National Co+op Grocers (NCG) has earned global recognition for its commitment to its mission, ethics, accountability and transparency. B Lab, the non-profit that certifies B Corporations, last month named NCG among its 2018 “Best for the World” honorees in the Governance category.
B Lab’s governance rankings system measures whether a B Corp has adopted a social or environmental mission and how it engages its employees, board members and the community to achieve that mission. It also measures employee access to financial information, customers’ opportunities to provide feedback and the diversity of the company’s governing bodies.
According to B Lab, NCG is among the top 10 percent of more than 2,500 certified B Corps worldwide within this category. The 233 Best for Governance companies come from 77 different industries in 16 countries.
“NCG is a co-op built, owned and governed by independent food co-ops who in turn are built, owned and governed by food co-op shoppers. We all share a belief in the power of cooperation to build and sustain communities and look to the cooperative values and principles as a guide to how we conduct business for and with each other,” said C.E. Pugh, interim CEO of NCG.
“This provides the foundation for a strong and collaborative governance system that comes to life in business practices ranging from developing resources that foster cooperation among our food co-ops, to working with our board and owners in innovative ways, and to championing and upholding a commitment to mitigate climate change. We are grateful to B Lab for honoring NCG and our work, and for recognizing the positive impacts of the cooperative model,” Pugh said.
“People are hungry for organizations like NCG, who are changing the system by building businesses that seek to create the greatest positive impact,” said 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 be not just the best in the world but the best for the world.”
Founded in 1999, National Co+op Grocers (NCG) is a business services cooperative for retail food co-ops located throughout the U.S. NCG helps unify food co-ops in order to optimize operational and marketing resources, strengthen purchasing power, and ultimately offer more value to natural food co-op owners and shoppers everywhere. Our 147 member and associate co-ops operate more than 200 storefronts in 37 states with combined annual sales of nearly $2.1 billion. Find a map of NCG member and associate co-ops here.