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Jendi Coursey Communications is celebrating our one-year anniversary as a Certified B Corp, and what a year it’s been! During difficult times, we tend to find out what we’re made of, and navigating 2020 as a B Corp was a great exercise in keeping our values at the forefront of our work.

Our Values

Whether we’re in the middle of a pandemic or enjoying a peaceful, uneventful year, and no matter who we’re working with or what type of project we’re working on, you can count on three things from us.

1. We will bring a can-do attitude to the endeavor.
2. We will tell the truth in service of excellence.
3. We will find ways to learn and grow and invite others to join us.

Education and Health Care Got Walloped

This year required a fair amount of crisis communication. Most of our clients are in health care and education, two industries that faced unprecedented challenges in 2020. School districts had to change their delivery model overnight when they were forced to close schools unexpectedly last March, and our healthcare clients were on the frontlines, doing everything they could to keep patients safe while processing huge volumes of ever-changing information about COVID-19.

No matter how crazy things got, we took each new challenge in stride, sometimes combatting persistent misinformation to help people make good decisions. We also had to deliver hard news at times, like telling our clients who were overwhelmed by their current workload that we wanted to help them reach out to even more people, expecially difficult-to-reach populations that didn’t speak English or use electronic means of communication. And to their credit, our clients stretched past their previous limitations and found new ways to connect.

We Used the B Corp Framework as a Guide

Our goal during the last 12 months was to help our clients communicate and collaborate with all of their stakeholders using approaches consistent with their values. We used the pillars of the B Corp framework–governance, workers, community, environment, and customers–to consider all the ways our clients intersect with their communities, and we encouraged our clients to make decisions and develop messaging with all those intersections in mind.

In our own work, being a B Corp keeps us accountable to rigorous social and environmental standards. Ultimately, B Corp certification is a challenge to make business a force for good in the world. Weathering a pandemic, a fractured economy, and political division has made so many of us reflect on our values and our purpose in new ways. We’re thankful that we were able to meet this moment with a solid foundation and with a like-minded community of other B Corps. 

We’re Looking Forward to a Slightly Calmer Year

We’re especially grateful that we were able to support our clients through the last year and even grow our business. It meant the world to us to keep the team employed and supported. As it turns out, B Corps in particular were well-suited to navigating the challenges in 2020. It’s not so much that we were insulated from difficulties, it’s more that being a B Corp means having a common set of priorities: continuous improvement, accountability, leadership, and a long-term perspective.

Leaders at B Lab, the organization that manages B Corp certification, shared in their year-end reflection that “as members of a business community founded on the power of connections, B Corps have an opportunity to lead the way toward a more resilient and inclusive economy that works for all people and protects the future of the planet.”  

It’s been a wild year, but we couldn’t think of a better time to be part of the B Corp community. Here’s to another year of being in it together!