including how to schedule a workshop and the different rates, please contact Jessica Thomas (jothomas@ncsu.edu).