GoViably For Vendors
A sustainable business integrates social and environmental responsibility into the core of their business model. Businesses, by default, should be conscious of the impacts they are having on their team, community and environment in addition their financial performance. Some of the ways this can be done are by lowering their carbon footprint, choosing suppliers who are local and who do not use child labor practices, choosing raw materials that can be recycled or are recycled, or biodegradable. It also means having a strong corporate culture of transparency and respect for their staff. A sustainable business looks at their impact holistically.
Becoming or deepening as a sustainable business is a journey. An easy and low-cost way to start, for example, is by implementing a culture where social and environmental responsibility is reflected in all decisions and by learning how to implement a culture of sustainability throughout all staff and roles of the business. There are many ways to get started with GoViably – one of these is a free energy efficiency and decarbonization virtual
walkthrough to learn about your physical building and equipment. The building is a neutral territory for beginning a sustainability movement – it introduces the topic to the culture without taking on the behavior of individuals. It can get the conversation going!
Step one in developing an action plan is reporting on how your business currently engages with social and environmental responsibility. This can be done through the GoVIably Certification assessment and report. You will fill out a questionnaire asking about your governance, about your energy used and your products materials and distribution. We assess all your answers and create a report for you which summarizes where you currently stand. This report also serves as your action plan. In this report, GoViably will also provide suggested action steps on where and how you can improve. Maintaining the action plan can be done through our sustainability dashboard checklist, and by retaking the assessment periodically so you can see the progress made. In future developments of the GoViably sustainability dashboard, you will see features that will simplify tracking your progress and improving your sustainability standing.
GoViably for Individuals
We are here to simplify the process – we can contact the seller for you. Should you have any questions, you can email us at info@goviably.com
Products and ingredients that are environmentally sustainable are those that have minimal negative impacts to people, animals and the planet. There are a variety of ways to decrease a product or ingredients’ negative impacts. Some of the ways to do this include being made from recycled material, being recyclable or biodegradable, avoiding child labor and avoiding animal products to name a few.
GoViably endorsement requires each seller to answer a survey to confirm they meet the minimum standard of social and environmental responsibility. This survey includes questions about:
- The degree of integration of social and environmental responsibility in decision making
- A business’ mission and its implementation regarding governance and diversity
- A business’ carbon impact
- Their suppliers and their environmental and social impacts
- Sustainable materials
- Waste management.
Coming Soon
Our website has not yet been turned into an app. We plan on making this improvement in the coming year.
Business Sustainability Services
When a business signs up for a sustainability certification assessment and report, once the report is created it will be given to the clients via PDF. These reports have a variety of uses, including being used for your team internally to set goals, they can be used on your website to provide transparency to your customers, or they can be used to share with investors and other stakeholders. We can provide you with our standard report or, if you require specific data,
we can modify it to meet all your needs.
Our reports are based on the information a business provides in the sustainability certification assessment. In the report we provide suggested action steps on how a business can improve their social and environmental sustainability, these are based on industry standards containing that business. For fully customized and tailored strategies, a business can set up a discovery call. In the discovery call, you will obtain detailed guidance and help implement improvements through our consulting team.
Once you have your report in your hands, it is yours to use as you will. We recommend renewing your report every 18 –24 months, depending on your progress with your sustainability action items. For those who have made significant improvements and want your successes shared with your stakeholders, you can renew your report sooner.
One on One Consulting
Think of GoViably as your temporary sustainability department – our consulting services are here to help you implement strategies to improve your sustainability, from strengthening your corporate culture, to transitioning to sustainable materials and in between.
Consulting is advised if you want to become socially and environmentally responsible but are not sure where to start. Do you have ideas but need help staying consistent on putting them into practice? Or you think about sustainability sometimes but need help being consistent with integrating social and
environmental responsibility into the core of your business model? If either of these questions rings true, you may be an excellent candidate for consulting services.
Consulting by nature is often customized, however our most frequent package is a 3-Month package. This package includes weekly 1-hour video sessions and unlimited emails for $4,422.
Our consulting sessions are most helpful to businesses who don’t have their own sustainability department in-house but are ready to make a shift to minimize their negative impact. You may be a business with some ideas but isn’t sure about how to implement them, or you may lack time to strategize and need guidance on setting goals.
General Questions
Our definition of CSR is a business doing the right thing. CSR is when a business self-regulates its social and environmental impacts and holds itself accountable to itself and other stakeholders. This usually consists of reporting their actions and being transparent about how they are positively impacting their communities and the environment, this can be from sharing where they source their materials from, to their waste management, to their governance and diversity.
- Financial Statement: A financial statement is one of four documents that reports on a firm’s financial status. It has no information about social or environmental impacts and is primarily used to make decisions about how to reinvest the firm’s revenue. It is really focused on a shorter period of time such as a quarter or a year.
- Annual Report: an annual report is utilized to give shareholders insight into the performance of the organization. It includes information about the financials and the operations of the organization. Some organizations will expand this report to include social and environmental impacts of the organization, but this is not a true sustainability report because it is confined to reporting what happened and does not go into future goals of the organization. The report is dominantly used by shareholders to determine if they will continue to invest in an organization, so it really focuses on past performance.
- CSR: This acronym was the mainly used historically when all Sustainability reports were called Corporate Social Responsibility reports. The movement was inspired by corporate philanthropy and the idea that the business has a social contract with the community to have a net positive impact. It grew out of the business practice of publishing annual reports and integrated the triple bottom line which encourages consideration of people and planet along with profit. This term is still being circulated but there are many other terms that organizations will use to explore their environmental and social impacts.
- ESG : This acronym is commonly used interchangeable with CSR. Many of the same elements exist in the report but the primary audience considered is investors. The acronym stands for Environmental Social Governance and the term grew out of the UN Sustainable Development goals and continues to advance the CSR movement towards greater global sustainability.
- Community Impact Report : This is a report that is generated by organizations which long to tell their story of impact to the community. This report will include some financial information but is dominantly concerned with social impacts. It does not typically Include environmental information. It is commonly used in the non-profit sector and could be expanded to include environmental information even if the mission of the organization does have environmentalism as part of its impact.